"Nature and Science for Young Folks" was a fixture of the magazine from the beginning of the 20th century. Short articles would appear up-front, followed by children's questions. Later editions included simple electronic and then radio projects for boys. This edition notes the death of the last passenger pigeon, once populated in the hundreds of thousands. Luckily conservation was able to save some of the birds named at the end of the first article, most of which were slaughtered, of all things, so their feathers might adorn ladies' hats!SOME EXTINCT AMERICAN BIRDS
A bird or other animal is said to be extinct when the last one of its kind is dead. Extinction may result from natural conditions being unfavorable to the life of the species, it may be caused by man, or, again, it may be from a combination of both. The extinction of our own birds has been caused largely through the agency of man. And men, if they will, can save most of the species which remain. To that end our States have protective laws relating to game- and other birds, and much has been done and is being done to teach people the value of wild birds and the wisdom of protecting them.
The great auk is perhaps the most famous of our extinct birds. This was a flightless water-bird about the size of a goose. Though its wings were too small for flight and it was very awkward on land, it was an expert swimmer. Its home was in northern Europe, southern Greenland, southern Labrador, and on our Atlantic coast at least as far south as Massachusetts. Funk Island, north of Newfoundland, was a favorite nesting-place. Sailors landed here and killed them by the thousand for the oil to be obtained from their bodies; by 1844 or 1845, they had been exterminated here and in Iceland. With the natives it was an article of food, and it was easily caught on land. Another circumstance which no doubt hastened its extinction is that it laid only one egg to the nest. In 1852, the last great auk was seen alive, and the last dead one was found in 1853. There exist about eighty mounted and unmounted skins, four skeletons, and a good many eggs. An egg is worth about $1200 at auction.
The Labrador duck bred in Labrador, and was found on our Atlantic coast south to Chesapeake Bay. For many years before its final disappearance, it had not been a common duck; about 1875, it became extinct from some unknown cause. "Skunk duck" was one name by which it was known to hunters along the coast, this because of the black-and-white marking of the drake; the female was a grayish bird with a large white patch on each wing. About thirty-five skins and mounted specimens exist in museums, but not a single egg is known. In fact, the nesting of this duck, even as to where it occurred, is a matter of conjecture.
This year, the last known living passenger-pigeon died. This was a captive bird in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens. In the wild state the species has long been considered extinct. The last records of specimens taken are of two birds, one near Detroit, Michigan, and one at Canandaigua Lake, New York, both, by a most remarkable coincidence, on the same day, September I4, 1898. There have been many reports of birds seen since then. Possibly some of these have been true, but generally such reports are due to mistaking other birds for the pigeon. Wholesale slaughter by man was doubtless the chief cause of extermination in this case.
The wild pigeon was once extremely abundant. Early writers tell of flocks of "countless millions" which "darkened the sky" and required days to pass a given point. They nested in great colonies, every available tree over a wide extent of forest being occupied by from several to as many as forty or fifty pairs. As late as 1876, a nesting in Michigan averaged three or four miles in width, and extended for twenty-eight miles.
As the Eskimo curlew has long been a very rare bird, and the latest specimen was taken in 1911 (at Waco, Nebraska), it is now regarded as extinct or on the very verge of extinction. This was a large snipe-like bird, and was much sought by gunners; they called it the dough-bird. It nested in the arctic regions and wintered in South America, so that in the Lfnited States it was found only during its migrations.
The Carolina parrakeet was one of our most interesting birds; it was the only parrot-like species within our borders. It was a handsome bird, its head and neck yellow excepting the sides of the face and top of the head in front, which were orange; the bend of the wings and the upper parts of the legs were also orange; the rest of the plumage was largely green, varied below with yellowish. Formerly its range embraced the southeastern and central States. Now only ten individuals, captives, are known to exist; they are in the Zoos of New York City, Cincinnati, and Washington. A flock of thirteen was seen in Florida in 19o4, and there, if anywhere, remain the few wild survivors. It was killed in large numbers by fruit-growers because it was destructive to fruit; plumage hunters killed thousands of others for their feathers, and many were caught to be kept or sold as cage-birds. These are mainly the causes, as far as known, of the extermination of the Carolina parrakeet.
