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The cut at the top of the page
shows the great towers that
carry the aerial wires at the
new Marconi station in
Coltano, Italy; and the
round cut, which was tak-
en from a photograph
made at night, the elec-
tric waves and sparks
flying from the wires. A
portrait of Marconi is
given at the bottom of
the page

It will be under-
stood, of course, that
the vibrations sent
through the water are
electrical and not merely
the vibrations of sound.

Multiplier of Hands

MULTIPLIER of hands of

AMULTIPLIER

a very interesting type was devised recently to meet a curious need. The dissolution of the Standard Oil Company into thirty-three auxiliary companies

importance. difficulties were minimized, how

ever, by the invention of a mechanical device whereby eighteen fountain pens were connected on the principle of the pantagraph in such a way that all moved in unison with a pen in the hand of a secretary, who thus signed nineteen certificates at once.

Here no new principle was involved, but the ingenious application of an old principle resulted in a great saving of time and labor.

Turning to a field about as far removed as possible from the office

of the Standard Oil Company, let us note the successful application of machinery to one of the most primitive and exacting of the labors of the farmer-namely, the milking of cows. Until recently, this has been a manual task, performed precisely as it has been ever since the first bovine was domesticated. While practically all other stages of the dairy industry-including the separation of cream and the manufacture of butter and cheese

have been performed by mechanical devices, it has been found difficult to devise an apparatus that would satisfactorily extract the milk from the udder of the cow.

The peculiarity of the manipulation performed by the hand in milking consists in the fact that pressure is first applied with the thumb and forefinger, and then successively with the remaining fingers, the operation being simple enough once the knack of it is acquired, but presenting certain difficulties for the novice, and even greater difficulties for the inventor who would imitate it mechanically.

Now, however, the feat appears to have been accomplished. A milking-machine recently developed in Sweden is a compact apparatus that is attached to the cow's udder and operated by any kind of air compressor driven by electric motor or storage battery, or gasoline engine, or even by horsepower. The actual milking is performed by a movable rubber sheet driven forward by two pistons lying one above the other, so

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The work of signing 200,000 stock certificates, following the dissolution of the Standard Oil into thirty-three auxiliary companies, was facilitated by a mechanical device whereby eighteen fountain pens were connected on the principle of the pantagraph

in such a way that all moved in unison with a pen in the hand of a secretary. Nineteen certificates were thus signed at once

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existence and relics of his bones were in many cases preserved in deposits that gradually accumulated in the cave bottoms. Some of the most interesting remains that have been discovered in recent years were the pieces of reindeer and other horns found in the caves of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in the south. of France, on which were roughly engraved remarkable drawings of the heads of chamois and the bodies of deer. On the walls of a cave at Dordogne are tinted drawings representing the prehistoric bison with extraordinary fidelity.

At La Chapelle-aux-Saints, a human skull also was found in such state of preservation that it has been possible to make a mold. of its interior that represents the brain of the cave man with a high degree of accuracy. A recent number of the French periodical L'Anthropologie makes a study of this brain-cast in comparison with the brains of higher apes and of present-day

man.

The conclusion is drawn that the brain of the cave man is intermediate both as to size and as to typical characters of its convolutions. In mere size, it is much larger than that of any existing ape; the predominance of the left hemisphere, and certain characteristic fissures are also distinctively human.

On the other hand, the general form of the brain, the general simplicity of its convolutions, the position and direction of the important fissure known as the fissure of Sylvius, and the reduction of the frontal lobes are characteristics that link the brain of the cave man with those of the existing gorilla, chimpanzee, and ourang.

Summarizing the results of the comparison it is declared that the skull of La Chapelle-aux-Saints is assuredly human in the abundance of its cerebrod material, but that this material lacks the superior organization that characterizes the man of to-day.

The Origin of Man

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suggest with some precision the probable channels of their remoter origin.

A very interesting attempt in this direction was made recently by Dr. John Gray before the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. He declares that two quite different races of men lived in Europe in the paleolithic or rough stone age the time when the most perfect implements were made of chipped stone; the idea of smoothing the surfaces by friction being a later development.

One of these races is represented by skeletal remains discovered at Galley Hill, at Brunn, and at Aurignac, and may thus be conveniently designated the Galley Hill

man.

The other race has left remains at Neanderthal, at Spy, and at Mousterien, and may be conveniently designated the Neanderthal man, after the famous skull that for a long time represented the most primitive type of prehistoric man known to us.

Dr. Gray has made elaborate comparative studies leading to the conclusion that the Galley Hill man originated from the simian strain whose best known modern representative is the chimpanzee. The Neanderthal type of man, he thinks, comes of a strain that has its present day representative in the gorilla.

He speaks of the Galley Hill man and the chimpanzee as chimpansoids; and of the ancestors of the gorilla and the Neanderthal man as gorilloids.

What gives peculiar interest to Dr. Gray's theory is the fact that he does not hesitate to extend it to the existing races of mankind. The tribe of chimpansoids that, at an excessively remote period of the past, diverged from the tree-haunting ancestral strain and developed the Galley Hill race of cave men, was destined ultimately, through sundry lines of descent, to develop the races of men now inhabiting the South Sea Islands and Eastern Asia.

The race of gorilloids, branching from the ancestral line independently and at a later day, developed ultimately, as descendants of the Neanderthal man, the Europeans of to-day, and through collateral lines, such far-away nations as the aboriginal Australians and Tasmanians.

Of course, there is much that is provisional in this hypothesis, and future discoveries of human remains in many regions of the globe must be called on to substantiate or refute

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