Evening Star Newspaper, September 21, 1930, Page 84

2 sbme, still occupying the central site on the ebeervatory grounds. A few months after the installation of this glass—which the newspapers of the day re- ferred to as “the great Cambridge telescope”— Prof. William Cranch Bond began to watch the planet Saturn through it. On September 16, 1848, he saw what®appeared to be a star studding the plane of Saturn's rings. Two days later William Lassall, observing in Eug- land, independently discerned the same object. Noting that the “star” moved along with Saturn, both men concluded that it was =a satellite. Thus was found Hyperion, the first sky-land to be discovered by an American. And that was the beginning, 82 years ago, of the American era of astronomical discovery. Two years later Bond again pointed the instrument on the fascinating Saturn and dis- covered a new realm. He saw for the first time the shadowy crepe ring within the two well known brighter rings of the planet. This in- nermost ring, sometimes called Bond's Ring, is about 128,000 miles in diameter and ils broad speedway measures about 11,500 miles in width. Quite a sizable bit of territory, these American suburbs of Saturn! Another American, Prof. Pritchett, reported in July, 1878, the sighting of a “great red spot” on Jupiter—a marking which was inde- pendently discovered by Niestem at Brussels. The spot measured 30,000 miles long by 7,000 miles wide. Was it a continent forming? Or was it merely a cloud in ‘the heavy atmos- phere? The red spot gradually faded. In 1926 Dr. E. C. Slipher in Arizona saw it as pink, and his photograph showed its shrunken dimensions to be 19,500 by 6,300 miles. What- ever the great red spot may turn out io be— or to have been—it seems likely that Jupiter # yet in the ewrly stages of evolution. Mars is different—more mature, more ter- restial in its conditions and more accessible to explorers from the earth. It is no wonder that the face of Mars has been explored and mapped in more detail than that of any other planet—and in these projects Amcricans have been active and prominent. Peary’s repeated assaults on the North Pole are not more eloquent of.a dominant will than is Percival Lowell’s dedication of himself and his fortune to the exploration of Mars. In 1894 Dr. Lowell erected at Flagstaff, Ariz., the observatory which bears his name. He or- ganized an able staff of astronomers, and until his untimely death in 1916 concentrated his energy and the resources of his institution on the study of Mars. Other planets were watched betimes, but when Mars was favorably placed it was the cynosure. Dr. Lowell left an endowment to continue the work in perpetuity, and the Lowell Observatory has explored and named more than 300 canals and nearly 200 oases of Mars. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, SEPTEMBER 21, I‘r was back in 1877, however, that American astronomy scored its first Martian discovery. The planet was at its nearest approach in modern times, the year was momentous for discovery. Schiaparelli, watching in the clear sky of Italy, first glimpsed then the dark markings which he called “canali.” And Asaph Hall, watching in the not-so-clear sky of Washington, but using the largest telescope then in the world, searched for satellites of the “moonless Mars” and—surprisinly!—found two. ‘The news was flashed to Europe by the new Atlantic telegraph. Astronomers there turned telescopes on Mars and confirmed the Ameri- can's announcement. Congratulations poured in—praise not only for the keen-eyed observer, but compliments also for the 26-inch refractor of the Naval Observatory, which had brought the new lands within sight. The moons of Mars proved to be not much larger than a Texas ranch. Phobus has a diameter of 10 miles, Deimos five miles. The imperialists get little encouragement in Dr. Hall's discoveries, but his astronomical achieve- ment is all the more creditable because of the small size of the objects. The biggest telescopes, like the tallest sky- scrapers, are soon outclassed. Pre-eminence shifted to Lalifornia in the '80s, with the erec- tion of the 36-inch Lick telescope. Its power was soon demonstrated. In 1892 Barnard dis- covered with it the fifth satellite of Jupiter; in 1904 and 1905 Perrine sighted the sixth and seventh satellites, and in 1916 Nicholson picked up with this superb glass the tiny ninth Jovian moon, the eighth meanwhile having been dis- covered by Mellotte at Greenwich. Another American, William