PRICKLY PAIR

TWO sharp quillers from the Amazon Jungle moved in with Marion and Paul McMichael of Brooklyn two years ago just so the husband and wife could prove a point. You see, the quillers are prehensile-tailed porcupines named Gerald and Geraldine and the McMichaels had heard that all such animals were dumb—and dangerous. As a member of the New York Zoological Society, Paul didn’t think so and he brought a couple home to study..

“Affectionate and playful, Gerald and Geraldine are clean and do not destroy furniture. They do not shoot their quills as many hunters believe. But the quills are sharp as needles and overlay like shingles on a roof. They grow from five to six inches long and then are shaken loose. Removing them from the rug is the only tough job.

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Making Fish Feel at Home in New York Aquarium

VISITORS to the famous New York aquarium are little aware, as they pass along before the amazing array of tanks containing fish of every shape and color, that behind the scenes of this remarkable institution there are thousands of feet of pipes, an intricate pumping system, a veri table hospital for ailing fish, and a staff of icthyologists whose task is to provide the fish with the most comfortable living quarters possible.

The hospital of the aquarium is equipped with microscopes, operating tables, a research laboratory, and even an ultra violet ray lamp for the treatment of afflicted fish. Here experts study all specimens of fish brought to them, and one of the results of their labors is that fish actually live longer in the tanks than they would in their native habitat.

By way of making the water healthful for the fish to live in, water from an artesian well, purer even than sea water, is supplied through a closed circulating system, 300.-000 gallons of water going through the

tank a day. Fish swimming around in the sea or in a lake give off acids from their scales, but the aquarium takes care of this situation by mixing a slight amount of bicarbonate of soda in the water.

One feature about life in an aquarium tank that fish undoubtedly find attractive is that they are fed regularly by an expert chef who knows exactly what each fish likes best. Thus the aquarium denizens do not have to forage for their food, and never do they come to a mouth-to-mouth struggle with powerful enemies for their sustenance.

Recently when one of the pair of penguins of the aquarium died, the survivor began to pine away, and it looked as if he would soon follow his pal to penguin paradise. Experts were at a loss to find a cure for the bird’s loneliness, until some one thought of a mirror, and now the penguin, fully recovered, poses all day before his image, thinking that it is his deceased pal. Certain varieties of extremely delicate fish, found in deep tropical seas, cannot survive in the aquarium waters.

Jet Noises Tried Out on Guinea Pigs

Jet engines make a lot of noise—enough to pain or perhaps harm your ears. To find out more about the effect of very loud noise on human ears, Air Force scientists at the Wright-Patterson Base are learning what it does to guinea pigs’ ears. The anesthetized animals (below) are placed in a soundproof room equipped with sound generators. Those are not earphones Dr. H. E. von Gierke is wearing, but muffs to protect his ears.

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Farms of Future to Have Giant Stock

WHAT will future ages do for food?

Some have suggested that the chemists will set up huge machines, to turn out proteins, starches, sugars, fats and vitamins, which will be taken in suitable “tabloid” doses daily by the population; that instead of farms, we will have only great chemical works, full of vats and tanks, while the outdoors is used for parking purposes exclusively.

At the recent meeting of the American Chemical Society, however, a less mechanical proposition was suggested; that, after all, plants and animals are the most efficient laboratories for the production of certain complicated organic chemicals. Instead of reducing production, we will increase it; except that, as the inventor of the steam shovel made only a super-spade, biologists will breed us super-cows, just as much more

effective. Plants, also, we may suppose, will be developed for optimum economy; putting as much as possible into fruit and as little as necessary into inedible stalks and roots. The weather, too, will be regulated: a variation in the amount of ozone in the air (done by electricity) will cut off or let through more sunlight, as the crops require. Let it not be supposed that this revolution completely does away with machinery; but the super-horse is a machine as powerful as the truck, and consuming fuel which can be raised locally. The whole, as a picture of agriculture in the year 2035, has been presented by our interplanetary artist, Paul, after reading the prophetic address of Chemist Thomas Midgley, and Wells’s “Food of the Gods.”

TARANTULA’S BITE FAILS TO KILL

Professor P.W. Fattig, curator of the Emory University Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, made a large tarantula from Honduras bite him the other day. The professor said he tried the experiment partly out of curiosity and partly to prove his contention that bites of such insects are not necessarily fatal.

It took about half an hour’s poking to make the supposedly vicious creature bite. Then it hung onto the professor’s thumb with a bulldog grip for about three minutes before it was pried off. Professor Fattig said the bite was two or three times as painful as a bee’s sting and his thumb felt about three times its normal size. There were no other ill effects and the swelling soon disappeared.

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Do SHARKS Really BITE

Is It Possible to Learn the Truth About the Habits of Alleged Man-Eaters in the Semitropic Water? Here Is the Report of a Study Made for Popular Science Monthly by One Who Now Fears the Swift Monsters

By JOHN CHAPMAN HILDER

SOME years ago, I heard a celebrated naturalist state unequivocally that sharks would not attack men. As proof of his statement, he cited his own experience in shark-infested waters. Clad only in a bathing suit and a diving helmet, he had descended to the sea bottom, staying there for considerable periods while sharks and other fish swam negligently about, merely evincing a mild curiosity in his presence.

Further, this naturalist said that, though he had tried in various parts of the world to run down instances in which men had been attacked by sharks, he had failed to discover a single authenticated case. He gave it as his opinion that attacks hitherto attributed to sharks had in reality been perpetrated by that other killer of the sea, the barracuda.

Not being a naturalist, I do not propose to set up my own opinions in controversion of an expert. Nevertheless, I have gleaned a few items of information that do not gee with the theory that the shark is as harmless as a dove.

Not long ago, several young men were swimming in an inlet on the east coast of Florida, diving into the water from a bridge. Suddenly, at the cry of “shark,”

they scrambled to land. From the bridge, the intruder, a good sized fish, was plainly visible. It had cruised in from the ocean, as sharks often do, in search of food.

Among the swimmers was one who was not afraid of sharks. ”They don’t attack men,” he declared. To prove his theory, he waited until the fish floated close to the bridge and then jumped onto its back.

The shark promptly amputated the rash young man’s arm at the shoulder. And had not his companions succeeded in driving the brute off, there would have been nothing left of him. At any rate that is the way the story was, authoritatively, told to me.

THIS incident, of course, proves nothing except that if you jump on a shark’s back it will resent the familiarity. Suppose we take another case, one in which, according to the best report I could get, a shark struck without such open provocation.

On the Inlet at Palm Beach, five minutes’ walk from where I live, is a municipal dock. Last summer, the dockmaster went down to the ocean to take a dip before breakfast. He had waded out and was standing still in waist-high water, when something suddenly seized his foot.

Shouting for help, he got out of the water as fast as he could—with most of his heel ripped off. He did not see what had bitten him, but the doctor who treated his wound, and several professional fishermen who examined it, say that beyond question only a shark could have inflicted the injury.

A man who lives in West Palm Beach is minus part of his hand. Going bathing in the ocean, he ran exuberantly into the surf and dove headlong through a roller. Instantly one of his hands, he says, was seized by a small shark. He beat at it with the other hand and managed to get free.

THERE is a negro living in West Palm Beach whose scalp, he insists, bears the marks of a shark’s teeth. He is a native of the Bahamas, where his memorable adventure occurred when he was a boy. He was seized following a dive and rescued by companions just in time.

The fact that tropic and subtropic waters contain dangerous fish does not mean that it is impossible to swim in them without being attacked. It does mean, however, if these stories are true, that there is an ever present risk of attack. Some persons, confident that they have charmed lives, go for long swims off the Florida coast, firmly believing that the fish that is to attack them has not as yet been spawned.

There was one such enthusiast who used daily to swim about a mile out from shore. Having done this for some time without mishap, he pooh-poohed the suggestion that it was a hazardous pastime. One day, he felt something take a piece out of his thigh.

Swimming frantically, he made for the beach, conscious of subsequent bites en route. In the surf, he fainted from loss of blood, but was pulled to land. Those who rescued him insist that he encountered a school of small sharks, that literally fed on him as he swam. At the hospital, to which he was rushed, they despaired of saving his life; but after a year’s confinement, he recovered.

I know of another enthusiast, a close friend of many friends of mine, who also paid the price of his foolhardiness. Though warned that a shark had been seen lurking in the vicinity of the spot where he proposed to swim, he disregarded the warning. A few minutes later, he too was carried, in a fainting condition, out of the surf, with the greater part of one calf torn away, presumably by the shark. Out in California, I have four times felt earth tremors. There was no mistaking them for anything but what they were, but no mention of them appeared in the local papers. Similarly, in communities along the Caribbean, the Gulf, and that portion of the Atlantic where dangerous fish are found, there is little disposition on the part of the press to publicize events that might prejudice possible visitors. It is not difficult, however, to uncover apparently authentic cases of shark bite.

