From the September 17, 1932, issue
ANOTHER GREAT WALL
The Great Wall of China, winding like a mighty, protecting serpent along the old northern boundary of the Celestial Kingdom–
Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Wall of Britain, built and fortified to shut the barbarians of the north out of southern Britain in Roman days–
And now, added to this small, select list of Great Walls in the world is an American entry–the Great Wall of Peru, which has been discovered by explorers flying over the Andes.
The American Wall was built with hard labor by an Indian people called the Chimu, who had an important civilization long ago on the Pacific coast of Peru, until finally they were swallowed up in a terrific struggle by the powerful empire of the Incas.
CHIMPANZEE EXCELS BABY IN SEVERAL MENTAL TESTS
An ape brought up with a child in a human family is superior to her human “brother” in performance on a number of mental tests and experiments, the psychologist who performed the experiment, Dr. W.N. Kellogg, declared before the meeting of the American Psychological Association in Ithaca.
Motion pictures were shown by Dr. Kellogg, professor at Indiana University, of an infant chimpanzee and human baby learning to untie knots and performing other tests of their mental development. The two had been brought up together for 9 months. The ape learned more rapidly, remembered longer, and for the first 5 months responded to more words than the boy, Dr. Kellogg said. The superiority of the ape was probably due in large measure to her strictly human environment, he believes.
Other experiments, however, reported to the same meeting by Dr. Louis W. Gellerman of Yale University indicate that infants and apes do differ in reasoning ability even at that early age. One of the tests he gave in identical fashion to two babies and two chimpanzees was to distinguish between a triangle and a square in order to secure food. Human babies have greater ability to discover the relationship between the correct food box and the shape of the marker placed above it, Dr. Gellerman found.
The chatter of the babies as they puzzled over the boxes showed that they learn not alone by trial and error, but by thinking out the problem in words. This superior ability to “verbalize” distinguishes the mentality of humans from that of apes, Dr. Gellerman indicated.
DISCOVERY OF NEW ENERGY FORM PREDICTED
The discovery of a new type of energy within the atomic nucleus was predicted at York, England, by Dr. C.D. Ellis, physicist of Cambridge’s famous Cavendish Laboratory, who spoke before the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Ellis is an associate of Lord Rutherford. He presented evidence that the energy distribution of electrons emitted by radioactive atoms like radium upsets the principle of the conservation of energy. The principle has been considered fundamental to physics.
In attempting to find a way out of this dilemma, Dr. Ellis suggested that possibly there would come the discovery of a new type of energy in the bodies that emit beta rays or electrons.