H. Pickering, discovered, in 1898, the ninth satellite of Saturn —+thus continuing the exploration of this sys- tem begun by Bond 50 years before. In 1905 Pickering armounced the photographic discov- ery of a tenth Saturnian moon, and in 1929 he published the elements of a hypothetical eleventh satellite which he had computed from irregularities in the motion of Saturn—but these await confirmation. Even more challenging to the imagination is the recent discovery at Lowell Observatory of a distant body which some astronomers have identified as the long-suspected ninth planet of the solar system. More than 50 years ago the French astronomer Flammarion pointed out that the paths of certain comets suggested the existence of a trans-Neptunian planet. The period of evolution and the distance he assigned this theoretical body in 1879 are remarkably close to the values computed by observers in 1930. In the years since Flammarion's bril- liant prediction many able mathematicians have worked on this problem—in Scotland, George Forbes, and in the United States, David P. Todd, Percival Lowell and W. H. Pickering. Astronomical bookkeéping is cluttered wup with scores of comets and hundreds of as- teroids. These latter, which one disdaining 1930. star hunter dismissed as “those vermin of the skies,” are now so numerous that mythological names have been almost exhausted and recent discoverers have christened their asteroids for colleges, friends, cities, pets and even favorite foods. The late Dr. J. C. Watson discovered 22 asteroids over many years, and at his death was so concerned lest they be lost before their perturbations were calculated that he left the National Academy of Sciences a legacy to finance these laborious computations. UITE in contrast with Prof. Watson's ex- pensive asteroids are Prof. E. E. Barnard's profitable comets An American Maecenas offered a prize of $200 for each discovery of a comet. Barnard discovered 19 over a few years, and with the money paid off the mortgage on his home—literally a house that comets built! Then there is the sun—a laboratory, a power house, a cosmic empire in itself. The first _American solar discovery came during the- " eclipse of 1869, when Prof. William Harkness of the Naval Observatory glimpged a peculiar green ray in the corona. Others saw it, and immediately there was a searching of terrestrial spectra to determine which element was re- sponsible. It has never been found. The green ray is a mystery to this day and has been at- tributed to an unknown element, “coronium.” ‘The following year Prof. C. A. Young of Dart- mouth, discovered the “reversing layer,” a shell of cooler gases which envelops the sun to a height of several hundred miles. Trowbridge and Hutchins of Harvard, dis- covered the protean element, carbon, in the Before that only 33 earth ele- ments had been identified in the solar light. Recent explorations by Mount Wilson observers, led by Dr. C. E. St. John, have identified 23 steppes as landing fiedds for the air transporg of the next millennium. But of what use are stars, planets and 50,000,000 tons of gaseous platinum 93,000,000 miles out in space? Well, there are American factories that have profited as a result of solar research, strange though it may seem. Let me explain. The spectroscope is an invaluable toel in the hands of metailurgists and chemists in testing the purity of metals and other materials for in- dustry. It speeds up results, saves money and so has become a factory device. But the value of the spectroscope as an industrial tool rests on the solar researches of a German physicist, Kirchoff. What he discovered in the pursuit of knowledge on the sun 70 years ago has been turned to practical use in the pursuit of dollars on the earth in 1930. PERHAPB helium would have been found eventually, but it is another fribute to the professors that Lockyear of England sighted it in the sun 26 years before its existence was known on the earth. His discovery gave the clue, & hint that something was to be looked for. Last year the United States produced 8,000,000 cubic feet of helium—as a lifting gas for dirigibles. Whole industries are founded on the behavior of gases under electrical excitation. But it is only in the stars that we may observe gases under extreme conditions of temperature, pressure and rarefication. The stars are laboratories. They provide, as Dr. Hale has pointed out, cosmic crucibles in which we may explore in the past and future of matter. They are