It is true that the barracuda—a slim, swift, piscine torpedo—has been responsible for many injuries and deaths. Attracted by any moving object in the water, it speeds to the attack, biting at anything, not because it is hungry, but just for the sake of biting.

DOWN around the Florida keys, where barracuda swarm, it is sometimes impossible for a fisherman to pull a whole fish into his boat. Drawn by its struggles, barracuda chop it to pieces before it can be brought to gaff.

Even when the fisherman is pulling the head of his mutilated catch overside, a barracuda will leap clear of the water in a savage attempt to get that, too. When hooked himself, he is a lusty fighter, and woe betide the inexperienced angler who neglects to club him to death before bringing him aboard.

Two men, fishing from a rowboat recently, pulled in an apparently exhausted barracuda and forgot to tap him over the head. The next moment they took to the water, and let the barracuda have the boat to himself.

Ordinarily the shark is somewhat more lethargic than the barracuda. He is attracted to his prey by scent rather than by sight. The eyes of the barracuda are large and keen-sighted. Those of the shark are relatively small and their vision is poor. Of the two, the barracuda is by far the faster swimmer, his speed having been variously estimated at from twenty-five to seventy miles an hour, as against the shark’s eight to nine.

Since no one, to my knowledge, has ever been in a position to hold a stop watch on the respective performances of either fish over a measured course, the speed of which each is capable is wholly a matter of conjecture. It would seem reasonable to suppose, however, that the known fact that the barracuda is fast and attracted by anything that makes a swirl in the water has led to the supposition that he is more dangerous to swimmers than the shark.

One factor that would appear to enhance the difficulty of identifying the miscreants in such cases is that the victims of predatory fish seldom see their assailants clearly.

NATURALLY, when a man has been bitten, his first thought is to get to shore. He does not look to see what has attacked him. If it happened to have been a shark, he might have caught a glimpse beforehand of its dorsal fin cutting through the water. But though the dangerous types of sharks are surface swimmers, they do not invariably stay on the surface. If the attacker were a barracuda, which has no large dorsal fin, it is improbable that the swimmer would see it at all.

Nevertheless, though their victims may not have seen them, it is said to be possible to tell, from an inspection of the wound, whether it was inflicted by a shark or a barracuda. The jaw formation and dental equipment of the two fish being utterly dissimilar, their bites are as unlike as those of a dog and a woodchuck. With its seven rows of thin, flat, triangular, saw-edged teeth, the shark is a ripper, a tearer of flesh. The barracuda, with long, razor-sharp fangs projecting from the roof of its mouth, and its jaws rimmed with smaller, needle-pointed teeth, is a sheer. The shark scrapes a jagged wound; the barracuda neatly cleaves.

A few varieties of the fish, it is true, can be definitely exonerated, these being the kind known as “bottom feeders,” who have either no teeth at all, like the nurse shark, or teeth too small to do any damage. With these exceptions, however, all sharks, it is assumed, are potential man-eaters. The consensus of opinion among the authorities I have talked with is that sharks that attack men probably do so without actually knowing the nature of their quarry.

Observe that I say “probably.” The truth is that compared with the mass of information available regarding the lives, habits, and so-called psychology of wild animals, there is relatively little definite knowledge concerning the equally wild denizens of the deep. Thus, for example, though we know pretty well what a lion may do under given conditions, we can’t tell much about what a shark will do.

Hunters, zoologists, and animal trainers have had opportunities to study the behavior and characteristics of lions for many years. The motion picture camera has played a large part in making these researches possible; by means of it, the animals have been studied in their natural environment, unconscious of being under observation.

Submarine photography is still in its infancy. Already, however, it has exposed one ancient theory as a fallacy by showing that a shark does not have to turn on its back in order to bite. Eventually underwater photography will expose still other fallacies. The great obstacle will be the virtual impossibility of keeping one particular fish, or group of fish, under observation in a natural state.

SHARKS have voracious appetites. Their natural food consists of small fish such as mullet, bluefish, kingfish, and jacks. Their presence or absence in any particular locality is governed largely by the presence or absence of food. They trail the big schools that criss-cross the seas, harrying them much as wolves harry a panic-stricken flock of sheep. One of their peculiarities is that normally they do not attack healthy, vigorous fish. If they did they would long ago have cleaned out the oceans.

One can sometimes see sharks gliding lazily along, right in the midst of a school of mullet, say, apparently ignoring them. Actually they are on the lookout for stragglers. Sharks have an amazing, mysterious sense that enables them to detect anything amiss with another fish, whether of a different species or one of their own kind.

Let a fish be hooked by an angler, and if there is a shark in the vicinity he will go right after it. The smell of blood attracts him, and as soon as he sees the hooked fish he can tell, by the way it swims, that something’s the matter with it. Smaller fish seem to know that sharks can’t see very clearly at any distance, and for that reason, when pursued, swim in sharp zigzags, constantly changing their courses.

THE smell and taste of blood rouse sharks to a high pitch of ferocity. One minute you may see them loafing along among a school of mullet in seeming nonchalance, and the next instant they are enacting a scene of indescribable carnage. One shark will have bitten a smaller fish in two; whereupon, together with its suddenly frenzied companions, it will try to kill everything within reach. At such times, when the water is whipped to a crimson froth and the air just above glistens with the bodies of the pursued, leaping clear in the frantic effort to escape, battles royal among the sharks themselves are a common occurrence.

If there were always schools of smaller fish to feed on, it might be that sharks would never attack men. But these schools come and go, kept ever on the move, not only by the necessity of seeking their own food, but by hosts of enemies. Deprived of their natural sustenance, sharks will eat anything they can get.

They follow ships for the garbage, enter harbors, and lurk at river mouths and inlets for such fish or other fare as may be brought down by current or ebbing tide. They lie in wait, close in along the beaches, for random fish that may come along, disporting themselves in the surf. It is these stray, hungry mavericks, who for one reason or another have become separated from the pack, that are blamed for attacks on swimmers.

Before coming to Florida, I had been led to believe that dangerous fish do not come close in for fear of being beached. The fact is that in pursuit of food, they frequently beach themselves. Captain Herb Hiscock, now retired, who has fished these waters for many years, told me he had seen sharks beach themselves by the score. In answer to my question as to which he considered more dangerous, the shark or the barracuda, he nominated the shark. So did Captain Herman Gray, whose experience in fishing tropical waters covers twenty-five years.

SHARKS and barracuda are not the only bad news to be encountered in southern seas. There are also the sting rays and the moray eels and the Spanish men-o’-war, the latter being the “chambered nautilus” of mythology, a beautiful purple and cobalt blue jellyfish, contact with which produces an effect similar to scalding.

The sting ray. is armed with a barbed bony lance near the root of its tail and, being a slimy beast, inflicts a highly poisonous wound. The moray eel lives in holes in the rocks. It is a powerful brute, sometimes attaining a length of six feet, and a big one is easily capable of severing a man’s wrist or ankle. When hooked and landed morays, unless thoroughly clubbed, are bad medicine; for they will try to sink their teeth in everything in sight. Though both can inflict serious wounds, however, neither the sting ray nor the moray is likely to molest a man unless he molests it first.

Brassiere for Bossy will increase the flow of milk into her udder from 25 to 35 per cent. Invented by a Phoenix psychiatrist, the canvas bra has four elongated sacks which cradle the cow’s teats.

Flashlights Reveal Frog Monsters

Camera Hunters Find Strange Reptiles EXTRAORDINARY flashlight photographs of strange barking and climbing frogs that inhabit the coral island of Santo Domingo in the West Indies form part of a valuable collection of reptilian life recently gathered for the American Museum of Natural History by Dr. and Mrs. G. Kingsley Noble.

In one of the most unusual scientific expeditions ever undertaken, the explorers used automatic flashlights to photograph frogs in their native haunts. Months of preparatory labor were spent in perfecting this method of photography, which Doctor Noble first practised in obtaining pictures of frogs that infest New Jersey meadows.

In addition to their large collection of photographs, preserved specimens, and skins, Doctor and Mrs. Noble brought back nearly 40 living specimens of the largest lizards in the world, believed to be direct descendants of giant prehistoric reptiles; a huge tree frog; and an amazing species of frog that “barks like a dog and squeals like a pig.”

The Santo Domingo horned lizard, which sometimes reaches a length of five feet, has an enormous head, powerful jaws, a wide gaping mouth with deep indigo interior, a red tongue and little pink projections dotting its face. The entire upper body is armored with a crest of spines running from the back of the neck to the tail. It bears a close resemblance to certain dinosaurs.

Natives of Santo Domingo believe that weird barking sounds, which emanate from their forests at night, are caused by ghosts. Doctor Noble traced these noises to tree frogs. Even more curious are the larger tree frogs that hatch from eggs into tadpoles, and reach their complete development while still in the water. They weigh a pound or more and perspire a strange milky liquid that causes blisters if it touches a person’s skin, and fills the air with an intolerable odor.

