Vales & Swales

Not all scientists are suited by temperament and intellect to keep vigil on the heights where paradox flourishes in the wind of metaphysics and knowledge fades into the unknown--to clock the flight of star-clouds, chop the atom's nucleus into mathematical hash or chase the primordial life-germ through a thicket of test tubes. Some workers must patrol the vales & swales where humbler things may be found beneath any stone. Such upturned stones in recent weeks disclosed the following:

P: Librarians have wondered for years why the leather bindings of books in frequent use last longer than those which are rarely called for. Experiments by Chemists R. W. Frey and C. W. Beebe of the U. S. Department of Agriculture convinced them that salt from sweaty hands acts as a preservative.

P:Anthropologist Mildred Trotter of Washington University (St. Louis) found that the hair of Arabs is more oval (less circular) in cross-section and larger in circumference than that of U. S. whites.

P:Charles W. Heath of Sioux City was granted a patent on a "submarine eye" for hunting sunken treasure. Essential feature is a television transmitter which will examine the sea floor, send pictures of what it sees to a screen on board the boat.

P: The British Boot & Shoe Trade Association, deciding that the only way to fit a shoe properly is to study the shod foot in action, exhibited a rubber overshoe carrying six electrical contacts at key pressure points. When the wearer walks over a metal surface, electrical instruments record the pressure changes.

P:Dr. W. R. Singleton of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, by pollinating corn from three different strains, grew ears with alternating rows of red, white & blue kernels.

P:At the University of California, a female rat known as BH-17543 gave birth to a litter of 18. Previous record for a litter of rats: 17.

P: Suicides and murders by means of potassium cyanide in Japan are increasing. Chemist Matsutaro Nishida of Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Board announced discovery of a substance which, if mixed with the poison, would emit an odor so foul that it would deter would-be suicides from drinking it, warn victims of murder-plotters.

P: Exhibited at the National Hotel Exposition in Manhattan were an automatic device for detecting bogus money and bad checks, a pump apparatus for dealing with flooded bathrooms, a meat-softening substance called tendra which is extracted from a South Sea Island plant.

P:Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History put on exhibition a Neanderthal man's tooth. "While this is a small addition," said a museum spokesman, "it is a highly valued one, as few if any other museums in America possess similar material."

P: Famed Psychologist Alfred Adler ("Inferiority Complex") opined that children who do not digest their food properly may later become greedy for food, and, by extension, greedy for money, which would explain why so many potent financiers have stomach trouble.

P: In Sydney, Australia, where hospital inmates were kept awake at night by barking dogs, the dogs were silenced by severing their vocal chords. One E. G. Pryce, returning from Russia, declared that Soviet scientists have bred a barkless dog by crossing a Siberian wolfhound with an Australian dingo.

P: By radiating his poultry pen with ultraviolet light, a farmer near Niles Center, Ill., raised chickens whose flesh was all white meat.

P: Sir Frederick Hobday of the Wye Agricultural College, Ashford, Kent, found that the spread of foot-rot among British sheep was checked by shoeing the sheep with tight-fitting rubber boots.

P: Shown at London's International Inventors' Exhibition were shoes with collapsible 18-inch stilts folding into the soles, for short persons who wish to see over the heads of a crowd at a parade; a breakfast eggcup adjustable for large or small eggs; an electrically lighted dog harness to prevent dogs from being struck by automobiles at night.

P:A South African named R. H. Harris offered to the British Government the patent rights on his method for exterminating the tsetse fly. The device consists of a dummy bullock with an electric light shining through a hole in its side. When the fly approaches to bite the bullock, it is attracted by the light, enters the dummy, cannot get out.

P:The American Bituminous Coal Merchants Association announced lump coal wrapped in Cellophane, to keep cellars clean and enable housewives to put coal into furnaces without soiling their hands.

P:A press agent's release from Dictograph Silent Radio Company began thus: "Tomorrow's radio has arrived and is announced today. It is the first silent radio ever introduced on the market as such."

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