test tubes in which we may try out our theories and perhaps at last come somewhere near the truth. They are em- pires, too, for the mind to explore, expand to and learn by. Does this seem overambitious? Then re- member that man is as yet but an infant spiritually. Only 320 years have passed since Galileo first turned his “optik tube” toward the skies. His telescope was of 2% inches aperture. We have one of 100 inches, are planning another of 200 inches, and can we believe that anything but the ultimate curve of space will limit man’s future vision? An airship bhas circumnavigated the globe. Is it extravagant to believe that some day & ship will navigate interplanetary space. With radiation flooding us, is it merely imaginative to repredict that some day man will harness this energy to his own purpose? But these projects are for the noonday. And while we can only guess how they may be ac- eompll;hed,wledmth&ttheywfllbeand that their foundations are already laid in the empire of discovery which our pioneering pro- fessors have glimpsed through the mists of our morning. THIS “MANNERLY ART” OF SELF DEFENSE OW would you boys and girls like to see some box-fights tonight?” inquires Joe Davis. “Not me ‘or I delicately shudders Minnie Mellish. “Bru- tal pastimes are not——" “Brutal, your Aunt Chovy!” I cuts in. “More people are hurt every year in Skaneateles, N. Y., by the collapse of churches in Barcelona, Spain, than are hurt in the ring. Did you know that accident companies give pugilists a lower rate than interior decorators and Swedish mas- seurs?” “That’s right,” agrees Davis. 6¢ “I once knew a leather-pusher who'd been in 86 mills, not . counting the time he beat up his mother, with- out even getting his pompadour mussed. When I saw him in the hospital—" “Hospital, eh?” grunts Ira Mellish. “What was he doing there? Waiting for a taxicab?” “No,” says Joe. “It seems he'd cut himself while shaving and he wanted ’em to analyze the red spot on his cheek. When they told him it was blood, he fainted dead away. He'd never seen any before.” “That ‘Slaughter-House’ McGinley you're talking about?” I inquires. “Yeh,” returns Davis. “Mrs. McGinley's boy.” “I knew him well,” says 1. “I remember when that Lithuanian first came over on the Caulifiower gnd took on ‘Cast-Iron’ Connolly, the champion of Sweden. McGinley laid him like linoleum—or was it like linoleum?” $NJO,” comes back Joe. “It was like a Kermanshah rug with astrakhan piping of the Teheran type——" “Have it my way,” I interrupts, coldly, “but when did you get to be an expert on rugs 6f the Teheran type?” “Maybe I'm mot,” retorts Davis, with what goes for asperity in some latitudes, “but I cer- tainly can tell Delft ware from early American slat-back chairs. However, go on with your story. - The lack of interest in its's getting in- “Well,” says I, mollified by his surrender, * ‘Slaughter-house’ led with a right-cross at the opening bell that he could have sold for sleep- ing powders to a drug store if it had landed. ‘One-Round’ Heffernan ducked—-—" “‘One-Round’ Heffernan, eh?” snorts Mellish. “How many guys was this friend of yours fighting? I thought the scrap was with ‘Cast- Iron Cennolly?” “It was;” I admits frankly, “but, at the last moment, he Bdd to cancel on account of his kid getting the whoeging cough. Connolly was afraid he had some of the germs with him and might slip 'em to ‘Slaughter-House,” who had some children in Sweden——" “Considerate is what I calls it,” comments Davis “Connolly always was like that,” I tells him. *Sensitive, kindly, and a sentimental lad. I was at a speakeasy once when he got into a -gerap with three revenue agents who wanted to pinch the proprietor for parking his ear on the wrong side of the street. Quick t» sense injustice and restrictions on personal #berty, ‘Cast-Iron’ spilled the three bozos down the steps. but even in his rage he remained con- siderate. Feeling that the ejected lads might be & Lit fatigued from their labors, he sent “In the fourth round the bozo from the frozen north is caught under the chin with an elevator punch that smacks him through the ropes.” three chairs down the stairs after them.” “Come on,” growls Ira, “Let’s go to the fights. Nothing can be as brutal as this hoop-la. ...Who's on the card? “Quite a bunch of good boys,” replies Davis. “There's Malachi Ginsberg, the battling Arab; Joe Kitish, the bounding Basque from East Liverpool, Ohio; ‘Scarface’ Mulligan, the——" “Never mind the rest,” scowls Mellish. Let's