ZEBRAS USED TO HAUL ST. LOUIS MILK WAGON
Zebras draw a milk wagon on a regular St. Louis, Mo., delivery route. A pair of the animals were recently imported after their purchase from a German circus. The milk concern trained them to wear harness and pull a wagon just as horses formerly did. Comely milkmaids drive them and deliver the bottles to the customers along the route. The novelty appeals to buyers of the firm’s milk, and helps to advertise its products throughout the neighborhood.

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INSIDE STORY of the RODEOS

by ANDREW JAUREGUI

CHAMPION TEAM ROPER

FOR thirteen years I have been doing “setting-up” exercises —attempting, more or less successfully, to remain in leather on a plunging broncho or Brahma steer or to rope and tie elusive, wriggling bundles of calf meat. I am a rodeo performer and, with other cowboys, move from rodeo to rodeo each season, risking sound bones and excellent health for the roar of the crowds and the reward of gold.

Everywhere we hear these three questions: Isn’t it dangerous to ride wild horses ? How do you stay in the saddle ? What are the tricks of rodeo riding?

There is danger and, of course, there are tricks. Some have learned the fine points that enable them to ride to a championship in at least one division. Most of us specialize in one subject. Mine is roping. Some choose to ride bare-back on Brahma steers, others prefer bucking bronchos, minus bridle, or wild horses, without benefit of saddle or bridle. We take every precaution, but danger from the unforeseen stalks us always.

Although we use strong saddles with fourteen-inch swells directly in front of the legs to help us hang on during the plunging, these are of little help under some circumstances, such as fighting a horse in the chute. When I ride this kind, I slip into the saddle quickly and draw the bucking rein, a heavy rope leading to one side of the halter, back short. This pulls the pony’s chin in close to his chest and keeps him from rearing up. .

There’s a very smart trick in riding these untamed animals—swaying with the horse while keeping balance by leaning back against the rope. Oddly, the worst buckers are bronchos of several years’ rodeo experience.

No matter how mean the horse or how tough the going, we must observe a few rules to the very letter. We must wave one hand in the air—to touch leather with this one is to be disqualified. We must continue scratching with our spurs. Our only safety lies in keeping a steady and tight hand on the bucking rein, keeping our balance in the saddle if possible, or pulling ourselves back as we start to fly through space. For ten long seconds during what seem like a thousand bucks skyward and back again, we must stay aboard these heaving mountains, then slide out of the saddle as best we can. Some bronchos continue bucking after the final gun barks, while others heed the signals and calm down. Since we draw mounts by lot shortly before each event, unless we get a broncho we know by rep- utation, we must be prepared for anything!

But riding a wild horse! There’s excitement. Imagine straddling a bundle of mixed thunder and lightning bareback, with no bridle, and hanging onto a rope passed around its middle as it plunges, bucks, races, storms and kicks. Thanks to the Rodeo Association of America, the organization that rules these events, we don’t have to change our spurring position on the barebacks. So every rider who is wise sets his feet out ahead and scratches along the shoulders and doesn’t change that position. Meantime, he must keep a hand free to wave his sombrero, he must not change hands on the loose rope and he must maintain a pleased expression for the benefit of the customers.

Dangerous as are the wild bronchos, riding them is less hazardous than boarding, riding and departing from the rolling back of a cantankerous Brahma. They are a cross between India’s sacred cow and the Texas Longhorn. Their flesh rolls, their horns are sharp and they take keen delight in goring a rider once he is thrown. They give more action and are smarter in some respects than the bronchos. Although they look smaller, they are really heavier than horses. And they’re quick as the wind. Tex Palmer was tossed from a Brahma at Oxnard, Calif. Hardly had he hit the ground before the steer attacked. When the battle ceased, the Brahma had shoved Palmer all around the arena, leaving him bruised and, of all things, with two black eyes.

The only protection the boys have is provided by tipping the horns on the worst animals with round, brass knobs. These may cause considerable pain, but they’re not apt to plunge through the body.

I like roping for real scientific precision and action. In team roping, we work in pairs, one rider taking the head, the other the heels. Each of us sits beside the chute, until the steer crosses the “dead line,” thirty feet distant. Then we give chase on horses trained to follow the animal.

If I’m playing head man, I toss the first rope. As the loop settles over the steer’s head, my horse comes to a dead stop. Quick as a flash, the heeler ropes the steer by the heels, then we move in opposite directions and force him to fall. Then I dismount and tie his heels with a three -foot pigging string, one end tucked in my belt and the other in my mouth.

All we need for roping is a good horse, a sturdy roping saddle and a twenty-five-foot length of seven-sixteenths-inch Manila rope. The pony must be sturdy, very fast and schooled not only to stop from a gallop on a dime, but to back up and keep the rope taut while you tie up the steer. The roping saddle has a low cantle board, which enables the roper to get off quickly and which will stand hard jerks of the lasso which is tied to the pommel.

Bull-dogging has lost favor in some states, while roping has gained. In bull-dogging, the rider leaps from the saddle at a gallop, falls on the steer’s head and twists him down by pulling the nose into the air as the cowboy walks backward. Some consider this a cruel practice. In its place, “decorating” is practiced. This is the same, except that the “decorator” slips an elastic band over the animal’s nose.

The stars of the rodeo game must keep in fit condition the year round. They train as faithfully as any other athletes, for theirs is a hard lot, and some may appear in thirty rodeos in a year.

A Tame Woodchuck
A WOODCHUCK that eats pretzels, climbs trees, and opens a screen door when it wants to come into the house, is the odd pet owned by L. G. Lessig, of Newark, N. J. Two summers ago, the baby groundhog was found near the Lessig summer cottage in northern New Jersey. Fed milk from a baby bottle, it grew rapidly and quickly expanded its diet to carrots, wheat, tomatoes, crackers, and clover. When the family returned to Newark in the fall, the pet woodchuck returned with them. It would roll on the floor, play with spools like a kitten, and romp with its owners without the least show of ill temper. When summer came again, the pet traveled back to the cottage and established itself in a hole under the front porch. “Sleeping out” nights, it acquired the knack of opening the screen door and coming into the house for food and play during the daytime.

“TALKING” SCARECROW SAVES FARMERS FRUIT
A scarecrow that talks keeps fruit-eating birds away from a berry farm near Portland. Ore. When the farmer discovered that his berry patches were furnishing free meals for large flocks of crows and robins, he rigged a loudspeaker up inside his scarecrow. The scheme worked successfully so far as bird pests were concerned, and he has never been troubled with them since fixing up the “talking” scarecrow. This contrivance, however, is said to have attracted many song birds to the vicinity.

Carrier Pigeons Turn Cameramen

SOMETHING entirely new in aerial photography has been developed in Munich, Germany. In place of trained photographers carried aloft in airplanes or observation balloons, camera equipped pigeons are released to fly over the object to be photographed.

The pigeons do not fly at random. Months of training and selection are required before a few birds are chosen for camera work. Then their flights in each direction are timed so that the trainer knows exactly at what time the bird will be over a certain point. It is then a simple matter to time the camera to expose the film at the point desired.

The cameras do not impede the flight of the birds.

So valuable are these expertly trained pigeons that breeding stock often brings more than $2,000 per head.

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The Remarkable Roach

SAY what you will about the pesky cockroach, he really deserves our respect when we learn that he has been an inhabitant of this earth some 200 million years. (Man can be traced back only one million years.)

Some scientists think the insects will inherit the earth and rule it long after the human race has passed into oblivion. If this does happen, the cockroach will quite likely be among the most numerous of creatures, as he has been since the dawn of time.

To have survived throughout the ages virtually unchanged is remarkable in itself. The roach saw the huge dinosaurs come into being, strut their few million years on this planet and then pass away to total extinction. Some paleontologists believe the cockroach was the very first of all air-breathing creatures. His remains are found in great numbers way back in the carboniferous age and in all succeeding strata.

From our own futile efforts to annihilate him and all his tribe, we know something of the roach’s special ability to escape his enemies and go on prospering. Doubtless he has met more formidable foes than humans during past ages, and his numbers are still legion—as many a housewife knows.

Why is the cockroach so hard to exterminate? For one thing he is intelligent. Not only that but he is educated. Believe it or not, he gets lectures from his elders beginning in earliest infancy.

That the roaches actually conduct what appears to be classes for the young was discovered just recently by Dr. Vladimir Tuma, who has probably had close association with more of these insects than any man living. As consultant on insecticides for a great chain of five-and-ten stores, he raised—and killed—some 25 or 30 million of them over a ten-year period.

This is the incredible procedure Dr. Tuma has observed time after time among his insect charges: A whole family of baby roaches gather in a semicircle facing an adult male who stands facing them. While the young ones give every evidence of paying close attention, the professor delivers a lengthy lecture which consists of an elaborate series of manipulations of his long horns, or feelers.

The lecture comes to an end and the teacher stands quiet a moment. This is doubtless time for the youngsters to recite the lesson, and this they all do by waving their antennae in the air. Suddenly there must be a signal from the old-timer. Class is dismissed. The pupils scatter in all directions exactly like human youngsters let out of school.