Besides the above extinct or practically extinct species, certain others are unfortunately approaching the same state, while still others, perhaps a dozen of them, are so rare that they seem to have reached the first mile-post in that direction. Of all these, the heath-hen is probably represented by the smallest number of individuals; they are found in only one locality, the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where there were about three hundred birds in 1910. It is hoped they will increase, for they are now closely watched and protected. Heath-hens once frequented the States of New York, New Jersey, and the mainland of Massachusetts. It is a game- bird closely resembling the prairie-hen of the West.
Others whose existence is threatened are the trumpeter swan, scarlet ibis, American egret, snowy egret, whooping-crane, long-billed curlew, band-tailed pigeon. These are all game- and plumage-birds, a fact which indicates that man is the chief cause of their decrease. It appears doubtful that the laws which now exist for their protection will have been made in time to save them from the fate of the passenger-pigeon.
Edmund J. Sawyer.
COUNTING THE STARS FROM THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
If you take a large map of the western hemisphere and on it draw a line due south from Boston, you will find that it passes through Arequipa, a mountain city of Peru, four thousand miles south of "the Hub." Here is located a great observatory where men are busily engaged in sweeping the heavens with their powerful telescopes and making photographs of the distant stars.
While there are plenty of observatories in the United States, most of them are near large cities, and so there is always more or less smoke and dust in the air. Now, one of the first requisites for the ideal astronomical station is a clear sky, free from clouds, smoke, haze, and dust; so, more than twenty-five years ago, Professor Solon I. Bailey, of Harvard University, started out to find just the right kind of a place to build an ideal observatory. He tried several places in Colorado and California, and then went to Chile. Finally, he decided to build his station at Arequipa, Peru, a city more than a mile and a half up in the air.
Here has been installed the largest and most powerful telescope of its kind in the world. It is called the Bruce photographic doublet. A special camera has been attached to a driving clock to follow the stars, and, with this, more than ten thousand negatives have been taken (most of them I4x17 inches), with exposures varying, usually, from ten minutes to eight hours.
The mighty telescope seems to possess a supernatural power. It ferrets out tiny stars so many miles away that the naked eye could never hope to see them. With this great Bruce lens an exposure of one second is sufficient for the brightest stars; by exposing the plate ten minutes, stars to about the eleventh magnitude can be shown; an exposure of sixty minutes shows stars to about the fifteenth magnitude. By increasing the length of the exposure, the number of stars that appear on the negative is enormously increased ; for example, stars that do not appear at all in a four-hour exposure will become visible after an exposure of six hours. When we remember that there are three times as many stars of the second magnitude as of the first, and three times as many of the third magnitude as of the second, an idea can be gained of the countless stars there are of the twelfth magnitude, for instance; but the myriads of the Milky Way surpass human conception.
Many of the charts show globular clusters of stars. At the centers of some of these clusters, the stars are packed so densely that there are 1oo stars to the square minute (the sixtieth part of a degree). If the stars were equally bright over the entire sky, the number would exceed 10,000,000,000, and the sky would be so luminous that there would be no real night. These photographs must be made with the greatest care. They must then be enlarged or examined with a microscope, since the images of the stars on the original plates are like thickly scattered grains of dust.
One very interesting set of plates has been made, having exposures of four hours. These can be made only on nights when there is no moon. The approximate number of stars on some of these plates has been determined, the number varying from 1000 to 10,000 stars per square degree. On a single plate 400,000 stars have been photographed. The total number of stars recorded in this splendid set probably approaches one hundred millions, according to the calculations of Professor Bailey. These plates also show many clusters of stars and nebute, as well as comets and meteors. There is enough material in these plates alone to keep the most industrious astronomer busy all his lifetime.
