SCIENCE TESTS MUSICAL EAR

DOCTOR

OCTOR CARL E. SEASHORE, of the department of psychology at Iowa State University, has just perfected a system by which he can tell parents whether or not it will pay them to give a child a musical education.

In making these tests the pupil is not required to sing a note, and no musical instruments of any kind are used. Dr. Seashore has perfected a device by which he has divided one full musical note into fifty-two parts. By means of the most delicate tuning fork and a tiny telephone he can ascertain the exact susceptibility of a pupil to minute gradations of sound.

Dr. Seashore has been working on this musical testing system for years, but his results have been made public only recently. The first tests were made under the direction of a department of the Des Moines Women's Club. Several children were tested and each was sent home with a chart showing his musical qualifications and appraising his adaptability to a musical

career.

department until she reached the point from which the alarm was sent. Then it was often found that the fire was but a slight affair which had been put out by one of the

land companies long before the arrival of the fire boat.

Now, as soon as a land company reports to headquarters that the fire is out, the fire boat, which may be steaming at full speed up or down. the river, is immediately recalled by the wireless. This saves much time, as well as fuel, and returns the boat to her, berth, ready to respond to other alarms. The system proves itself to be so very efficient and economical that other ports in this country may be expected to adopt it before very long.

Ány unfortunate vessel approaching New York with a fire in her hold may "call" headquarters with her wireless and the fire authorities will immediately send a boat down the bay to her assistance.

WIRELESS FOR FIRE BOATS

THE wireless telegraph has been adapted to the fire boats of the New York City fire department.

Formerly, when an alarm which called for a fire boat came in, the boat responding was out of touch with the

FIRE BOAT'S WIRELESS

If a land company is successful, the oncoming fire boat can be signaled that she is not needed.

CONCRETE HOUSES FOR
BIRDS

THE high cost of living has reached

bird life and many of our feathered songsters are now living in concrete houses. In fact, the demand for cement homes is so great among the birds that they become

tenanted almost as fast as they are completed and put into place

Even the shy little bluebird has taken to these cement homes. The builder now has more than a dozen bluebird families housed in his cement hutlets, and they like them so well that they stay the year round, forgetting to go south for the winter months. Martins, liking the company of other birds of their kind, prefer to live under one roof as one big family, and for their benefit two colonial cottages of cement of twenty rooms each are being built. These artistic white structures are exactly to the liking of the martins, for it took just one

ONE-ROOM
COTTAGES

Some birds scorn them but other clans consider them quite aristocratic, and far above the "tenements" of the martins.

even

upon some fence post or tree trunk. A mischievous little house wren went so far as to invade the workshop where the houses are being made and to take possession of a new hut that was hanging up near an open door to dry out.

half hour for all the

martins on the premises to take possession of the first one which was put up on a tall pole.

No self-respecting martin will make his home in a single-room house, and no robin in a tenement.

ODMAN WANAMAKER of New York and Philadelphia, son of the famous merchant and former postmaster-general, is going to Europe this summer. Being in too much of a hurry to wait for the Cunarders, which consume five whole days in the passage, he has reserved a berth on the "Rodman Wanamaker Transatlantic Flyer," a Curtiss flying boat, scheduled to make the trip in from twelve to sixteen hours. Mr. Wanamaker believes in "safety first". Therefore, he is not going in person, but by proxy. Some accounts have it that Mr. Wanamaker is to foot the bills for two other men, not designated. At any rate, an attempt will be made to fly across the Atlantic in a single, unbroken flight, "between dawn and dark of one day."

At Hammondsport, on Lake Keuka, in Central New York, Glenn H. Curtiss has a shipyard in which one hundred and fifty men are constantly employed in building flying boats. Here is where the inventor sketched his designs for the flying boat which he believes is capable of crossing the ocean.

The craft is to be finished in time for trial on Long Island Sound or vicinity, in June or July. The start across the Atlantic is to be made in August or September. The finish will be somewhere

in Ireland, or on the bottom of the ocean between here and there. In the former case Wanamaker's proxies will receive a prize of fifty thousand dollars offered by Lord Northcliffe for the first aviator to fly across the ocean, and another of five thousand dollars offered by Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin, of the Women's Aerial League of Great Britain.

Right here it should be explained that the narrowest part of the Atlantic, that between Newfoundland and Irelanda trifle more than sixteen hundred miles -has been selected for the crossing. Being pretty far north, the days in midsummer will be longer than at a lower latitude, which gives more hours in which to make the crossing "between dawn and dark of one day", as the program has it. Furthermore, the crossing is to be made at an altitude of about ten thousand feet, where strong winds, blowing from the west, are counted on to help the flying boat, which is only designed for a speed of from sixty to a hundred miles an hour, to race along at two hundred miles an hour.

Flying across the Atlantic on paper has long been such a common performance that a blasé world now yawns whenever the subject is mentioned and turns to other news. But as the art of flying has progressed to the point where every

once in a while an aviator comes down alive, the conviction has been growing that the time is drawing near when actual transatlantic flight would be possible. Recently, opinion has crystallized on 1914 or 1915 as the year in which the feat might be achieved.

To give the proposed transatlantic flight proper éclat, Wanamaker, in agreeing to defray the expenses, placed it under the auspices of the Aero Club of America, of which he is a member. This club is an organization having more than six hundred members, including a formidable. array of notable names, established in a handsome clubhouse at Madison Avenue and Forty-First Street, New York City. It is affiliated with twentythree other aero clubs in the United States, and with the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. The wisdom of Wanamaker, in making this step, becomes apparent when it is known that several other persons who feel that they could find use for that fifty-five thousand dollars of prize money are talking volubly about mak

ing a try for it. By

co-operating with the

Aero Club of Great Britain,

the Aero Club of America will be able, if anybody else really does attempt the crossing, to elevate the affair to the dignity of a race.

The American and British Governments will be asked to provide a patrol of warships along the proposed route to give the aviators assistance, if necessary. As it would take a good many warships to patrol a lane sixteen hundred miles long, it has been suggested that yacht owners should be requested to help out.

The "Rodman Wanamaker Transatlantic Flyer" will resemble, in a general way, the well-known Curtiss flying boat. The only notable departure from

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standard design apparent in the sketch is that the propeller is placed in front instead of in the rear. The hull, which is about fifty feet long by five feet beam, is of torpedo, or stream line, form. It is almost entirely enclosed so that if the machine should take a dip in the ocean it may stay afloat at least long enough for the occupants to bottle their farewell messages. To further facilitate this object, the wings, or planes, will be arranged so that they can readily be detached, leaving the hull unobstructed. For, once the flying boat drops into the ocean, it cannot rise again. Curtiss wanted to design a craft that would be able to rise from the ocean waves as readily as an ordinary Curtiss flying boat rises from the smooth surface of

GLENN CURTISS "Curtiss vouches for the structural integrity of his big machine. There is no case on record of one of his flyers collapsing in the air."

a lake. Thus, in crossing the Atlantic the Wanamaker Flyer could swoop down on supply ships for fresh supplies of gasoline, like a seagull upon a fish-rise, and resume its flight. The crossing would thus be broken into a number of short flights. But Wanamaker opposed this plan, believing that a continuous, unbroken flight would be more significant.

In the bow will be installed a standard eight-cylinder Curtiss motor of approximately two hundred horsepower. This will be readily accessible so that any necessary adjustments can be made during flight. Twelve feet aft of the motor will be the cockpit, which will be large enough for two men. All the controls will be in duplicate so that the machine can be handled by both men in unison or by either one.

The wings will have a spread of approximately eighty feet with a lifting