Who can doubt, asks Dr. Tuma, that this is a form of education? He is convinced of it.

Assuming that this is a class for the young, what would the professor be teaching them? We may well imagine that it is a pretty thorough course in teaching the facts of life. He may not tell them about the bees, but he probably does about the birds—one of their natural enemies. He probably imparts to them the wisdom of the ages in those few minutes—all that has been learned in the 200 million years the hardy tribe has lived on this old earth.

The professor may caution the babies about not getting fat, for the roach owes his escape from enemies largely to the fact that he has always kept an incredibly thin body so that he can dart into the smallest cracks and crevices. Doubtless the young are taught also to stay out of the light—another of their habits that makes them hard to catch. The roach is so sensitive to light that he can seek and find a dark place even when its eyes are totally blinded.

Everybody has noticed that roaches go abroad only when the house is dark. If they had their way they would spend their whole lives in darkness, and this accounts for our comparative ignorance about their family life. Dr. Tuma was able to observe them in natural movements only by sitting in semi-darkness until his eyes were able to see them.

The roach’s body is perfectly designed for crawling into fine cracks. Broad and long though it may be, it is very thin up and down. Even its head is tucked under and its jaws move from side to side, not up and down, so the roach can chew his food even in a tiny crevice.

The roach’s antennae are remarkable organs. Much longer than his body, they sometimes have as many as one hundred joints. With these he smells out his food, and there is no telling how many other functions they perform for him. Doubtless they feel vibrations and thus warn of the approach of enemies.

It may be the sensitive feelers that keep the roach from eating poison, too. At any rate he is exceedingly hard to kill by that method. He can detect the slightest amount of arsenic and will not touch the most tempting food that has a trace of it. Also the roach avoids any food that is spoiled, as Dr. Tuma has proved beyond a doubt. He says, in fact, the roach is very cleanly about its person and quickly cleans off any undesirable material encountered.

It is because of this trait that we are able to kill roaches with sodium fluoride. They do not eat this poison, but after running through it they draw their feet through their jaws to clean it off and thus get enough of it in their systems to be killed.

Despite the reputed power of DDT as an insect killer, it is not too effective against roaches. It will kill them if put directly on them in strong enough concentration, but here their habit of staying in cracks again protects them and it is hard to get the stuff directly on them. Sprayed on walls, DDT seems to have little effect on the German cockroach, which is the little light brown fellow most prevalent along the eastern seaboard. The big American roach of the South falls victim more readily to residual DDT on walls and floors because he gets his body into it more than the German variety .

The favorite weapon of the exterminators against cockroaches still is sodium fluoride. This is the familiar blue-green powder that is dusted about where ever roaches can pass over it. It is originally a white powder but it is required by law in some states to be colored so that it may readily be distinguished from flour and other foodstuff.

There are two forms of poison that the roach has not yet learned to avoid—phosphorus and boric acid. These are the ingredients generally found in commercial types of roach bait. Boric acid is effective when mixed with food that roaches like, and they will also drink water with a concentration of it strong enough to kill them. The phosphorous is more effective, for some reason, when placed on slices of raw potato.

Though there are some 1,500 species of cockroaches that have been identified by entomologists, only about four of these have become pests in this country. Strangely enough, no two species ever infest the same building.

The huge cockroach of the South that is an inch and a half long when full grown is a native of tropical America. This is the big reddish-brown variety that flies when he wishes to. An Australian roach very much like this one has been imported to this country, probably in ship cargoes, and is difficult for the amateur to distinguish from the native species.

The German roach, chief roach pest of the highly populated northeastern states, is about a half-inch long, light brown and does not fly, though it has wings. This is also called the waterbug and the Croton bug. This latter name was acquired when large numbers of the roaches were attracted to the Croton waterworks after they were built in New York. The reason for this apparently sudden infestation probably was the roach’s natural affinity for damp places. He must have water, and will find it in one way or another.

The fourth species of roach seen in this country is the Oriental, sometimes called the black beetle. It is larger than the German but much darker in color and much less prevalent.

One reason why the roach gets along is that he seems to eat almost anything; On his known diet, besides all the more reasonable kinds of foodstuffs, are bones, hair, whitewash, leather, bookbindings, shoeblacking, ink and paint. Dr. Tuma, who has had every opportunity to study roaches’ eating habits, believes that much of the stuff they apparently eat is not really consumed but that they attack it in order to extract a small amount of water from it. He has found them rather choosy about food, he says.

If there is no food available the roach can still survive for a long while. Specimens in captivity have been kept living as long as 76 days with no food at all. This is just another item in their list of special abilities to get along under adverse conditions. The roach professor may give the young ones a special course in how to live without food.

Radio Increases Milk Yield of Cows With Musical Ear

THAT cows will give more milk to the strains of music was proven when Ben Scott, in charge of the cattle at the Fred-mar Farms near Oakville, Mo., installed a radio loudspeaker for the benefit of the restless bovines.

They immediately showed signs of musical appreciation and stood still while they were milked. Some even cocked a musical ear while the soothing strains of a classical waltz came from the radio.

As an almost conclusive proof to the new idea, the cow pictured boasts of an official record for 3-year-olds with 840.98 pounds butter and 17,864 of milk.

5,000-pound Devil Fish Is Caught

A GIANT Manta Devil Fish became entangled in the anchor and anchor rope of Captain A. L. Kahn’s fishing boat while he was angling just off the shore of New Jersey, almost capsizing the heavy boat.

A Coast Guard vessel came to the rescue, and killed the 5,000-pound monster Manta Birostris with 22 shots from a high-powered rifle. The sail-like fish has been mounted and placed on exhibition by Captain Kahn.

An 18-inch baby Manta was born shortly after the mother fish was dragged ashore.

These huge ray fish are seldom seen, since they live in the deepest parts of the sea.

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Trapping Animal Gangsters

by JAMES NEVIN MILLER

The gangster is commonly thought of as a product of modern civilization, but in reality he has existed since the world began among all forms of life. In this article you will read of how the predatory animals are preying upon their fellow creatures and encroaching upon the domain claimed by man. How the forces of the United States government work to stamp out the criminals of the animal world constitutes a story as gripping as any detective yarn.

“BRING him in, dead or alive!”

This square-jawed sentence sounds like parting words of advice to a posse of deputy sheriffs. But in this case it does not apply to man trailers but to animal hunters. It is the slogan of the super-sleuths of Uncle Sam, now engaged in a relentless battle against a vast animal underworld with headquarters in the great Western stock country.

All through the range lands these daring and persistent men trap the wary wolf, poison the cunning coyote, and shoot the meat-hungry grizzly bear and mountain lion. Oftentimes they spend months and even years trailing a single murderer.

Brimful are the records of the Biological Survey with accounts of the killing of predatory animals that have made remarkable reputations for cunning and destructiveness. An Arizona grizzly, for instance, had been killing cattle every spring for 10 years, and stockmen had offered bounties for his hide ranging from $100 to $500, but private hunters and trappers had simply wasted their time in trying to get the marauder.

However, a hunter employed by the Department of Agriculture and the State of Arizona finally got him after a thrilling hunt in which the pack of dogs was whipped and the bear stopped by a bullet when he was only 15 feet away. It is estimated that in four years this grizzly killed between $25,000 and $30,000 worth of livestock, and that in his lifetime he did no less than $75,000 worth of damage to ranchers.

Many, too, are the dramatic tales of renegade wolves and coyotes, finally outwitted after months of futile trailing. One day, not so long ago, a government hunter in the state of Washington trapped the Hanford wolf, an elusive killer that had been making depredations on livestock for more than two years, during which time it is believed that he destroyed at least $5,000 worth of stock. He was finally caught in a trap that had been concealed carefully along one of his trails. He dragged the trap and chain nearly seven miles before the hunter overtook and killed him! In bringing in these old trap-wise animals, hunters sometimes need the last ounce of patience they possess. One hunter tried for many months to catch an aged female wolf that had lost a foot in a trap and had become so cautious that every trap failed to hold her. She also refused the attraction of poisoned bait. Whereupon the hunter took his bed near a water hole along one of her trails and stayed there every night. Finally he shot the three-footed wolf within ten feet of his bed!

But perhaps the prize yarn of all concerns the famous Lobo wolf. After two years as king of the range during which he successfully matched his cunning with every artifice of ranchmen and hunter to effect his death, and cost cattlemen thousands of dollars annually in stock depredations, his reign ended abruptly a couple of years ago when M. E. Mus-grave, famous predatory animal inspector of Arizona, brought him down thirty miles east of Kingman, Ariz. The entire dramatic story is thus described by Mr. Musgrave himself:

“When I arrived at Flagstaff the latter part of August I received a letter from the Carrow Brothers Cattle Company, of Kingman, Ariz., telling me that the old wolf which had been on the range for several years was exceptionally active and was killing great numbers of calves. The Carrow Brothers raise purebred stock and, of course, the yearlings are quite valuable. I had sent two different trappers after this wolf in the past three years without success as he covered a big range and only passed over his routes about once every two weeks.