H'E frau and Minnie are finally won over, and we proceeds to the arena. Joe Davis has some kind of a drag with the lad running the abattoir and we're led to seats immedi- ately abaft the bull-ring. The first prelim’'s in progress when we gets there—an affair of clouts and clinches marked by all the science of a scrap between a couple of drunken Eski- mos battling blindfolded on a floating cake of ice. The referee’s constantly prying the ham-and-eggers apart. “Why does he do that?” inquires Minnie. “Even their best friends wouldn't tell 'em,” replies. “You mean halitosis?” says La Mellish. “Yeh,” I comes back. “That’s why the ref- eree won't Jet them get so close together.” “You know,” says Minnie, “I thought that young man with the light hair wanted to dance with the other boy.” “He probably did and does,” I tells her, “but this place has no public-dance-hall license and the owners would get into an awful jam if they'd let him do a schottische or a mazurka or even a simple Latvian folk dance. At that, you'll see a lot of necking before the night's out. And these lads’ll get paid for it, too.” “Do they get much?” asks Minnie. “About ten dollars apiece,” says I, “and an annual pass to all of last year’s ball games.” “That’s not much,” she sniffs. “No,” I agrees, heartily, “but it's better than a slap over the ear with a wet fish.” “Talking about wet fish as one will,” chimes in Davis, “did you know the lad over in the other corner's touted as the coming welter- weight champion of Manhattan Transfer?” “What,” queries Mrs. Mellish, “is a welter- weight ?” “Now, now, Minnie,” says I, reprovingly, “you're a broad-minded woman and all that, but, after all, there are some things that are best kept from the ears of the fairish sex . . . Did you hear the question, Joe?” “Yeh,” eomes back Davis, in a pained tone, “and I hope she doesn't insist on an answer.” “Oh, listen,” expostulates Minnie. “I'm no child.” “PIR.HAPB not,” I admits, “but even so, I still hold womanhood in too high a re- gard to let myself be privy to the dissemination of information that might cast a blight on the innocence and purity of—" “What are you talking about?” Mellish. “Minnie,” I explains, “wants to know what & welter is?” “Well,” grunts Ira, “why don't you tell her? A welter is a fighter who—er—is—er——" “You see,” I points out. “Even your hus- band hesitates. Can you blame me for not——" “Judas H. Maccabeus!” yelps Mellish. “Is there some scandal about being a welter?” “Isn’t there?” I asks, meaningly. “I supe pose you've never heard of Casanoves and Cleo= patra and Don Juan and the weller of affairs they got into? I suppose vou've never heard of the welter Europe got into during the Great War? By the way, what did you do in the Great War?” Ira snorts something and we turns our atten- tion to the mill. It’s soon over, and a couple of lightweights are dragged forth, one of ’em being introduced as a Laplander. “A Lapp, eh?” remarks Davis. “I wonder how many of him there are to a mile.” No matter how many there are, he’s a short horse and soon curried. The other baby hits him with everything but the referee's watch and chain, and what hitting the visiting boy does after the first round :is largely from mem- ory. In the fourth round, the bozo from the frozen north is caught under the chin with an elevator punch that smacks him through the ropes. For a moment he teeters on the apron outside and then spills into Ira Mellish’s seat, regardless of the fact that Ira's occupying it at the time. The kid's a Laplander, all right! “Let's get out of here,” snarls Mellish, push- ing the pug off. “You can’t go anywhere around here without having a fighter fall in your lap.” (The above article proves conclusively that the heavyweight situation in America is in a state of flux, and the rumor that Primo Car= nera's to be pulled down and a six-story aparte ment erected in his place, is without basis in fact, as most rumors are, and not a few facts.) (Copyright, 1930.) cuts in Many Hunters Licensed. Il’allthehunwrslntmsw\mt.ryuemarb- men and if they could be gathered together in one army, it would be a force to rouse the respect of most any foe or combination of foes. During the hunting season of 1928-29, licenses to hunt were granted to 6,425,000 hunters, who _paid $9,390,000 in fees for the privileges of hunting. New York led with 671,728, followed by Pennsylvania with 516,603, and Ohio with 381,817. Delaware was at the bottom of the list with slightly more than 2,000 hunters. ot