Arequipa is a city of thirty thousand inhabitants. It lies on the western side of the Cordilleras. To one approaching it from the coast, it seems to be a city of handsome marble, for it is built of a soft, white, volcanic stone. While it is in a region of earthquakes and volcanoes, the danger from these, cither to the astronomers or the instruments, is slight.
To the north of the observatory grounds rises the great range of Chachani, with the majestic cone, El Misti, to the northeast. High up on the summit of this mountain, 19,000 feet above sea-level, Professor Bailey established another station, and equipped it with self-recording instruments, but, as it was found that nearly every one who ascended to this great altitude was afflicted with mountain sickness and bleeding at the nose, it had to be abandoned, after having been in operation for seven years.
George F. Paul.
THIRST-PROOF ANIMALS
Water is generally supposed to be one of the absolute necessaries of existence. Yet there are various species of animals, in addition to sheep, which appear to get along very well without it.
Reports state that the sheep which range the stretches of the Nebo National Forest, Utah, the greater part of which is desert, go from four to four and a half months without water. The only moisture they get during all that time is from the dew and succulent plants. This record far, very far, surpasses that of the camel, which is commonly accepted as the typical animal that can live without actually drinking for many days. Again, sheep in the waste table-lands of Central Asia, while browsing on the green, sappy grasses and other vegetation during the spring, summer, and autumn months, frequently do not taste water for two months and more.
But the non-drinking periods of these animals are exceeded in duration by the little wild pigs living among the dry foot-hills bordering the African Sahara toward Abyssinia. Here there is no rainfall for periods of between two and three years, the water-holes are few and far between, and natural springs are seldom encountered, so the only moisture these animals can get is in the roots and other edibles they grub up, including the fleshy leaves of the cactus.
That animals and birds can adapt themselves to an existence without water has been conclusively proved by the investigations recently made on the little known and uninhabited Henderson Island, which lies 120 miles or so northeast of Pitcairn Island, in the Pacific. This island, which is no more than six miles in extent, has no springs, swampy grounds, or rain-holes. It is destitute of water. Yet on it are found a rat, a lizard, described as being very abundant, and no fewer than four species of birds. Two of these, the crake, or rail, and the reed-warbler, are usually associated with fresh water. But they, like the others there, unless the dew can slake their thirst, live and thrive without any evidence of suffering from the deprivation of it.
But perhaps the most singular instance of a thirst-proof animal is the pocket-mouse, one of the common rodents of the desert. This little animal—so named from the fur-lined pocket on the outside of its cheek, out of which it takes food on occasion—has no desire, no instinct, for water. Some of these mice have been kept for three years on the ordinary dry mixed bird-seed given to canaries. During this long period, not a taste of green food or a drop of water was given. In fact, the pocket-mice refuse to avail themselves of such treats.
The bird-seed put before them contained not more than ten per cent, of moisture, which is less than is required for digestion. Food as dry as this cannot be swallowed until it is moistened by saliva. Yet the pocket-mice suffered neither in health nor in spirits.
Such instances afford conclusive evidence that, when absolutely necessary, Nature can so readjust her workings in the constitution of animals that what is apparently absolutely vital to us—water—is not at all requisite for their health and well- being.
N. Tourneur.
This sketch calls attention to some very interesting zoological facts, which thus far have been but little noticed. The author might also have mentioned the prong-horned antelope of the deserts, the mountain-sheep of Pinacate, the kangaroo-mouse of the Sonoran desert generally, and the wood-rat of the same region. Of course it does rain occasionally in all deserts; but, for all that, the desert mammals and birds are so nearly "waterproof" that the wonder is almost as great as if it never rained at all. I was astounded by what I, myself, saw in the Sonoran desert.