“Upon receipt of Carrow’s letter I went to Kingman by train, met Mr. Carrow on the evening of August 31 and arranged to get out to his range on the morning of September first to try and poison the wolf. Upon arrival we killed a colt, made up several hundred pork-fat poison baits and started across the range in an automobile, scattering the poison baits as we went.

“About 1:30 in the day as we drove near a big tank, Mr. Carrow said there was a coyote on the left hand side of the car. Looking up I discovered that it was not a coyote but a wolf. However, I could hardly believe that the famous old wolf would be cut on an open plain in the middle of the day. I told Mr. Carrow to drive the car in the same direction we were going, which would be passing the wolf and not driving towards him. He apparently paid little attention to the car but was walking slowly along the hillside.

“However, pretty soon I noticed that the sly old fellow was indeed watching us out of the corner of his eye. Now, we had nothing in the automobile to shoot with except a 30-30 carbine with the rear sight broken off. However, I had shot the gun several times earlier in the day and had some idea as to how to manage it, so I determined to take a chance. As the car pulled opposite the wolf I stepped out on the opposite side of the car from where he was standing, and raised my gun so there would be no apparent motion while the wolf was in sight. -

“As the gun cracked the wolf bit himself on the shoulder and I was sure I had him although it seemed too good to believe. He jumped into the air and ran at full speed, perhaps for 75 yards, when he fell dead without a struggle. When we got to him we saw at once that it was indeed the old renegade and that he had been shot once before, though not seriously.

“Needless to say, Mr. Carrow was delighted. He threw the wolf into the car and drove back to Kingman, arriving at four o’clock with the wolf. He was the largest wolf I had ever seen on the range. When we held him up his hind legs extended to the top of my hat while the nose touched the ground. He weighed 78 pounds after the skin from the shoulder to the head was removed, together with the lower part of the front legs; and about all the blood had run out of him, for I had shot him directly through the heart. He bled freely.

“This marked the end of one of the greatest cow-killers of the state of Arizona, if not the entire southwest. Mr. Carrow’s foreman actually had found 50 head of white-faced yearlings during the past year that this wolf had killed and the Carrow range is only one of several that the wily old animal had worked on.”

Winter, when the stock comes in from the summer, range, is the time selected for the strongest drive against the coyote. Then it is that the coyote hungers, and the summer pasture is free for the government hunter to work without danger to the grazing stock. There are no sheep or cattle to fall victims to the poison, no sheep dogs to eat it and crawl away—only the four-footed bandits of plain and mountain.

Fifty-thousand choice morsels of meat, cut into convenient size for gobbling up by a hungry sheep killer, each tiny morsel with its portion of poison tucked safely away inside, tasteless and effective. That is the quantity that was set one year for the state of Nevada alone. Seventy-five thousand mouthfuls of meat and poison for New Mexico. One hundred and ninety-two thousand for Arizona. Half a million for Utah! Thus is the table of the western pasture prepared for the slinking bandit who prowls and preys wherever he may, skulking by day and slaying by night the finest and choicest of the farmer’s lambs and sheep and calves.

For weeks before the actual baiting begins the stockmen are enlisted and organized and taught the part they must play in this relentless warfare against the vast animal underworld. Each community has its own leaders in the work, being mobilized efficiently preparatory to spreading the message of death against the natural enemy of the community’s economic life.

Sometimes it is necessary to train the coyote into going for his food to certain free lunch counters which later are converted into death-stands for him. In these instances, a bait free from poison, generally fresh meat. When the coyotes are accustomed to come here for their food, and the tracks in the mud or snow show that the murderers are plentiful, the approaches to the feeding station are provided with delectable sandwiches of freshly killed meat coated with poison, just the size to fit a cruel mouth and slavering jaws. These little sandwiches, cut about an inch square and from a quarter to a half inch thick, are planted in the favorite paths which the coyotes take in approaching the bait. The murderer doesn’t know he has taken poison until a sudden message from his interior department conveys the fatal tidings.

Occasionally when a stand is far up a mountainside or in the high hills where the snow comes early and stays late, or in regions which for any reason soon become inaccessible for the stockman to visit, the government hunter places a carcass of fresh meat at a strategic point for the animals, loaded with many balls of fat, sunk into the flesh and covered over.

Reports from various parts of the West show that the hunters are killing coyotes in large numbers by this method. For instance, two hunters placed a 300-mile poison line in about five weeks, using 20 horses and burros for bait. When they got back to the beginning of the poison line they found 40 dead coyotes at the first two stations, whereas stockmen all along the line told of finding up to 73 of the animal gangsters.

Black Widow Spins Web to Help Build Weapons for U.S. Army

The black-widow spicier above is a defense worker. Its web filaments are used by Northrop as cross hairs in microscopes and telescopes for Army tank sights. Tougher than steel, they are so fine that 5,000 of them laid side by side take up only an inch.

At left, the spider is having a health check in the plastic box where it lives between jobs. At right, it has climbed out on a stick and is about to be shaken loose. As the spider falls on its back to the floor, it will spin a six-foot strand.

The National Geographic article talks about actually using the rats like smart little robots. The research in this article is supposedly aimed at learning more about electro-shock therapy in insane patients. I’m not really sure how the to are related. Maybe their goal is to make crazy people navigate mazes.

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Radio-Controlled Rats

Rodents with radio sets in their heads get their brains massaged by electric impulses for science.

INSERTING a miniature crystal set beneath the skin of a rat’s head, Dr. Joseph A. Gengerelli, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, has been doing research on the subject of instructing rats by radio. With the aid of high frequency broadcasts, a rat can be taught to open one of three swinging doors. The radio signals cause minor convulsions in the rodent’s muscles and it learns to open the right door if rewarded with food. The tiny radio set in the rat’s head weighs only two oz. and is connected to the brain by an almost invisible fine wire. Experiments are designed to provide knowledge which can be applied in the treatment of insane persons through electric shock therapy.

Luxurious Stable on Wheels Speeds Race Horses to Tracks

Transporting race horses in railway cars or in ordinary motor trucks always has been attended with anxiety for the owner and more or less discomfort for the animals. To eliminate these difficulties and to save time as-well, a luxurious automobile has been designed. It is a. completely equipped stable on wheels. Cushioned upon a passenger-carrying chassis with shock absorbers, the car develops an average speed of thirty or thirty-five miles an hour and can swing along with ease and safety at fifty. Two horses and a groom besides the chauffeur can be carried in the roomy, electric-lighted interior. There are two stalls, separated by a partition on a pivot to facilitate loading.

The sides are lined with canvas pneumatic pads and the floor covered with a special sanitary cork composition. Space is provided for feed boxes, cleaning implement, hayracks and watering troughs, and water is kept in a tank under the body. The horses are loaded through a wide rear door. They pass up the gradual slope on a ramp that can be hooked to the front or rear doors or taken apart and stored away in the stall. Unloading is done through a forward side door.

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POACHING MADE BIG BUSINESS by Ruthless Gangs of Killers

HIDDEN among the P’s of the dictionary, you find: “Poacher, One who takes game or fish illegally.” To this time-honored definition, recent events have given a new twist. Outlaws are invading the forests and exploiting the game resources of the country. Organized criminals are’ dealing in illegal furs, fake bounty scalps, out-of-season game birds.

The government’s battle against this 1933-type poacher forms a thrilling and comparatively unknown story.

Under the direction of the U. S. Biological Survey, federal agents and game wardens are making a concerted, coast-to-coast drive. Already, fatal duels, attempts at ambush, running gun fights, have marked the struggle.

On the flats of the Sangamon River, in Illinois, recently, two United States game wardens, K. F. Roahen and M. A. Charlton, were cornered by duck-poachers and in an ensuing battle barely escaped with their lives. Hearing heavy shooting along the river, they had headed for the sound. As they were creeping through the woods, they stumbled on a case of shotgun shells and several sheep-lined overcoats. They had hardly stooped to examine them, when a gangster lookout, hidden behind a tree twenty-five yards away, fired both barrels of his shotgun. The sound brought the other poachers on the run.

Fighting Indian style, the wounded men dodged from tree to tree as the gang closed in. Flying shot tore through the leaves and thudded against the trunks around them. Charlton was bleeding badly from wounds in both arms, hips and one leg and Roahen had been hit in the stomach, face, and hands by the time

they fought off their assailants and escaped. Weak from loss of blood, they had to tramp five miles to their boat, row across the river and then drive twenty-five miles by motor car before they could reach medical attention.

Soon after Roahen was released from the hospital, the ruthless gang sought to blow up his patrol boat while he was asleep on board, to wreck his automobile, and, subsequently, to murder him from ambuscade in revenge for his activity.

In Louisiana and in Iowa, other government agents were killed in cold blood by poaching gangsters. In Virginia, two out-of-the-season duck hunters fought a gun duel with federal agents that ended only when both poachers were killed. In Missouri, a U. S. game warden was attacked and seriously wounded from ambush and not far from Memphis, Tenn., another was shot at a dozen times with a high-powered rifle while he was examining a sandbar in the midst of the Mississippi River.

The game racketeers along the Mississippi and its tributaries, sell their bootleg birds to special dealers in Chicago, Ill., St. Louis, Mo., Cincinnati, O., Detroit, Mich., Cleveland, 0., and other mid-western cities. From $6 to $10 a pair is the price paid by hotels, restaurants, and clubs for such out-of-the-season delicacies. One ramification of the activity of a notorious Chicago liquor ring is reported to have been the large-scale disposal of wild game during closed seasons. High-speed trucks often transport the birds from the shooting ground to the ice-boxes of the crooked dealers.

Time and again, the government agents have traced ducks to the refrigerators of such dealers. But, in every case, they have failed to obtain a conviction. In court, witnesses would testify that the game birds had been shot by sportsmen during the open season and had been left to “age” under refrigeration at the dealers where the birds were found.

In bagging the birds, the duck bootleggers use blinds, sink-boxes, motor boats, and even airplanes. Five-shot pumpguns are most commonly employed although some of the poachers use automatics with special extensions attached to the magazines to increase their capacity to nine shots to a single loading of the murderous gun.

During the last few years, government officers have confiscated a veritable arsenal of firearms from men engaged in illegal hunting. They range from single-barreled rifles to enormous punt or swivel guns, twelve feet long and requiring several men to handle.

These heavy artillery pieces are found most frequently along the Atlantic coast from Long Island to the Chesapeake Bay and the Back Bay of Virginia. They weigh several hundred pounds, have from one to fifty barrels and shoot a pound of powder and two pounds of shot at each pull of the trigger. Anywhere from fifty to 125 ducks are slaughtered by a single blast from these gigantic scatter guns.

Usually, they are used at twilight when flocks of ducks are feeding on the water. The gun is mounted on a recoil block at the bow of a motor boat so it can be swiveled from side to side. Floating down upon a flock of birds, the poachers get into position and fire. Then, as rapidly as possible, they retrieve the dead ducks and speed away. Half an hour later, they repeat the performance, miles away and with similar results.

What happens when a government patrol boat hears the roar of the big gun and races to the spot, was illustrated recently almost on the doorstep of the nation’s capitol. Down the Potomac, not far from Washington, a gang of duck poachers was operating a swivel “cannon” with deadly effect. When a government boat overtook the craft of the outlaw hunters, they found no gun, no ducks, nothing suspicious. The law requires that both the gun and the illegally killed game must be captured before the arrest is made. Temporarily baffled, the officers retraced their course to the place from which the sound of the shot had seemed to come. As they we’re cruising about, one of the men noticed several corks standing still in the current of the river. They investigated and uncovered a clever ruse.

When the crooks had seen the patrol boat speeding toward them in the distance, they had thrown all the ducks overboard in weighted sacks with light lines and corks attached to them. The swivel gun had been dumped overboard in similar fashion. Later, when the government boat had left the vicinity, they planned to return, locate the game and the gun by means of the cork bobbers and retrieve both under the cover of darkness.

Duck bootlegging is but one of several types of poaching with which government agents must battle.

Along the Canadian border, for instance, illegal beaver trapping is a constant source of trouble. These animals are now nearing extinction and in states where they are found are protected by law. But the fur poachers, laying their traps at night and disposing of their catch by stealth, have been reaping a rich harvest of contraband pelts.

One loophole in the American law aids such gangs. The beavers, in felling trees and damming streams, sometimes do considerable damage. Consequently, most of the states with beaver laws have also passed legislation which allows their state game commissions to issue permits for trapping the animals where they are causing damage. On such permits, obtained under false testimony, fur bootleggers and their agents are trapping large numbers of the animals during closed seasons.

A gang of four men in Michigan was recently caught after it had carried on extensive operations in trapping beavers, mink, and otter out of season. For one shipment of furs, the leader cashed a check for $10,000. The country banker who received the check became suspicious. He shrewdly guessed how the money had been obtained and notified the government. Federal men traced the check to a St. Louis fur dealer and brought the operations of the poaching gang to light.

In addition to their illegal trapping, these men had been hijacking the furs of other poachers while they were on their way to market. The contraband pelts are frequently run by fast motor truck or motor car to New York, St. Louis, or Kansas City markets. Rival gangs wait near filling stations where these machines are known to stop regularly for gas and oil. After they have held up the drivers and stolen the cargoes, they race for the same markets and, not uncommonly, sell the furs to the same crooked dealer with whom the original gang had intended to do business.

Recently, half a dozen large-scale attempts to smuggle beaver pelts into the United States from closed-season areas in Alaska have been exposed at ports along the Pacific coast. Customs officials at Seattle, Wash., not long ago, discovered 1,200 pelts hidden under a shipload of dried fish. Another time, they confiscated $15,000 worth of beaver skins which had been cunningly secreted behind false bulkheads in the hold of a vessel, and a third time, they made a haul almost as valuable when they found the furs concealed between decks on a tramp steamer.

SCIENTIFIC detective work, not long ago, uncovered a smooth-running “underground railroad” operated by fur poachers in several eastern states. This gang of trapper outlaws had worked out a system of slipping the pelts north across the Canadian line, putting bogus brands upon them, and sending them back to New York and St. Louis as Canadian furs. The law then required every beaver pelt, shipped from a Canadian province, to carry a special brand formed by tiny perforations produced by an apparatus similar to a check protector.

In Washington, experts set to work with high-powered microscopes, comparing the perforations of the real and the bogus brands. Minute differences, visibly only to the eye of the magnifying lens, gave testimony that broke up the “fake brand” method of marketing the furs. A resulting change in the Canadian laws now requires that all beaver pelts shipped to the United States must carry consular certificates identifying them as real Canadian furs.

In western states, another racket has gained rapid headway. Gangs are preying upon fur farmers. They toss poisoned bait into dens of foxes and then cut their way into the enclosures and carry off the animals as soon as they are dead. In a number of instances, they have drugged female foxes and taken them alive to be sold in other parts of the country for breeding purposes. The owners of such farms are installing alarm systems and in some cases are encircling their pens with electrically charged wires to hold off the fur thieves.

BOUNTY faking is another activity of the outdoor gangsters. In many parts of the country, a bounty is paid for the scalps of predatory animals, such as wolves, wildcats, coyotes, and mountain lions, which prey upon livestock and poultry.

One gang in Kansas is said to have reaped a profit of nearly $150,000 from fake coyote scalps. It worked in collusion with several unscrupulous Missouri fur dealers, who supplied synthetic “coyote scalps” by the thousands at twenty-five cents apiece. Operating in eighty different counties, where a bounty of a dollar a scalp was offered, the crooks cleaned up a fortune. In many cases, they substituted dog scalps for coyote scalps.

In another instance, a gang was caught collecting bounty on the same scalps over and over again. It worked with dishonest county clerks as partners.

BECAUSE there is no standardization of bounty payments, each state setting its own price, crooks are able to defraud the government in another way. They trap the predatory animals in states where they are abundant and where the bounty is low and smuggle the scalps into the states where the bounty is high and the animals few.

For example: New Hampshire counties pay twice as much for wildcats as do Vermont counties next door. South Dakota has an eight-fold higher bounty on wolves than North Dakota. Colorado pays $50 for mountain lions while California pays $30, Montana $20, Wyoming $15, and Nevada $5. In Texas, four counties pay $50 apiece for wolves. This hodgepodge of conflicting fees has made the work of the bounty bootlegger comparatively easy.

What happens is illustrated in Wisconsin.

This state offers a standing bounty of $30 for each mature timber wolf killed within its borders. The neighboring states of Michigan and Iowa have no bounty at all upon these animals. Consequently, scores of scalps are smuggled in from other states.

One crook, who had been defrauding this state systematically in this manner for some time, was recently caught and sentenced to a term in the penitentiary. Every few weeks, he appeared at the county clerk’s office with two or three scalps, which he had taken from a supply obtained in Canada, and collected from $60 to $90. Officials finally became suspicious. They checked up on his movements and discovered that he had hidden his cache of scalps where he thought no one would ever find them—in the pulpit and parsonage of a country church.

ANOTHER form of bounty plundering • made its appearance recently in the Pacific Northwest. Several of the states in this region had banded together to exterminate wildcats. A special bounty was offered for each one killed. To protect against fraud, hunters were required to bring in the right forefoot of the animal when they collected their bounty money. This worked all right until one clever ring of crooks discovered the similarity between the foot of the wildcat and that of the ocelet, a small predatory animal of Southwestern and Central America. This gang began smuggling large numbers of ocelot feet into the counties where the fees were paid and collected a small fortune before the deception was discovered.

The federal government in Washington has been opposed to the bounty system ever since its inception. The contention of the government experts is that often the paying of such fees actually increases the number of predatory animals.