One point in the last sentence I think deserves a little modification. It is where the author says: "Water is not at all requisite for their health and well-bcing." That is hardly correct. It is the same with desert-living creatures as with desert plants. When it rains, they store up quantities of water, and they also get the benefit of dew. In the Sonoran desert, the dew is, at times, quite heavy; and it plays its part as a water-supply for wild life.
-W. T. Hornaday, Sc.D., Director of the New York Zoological Society.
NOTE: So many questions are received that we can undertake to answer 1n these pages only those of unusual or general interest. Other letters, containing return postage, w1ll be answered personally.—EDITOR,
Is A Frog A Reptile?
Noroton, Conn.
Dear St. Nicholas : Will you please tell me if a frog is a reptile or an animal?
Your interested reader,
Anne F. Maury.
A frog is not a reptile, but a batrachian or amphibian. Reptiles are covered with shields or scales. Batrachians have a smooth skin and begin life as a tadpole, to finally, as a rule, leave the water. The batrachians include the frogs, toads, newts, and salamanders.—Raymond L. Ditmars.
Does Fire Burn More Brightly In Cold Weather?
Esmont, Va.
Dear St. Nicholas: Will you please tell me if on a cold night embers of a fire die more quickly than on a mild night; and if a fire burns more brightly in cold air than in warm. If so, why?
Your interested reader,
Churchill Newcomb.
A fire burns somewhat more quickly on a cold night, but the difference is so slight as to be hardly noticeable. There is no appreciable difference in the brightness of a fire, provided there is no wind blowing.
Why Spring Comes Slowly?
Detroit, Mich.
Dear St. Nicholas: Will you please tell me why the coldest part of winter is when the sun is coming back?
Your interested reader,
Richard Newton Detzens.
The earth, the lakes, and the seas grow very cold during the winter-time, and it requires long heating to restore them to the summer temperatures. As you know, a pot of water stands a long time on the flame before it begins to get warm, and then it still takes some time for the warming water to boil. These delays in getting hot are due to the amount of heat which water must absorb before it shows any change in temperature. Earth and stones also must absorb some heat before they begin to show a change in their temperatures, but they do not delay as long as does water.
Therefore, as you see, when the sun begins to "come back" in the earliest spring, it has a large amount of work to do before it can make the waters and the lands show any change in temperature. Thus there is some delay in the earth's warming up.
The air about us is warmed mostly by the warm ground, and, in the best of circumstances, the air, a gas, warms much more slowly than the ground. Here comes in the great delay in warming up in the spring. In all, the warming of ground and air lags behind the date when the sun begins to return by as much as thirty or forty days. I would suggest that you visit the local office of the United States Weather Bureau in Detroit; there you can see a record made by a self-recording thermometer (thermograph) that will show you how the daily temperature curve lags and how the yearly temperature curve lags. The process is reversed in the fall.
Cleveland Abbe, Jr.
Some "Unearthly" Gases
Dear St. Nicholas: Has any mineral yet been found to exist in any heavenly body which does not exist on earth ?
Your interested reader,
Millicent H. Lewis.
There are certain elementary substances which, when highly heated in the stars and nebulae, produce a spectrum, or color strip, different from any that can be obtained from any of the elements on the earth, and it is undoubtedly the case that these substances actually exist in the stars but have never been found here. One of these is coronium, a gas that surrounds the sun. Another is nebulium, a gas found in many of the strange bodies called nebulze. The substance helium was for many years known to exist in the sun and in many of the stars, but it was not found upon the earth until the year 1895, no less than twenty-seven years after it had been discovered in the sun. —Prof. Eric Doolittle, University of Pennsylvania.
About Bears
Washington, D. C.
Dear St. Nicholas: (1) Will you please tell me whether the polar bear is or is not descended from the brown bear?
(2) Is there any book which I can consult for further information?
Yours truly,
Roberta M. Patterson.
(1) No, the polar bear is not descended from the brown bear. Both those species probably descended, in different lines of development, from the extinct cave bear of Europe.
(2) We should advise you to examine Osborn's Age of Mammals.
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