In recent months a number of states have been revising their bounty and game laws, seeking to cope with the activity of poachers and bounty fakers. Pennsylvania, for instance, now requires the presentation of a signed affidavit, as well as the delivery to the state game commission of the unmuti-lated skin of the predatory animal, before any bounty payment is made.

In the meantime, Federal agents and state game wardens are pushing ahead in their concerted drive on the gangsters of the open who are trying to defraud the government and exploit the wild life of the country.

This Trained Monkey Spends Most of Time in His Master’s Workshop
TINKERING with tools has earned this trained monkey at left the title of “house carpenter” on the estate of Cherry Kearten, famous African explorer and authority on animals. The chimpanzee was brought back from Africa after one of his expeditions and tamed and trained. He was allowed to wander about the estate at will and one day walked into Mr. Kearten’s workshop. His attendants couldn’t find him for a day and a half, and when he was finally discovered, he was busily engaged in nailing small pieces of board around the shop. Now he has a separate corner in the workshop and spends hours with the tools that have been provided for him.

Music for Bossie

Do cows like music well enough to give more milk? Miss Nora Johnston of Thorpe, Surrey, in England, believes they do, and has set out to prove her theory. She travels about a large farm with a portable carillon of her own design, playing a musical accompaniment while the cows are milked. She says figures accumulated over a period of time prove that the milk yield has increased since she started her program of music for Bossie.

Shark Octopus Undersea Battle Filmed
A most remarkable battle between a shark and an octopus has been photographed by a daring cameraman for the film, “Samarang”—(Out of the Deep). With his camera and equipment inside a diving bell, open at the bottom, the internal air pressure being sufficient to keep the water out at shallow depths, he placed a piece of meat in the water to attract the shark, the octopus already being in the vicinity. The battle which ensued between shark and octopus lasted twenty minutes, but it was quite one-sided. The shark swung into attack from below, as shown in one of the pictures, getting a death grip which is never relinquished until the helpless victim succumbs. The shark was of the tiger variety. The battle was staged in comparatively shallow water to allow of sufficient light for recording the extraordinary scenes. The battle winds up with the shark dining off one of the tentacles of his foe.

Sick Python Fed With Special Rubber Hose
WHEN the throat muscles of a 22-1/2 -foot python in the St. Louis, Mo., zoo became paralyzed recently, it became necessary for the zoo officials to use force-feeding methods to keep the reptile alive. The feeding equipment developed for the job consists of a five-foot length of special rubber hose fitted with a removable plunger. Ground rabbit meat is fed into the hose and is forced into the snake’s stomach by means of the plunger.

BULL WITH SINGLE HORN IS MODERN UNICORN
What might be called a modern unicorn has been produced by Dr. W. F. Dove, University of Maine biologist. From a day-old bull calf, Dr. Dove removed the two small knots of tissue which normally develop into horns. These horn buds he transplanted in the center of the bull’s forehead, thereby inducing the growth of a single massive horn. The bull, now nearly three years old, has developed much of the proud bearing ascribed to the mythical unicorn.

MURALS MAKE BEAVERS FEEL AT HOME
Beavers in a den at the Belle Isle Zoo, in Detroit, Mich., now cavort amid scenes resembling their natural habitat. To minimize the artificial appearance of the surroundings, an artist reproduced a colorful forest panorama, complete with pine trees, scrub brush, streams, and lakes, upon the concrete walls of the open beaver pit. Visitors are attracted by the novelty of viewing the animals against a woodland background.

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Rose Glasses on Chickens Reduce Fighting
There was murder going on in a New Jersey penitentiary yard. The prison chickens were killing each other. One after another, the young White Leghorns would fight among themselves to the death. Nothing was effective in preventing the quarrels until the warden tried putting rose-colored glasses on the birds. That stopped the fighting instantly. The Leghorns, the only fighters in the poultry lot, now are all equipped with aluminum-framed spectacles with center pieces extending in front of the bill.

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Mile-a-Minute Pigeons Thrill Millions in Races Against Time
By Edwin Teale

STREAKING through the skies with the speed of crack express trains, feathered racing champions, trained by amateur pigeon fanciers, are shuttling across the map on amazing flights. In recent years, the sport of pigeon racing has spread rapidly. In the United States alone, upwards of 10,000 amateurs own lofts, and each year the American Racing Pigeon Union sends out half a million numbered aluminum bands that go on the legs of newly hatched “squeakers.” As this is written, all over the East and Middle West fanciers are grooming their prize birds for the Chattanooga National, the Kentucky Derby of the air. This annual event, held about the middle of June, sometimes attracts as many as 1,700 entries. Last year, a one-year-old male pigeon, which had never won a contest in its life, carried off the prize. It averaged almost fifty miles an hour for the 535 miles from Chattanooga, Term., to its home loft at Washington, D. C.

Picture the start of this race, a few weeks hence. In special crates, the birds arrive at the southern city. They come from country estates, small back yards, farms, city roofs. Farmers, millionaires, mechanics, bookkeepers—almost every walk of life you can mention is represented among their owners.

Just at dawn, you hear the crack of the starter’s pistol. Officials fling open the doors of the crates. From each opening pours a torrent of wings. In a great cloud, the pigeons whirl over the field in widening circles. Then you see a bewildering demonstration that represents a great unsolved mystery of nature. The cloud breaks up and, in small bevies, the birds scud away —some north, some south, some east, some west—each heading unerringly for its home loft at least half a thousand miles away!

The birds rarely fly in a bee line. Instead, they take the easiest course, often following valleys where wind resistance is less. Mile-a-minute speeds are common, and one fleet-winged American bird averaged seventy-one miles an hour over a 300-mile course. Storms may delay them, hawks may swoop down upon them, hunters may fire at them. But, if they escape, they fly on. During the World War, more than ninety percent of the U. S. Army Signal Corps birds reached their destinations.

A few years ago, a Signal Corps pigeon, the “Topeka Hen,” set a distance mark, winging its way more than 1,200 miles from Topeka, Kans., to the government loft at Fort Monmouth, N. J. It had been sold to a Kansas fancier and had escaped from its new owner.

Another remarkable instance of the homing instinct of these birds is reported from eastern Canada. A racing pigeon, long given up for lost, fluttered down at the home loft near Montreal. It apparently had dropped exhausted into a yard during a race, had been captured and had had its wing feathers clipped. Waiting for weeks until the feathers grew out, it escaped and flew home. Sometimes, birds put in an appearance after months have gone by. A pigeon on its first training flight in California took four months to get home, and another was away for a full year.

Queerest of all tales about the feats of these remarkable birds is the experience of a West Coast fancier. He presented two racing pigeons to a friend who lived a couple of miles away. The new owner trimmed one wing of each bird and placed them in a pen with his show pigeons. Three hours later, the original owner was astonished to see the birds walking about in his own back yard. Unable to fly, they had walked the whole two miles home! Incidentally, if you find an exhausted or injured homing pigeon, copy the number on the aluminum leg band and report it to the American Racing Pigeon Union, 214 Congress St., Jersey City, N. J. This organization will get in touch with the owner. The bands are placed on the “squeakers” when they are five days old, and the legs grow and hold the rings solidly in place where they remain as long as the birds live. The same pigeon carries the same number throughout its life.

As early as the time of King Solomon, 3,000 years ago, the sport of flying homing pigeons was well established. During the Golden Age of Greece, news of the Olympic Games reached outlying cities through use of these swift couriers of the sky. For more than a century, there was a regular pigeon post at Bagdad, and when the knights of the Crusades rode to the Holy Land they took falcons to intercept messages carried by the homing birds of the Saracens.

Messages, letters, and even whole newspapers were photographed on thin collodion film during the Franco-Prussian War and thus sent out from the beleaguered city of Paris by pigeons. A single bird, in this way, could carry as many as 30,000 words. And it was homing pigeons, winging their way through smoke and shellfire in 1918 that brought help to the Lost Battalion in the Argonne.

JUST a century before that, in 1818, the first great pigeon race, the classic Belgian Concourse, was held at Brussels. This annual competition, in which the birds fly 500 miles starting from Toulouse, France, is now a national institution comparable to Derby Day in England. In the United States, the sport received fresh impetus in 1910 with the formation of the American Racing Pigeon Union. From coast to coast, clubs affiliated with this national body hold races for old and young birds and for distances ranging from 100 to 1,000 miles. In one New Jersey race, last year, 5,000 pigeons competed. During the last quarter of a century, American pigeons have won cash prizes totaling $94,000.

There are several ways you can get into this fascinating sport. You can buy old birds and raise your own young ones. You can buy eggs and hatch them out under ordinary pigeons. Or you can purchase the squabs, or “squeakers,” and raise them to maturity. The prices of racing pigeons run from $5 to $200 a pair. The highest price ever paid for a single pigeon was $1,086. The sum was given by a fancier from Louisville, Ky., for an English race winner in 1921. In another instance, a racing pigeon fan traded two descendants of a prize-winning bird for a large block of valuable oil stock.

Unique among these Hying money makers is “Old Nick,” a four-year-old racer which is putting its owner, young Leonard H. Murray, through college!

Some years ago, Murray found a stray pigeon with a band on one leg. He got in touch with the owner and through him became interested in the hobby of breeding racers. He now has a loft of nearly forty fleet-winged birds, among which the most consistent winner is Old Nick. The prize money collected by this bird alone has been sufficient to put Murray through a year at the University of Minnesota. In the early days, pigeon racing was a haphazard sport. Now, it is scientifically conducted with the aid of a dozen ingenious mechanisms and devices. Training is a matter of infinite care, and pigeon breeding is a lifetime work.

Special racing rations, containing corn, Tasmanian peas, vetch, and other grains, put the birds in tiptop condition. They eat about a pound of food each week, plus about fifteen percent of the food weight in grit. Sometimes, during the racing season, the birds are given a special relish of canary seed and a little hemp seed before their regular feed. Occasionally, table rice is added. During the moulting season, one or two percent of flaxseed is included in the diet.

To keep his birds in racing trim, one noted Canadian fancier gives them little bricks to peck at. He makes the bricks by crushing up egg shells, white millet seed, a block of magnesia, pieces of cuttlefish bone, a red building brick, and oyster shells. Adding anise seed, air-slacked lime, and iodized table salt, he sprinkles the mixture with water until it forms a mudlike paste. Then it is molded into small. bricks and baked for sixty minutes in an oven. A fresh bit of the material is supplied the pigeons each day.

The nests where the young squeakers hatch from the eggs are usually bowls filled with shavings, straw, or tobacco stems. Cedar shavings are best. One of the first problems is to keep the breastbones, or keels, of the young pigeons straight. In its early cartilage form, the breastbone is easily bent or deformed. During the first eight or nine days, however, a deformed keel can be straightened by massaging it with the hands.

The ideal racing pigeon has a broad skull, a long face, and a V-shaped bill. A full-grown male pigeon will weigh from fifteen to eighteen and a half ounces; a female from thirteen to seventeen. The birds are at their peak for racing when they are three years old. Some are still strong contenders when they are seven or even ten years old, and one 1,000-mile champion owned by an eastern fancier is still flying at the age of eighteen!

Even before the young pigeons have tried their wings, they are taken from their parents and their training begins. Through association with their favorite foods, they are taught to walk from the landing board into the loft. As soon as they take to the air, training begins in earnest. The first trip away from home occurs on a clear morning, before the birds have been fed, and they are released a mile or so from the loft. At the end of this and every other training trip, they find food awaiting them. Gradually, the distance of the homing flights is stretched to twenty, thirty, eighty miles. Then the birds are ready for a 100-mile race, then a 300-mile race, and finally a 500-mile competition, with perhaps the 1,000-mile marathon as a final test.

Oftentimes, to save expense, a club will hire a truck and take hundreds of birds together on a training trip to some distant point. However, the “single toss” method, in which each bird starts for home by itself, is considered the best training for youngsters. Some fanciers paint the roofs of their lofts a distinctive color to aid the birds in recognizing more easily their home destinations.

In addition to colored roofs, the mobile lofts of the U. S. Signal Corps have distinctive combinations of lights to guide night-flying homers. Such birds, developed by carrying the training hours later and later into the evening, would be of great value in warfare, as they could slip over the battlefield unseen in the darkness.

To get their pigeons accustomed to rain, many fanciers drive them from the loft during showers and make them fly under all the conditions they are likely to meet in an actual race. One expert makes it a practice to chase his birds around inside the loft to develop their wind in preparation for a big contest. He got the idea some years ago when his homers made a particularly fine showing in a race; a cat had got into the loft, the week before, and had chased the birds for nearly an hour before it was discovered.

In selecting birds to compete, some trainers not only take into consideration the experience and appearance of each bird, but also check up on its rate of respiration and its temperature. Only the pigeons that are in prime condition ride in the wicker crates that carry birds to the starting point of a big race.

At the end of every training flight, the birds are taught to trap themselves. That is, they walk into cages containing food, by pressing against wire bars which fall into place behind them. No matter how fast a racing pigeon may be in the air, if it is a poor trapper it is of little value in a competition. To understand why, let’s watch the final, exciting moments of a big race.

You take your place in the loft beside the owner. Because the returning birds are tired and nervous, you have to keep out of sight or they may not land. One famous fancier, A. Heuvelmans, who has been racing pigeons for forty-five years, has a special compartment in his Forest Hills, L. L, loft equipped with blue-glass windows through which he can see out, while the birds cannot see him. Here he awaits the return of his entries.

A distant speck in the sky grows larger, second by second. At a mile a minute, the homing bird is speeding toward you. The exact distance from the starting point to each loft has been figured out in yards and the winner is the pigeon making the highest yards-a-minute speed. Thus, differences in distances are taken care of in the computations.

The instant the bird drops to the loft and enters the trap, the owner goes into action. Reaching in, he grasps the pigeon and strips from its leg the rubber band which carries its racing number. This band was placed on the bird by officials at the starting point. It contains a key letter as well as a number and, inside, printed I in special ink, a second secret number. The same two numbers and key letter appear on a folded piece of paper that the officials keep. At the end of the race, unless numbers and letters on the band and on the paper tally, the bird is disqualified. Slipping the band into a small folding metal capsule, the owner quickly drops it through a hole into a sealed timing mechanism and jerks a handle. This automatically stamps the time on a strip of paper and moves another tiny compartment under the opening ready to receive the band of the second pigeon to arrive. In this way, the bands and arriving times of all the birds reaching a given loft are filed and recorded. Then the mechanism, still sealed, is turned over to the judges. Most fanciers own their own “clocks,” which cost in the neighborhood of fifty dollars apiece. Before a race, they are all set and inspected by the officials. No bird has finished his race until his leg-band is in the timing mechanism. Hence, the importance of having the pigeons trap themselves instantly on their arrival.

A couple of years ago, Edward Barnes, Secretary of the American Racing Pigeon Union, entered a fleet-winged but erratic bird in the Chattanooga race. It came scudding toward the loft at top speed, circled it twice and then dropped down on a neighboring roof where it perched for more than an hour before it entered the trap, by that time hopelessly out of the running.

To speed birds into the traps as soon as they settle down, many trainers “walk them in” rapidly by means of a short pole. However, there is always the danger that the high-strung bird may become frightened and take to its wings before it is safely caged.

One of the latest developments in the homing-pigeon world is the use of these mile-a-minute birds as carriers of news films. Several metropolitan dailies have put pigeons on their staffs. One New York newspaper uses them to bring undeveloped films of photographs of celebrities from incoming steamers. Almost before the liners dock, the papers containing the pictures are on the street. Similarly, pigeons carried pictures of the Rose Bowl football game between Stanford University and Southern Methodist University last fall, covering the distance between Pasadena and Los Angeles, Calif., in record time. Carrying light-proof aluminum capsules attached to their legs, the birds winged their way over a maze of buildings and with unerring instinct alighted on the one that was their destination.

HOW did they find their way? How do these marvelous birds cover vast stretches of country they have never seen before ? What guides them through the sky?

In answer to those questions, science is silent. The homing instinct is still an enigma of nature. One Belgian investigator advances the theory that the pigeons fly in a state of self-hypnosis. Another expert declares they have eyesight so superior to ours that they see distant details that humans miss and so follow a trail of tiny landmarks. Other scientists believe they are guided by the magnetism of the earth, following lines of magnetic force as a mail-plane pilot follows a radio beam.

Not long ago, a fascinating series of experiments revealed that radio affects the homing ability of pigeons. Research men released flocks of the birds near a broadcasting station while it was on the air, and again when it was not operating. When no radio waves were given off, the pigeons headed away for home in twenty seconds. When the station was on the air, however, it took them as long as three minutes to find their direction. Once, 169 birds were liberated at the same time. More than half of them, after repeated failures to find their direction, alighted near the station from which the radio waves were coming.

Just how the homing pigeon finds its way along the invisible skyways remains an unsolved riddle of science. But the speed and skill of these fleet-winged birds is providing thrills and pleasure for an increasing number of Americans.

TEAM OF 30 ANIMALS HAUL HEAVY WHEAT LOAD

Driving single-handed a team of 20 horses and 10 mules, hitched to a wagon train loaded with more than 1,000 bushels of wheat, Ralph Morehouse, of Alberta, has established what is said to be a record in western Canada. The trip was made recently over a 22-mile stretch from his ranch near Buffalo Hills to a grain elevator at Vulcan, Alta., where, without unhitching any of the animals, the entire load was disposed of in 1 hour 17 minutes. In turning corners, Morehouse, ignoring the leading teams, swung the hind teams over the pulling cable and started them in the proper direction. These animals would then pull the lead teams until they, too, were headed in the direction desired. About 2,000 persons gathered to watch the performance.