I have looked through a telescope only two or three times in my life."

The environment in which the astronomer works contains peril for the amateur or the unwary. On a beautiful moonlight night, the astronomer at one of the greatest observatories in this country was expecting a visit from a young girl friend, who wished to view the heavens through, a telescope. By chance, the astronomer had been called to another town, and so the girl made her way to the dome alone, where the telescope was pointed at the moon. For two hours, fascinated, she kept her eye fixed to the instrument-observing, in wonder, the mountain ridges, and the

craters of dead volcanoes. When she retired for the night, something seemed wrong with her eye, but she thought little of it, believing this to be due to the strain of long gazing. When she awoke in the morning, she found she was blind in one eye. The steady, concentrated light had killed the optic nerve.

There is the humorous aspect, too. The assistant in charge of a certain observatory left two visitors alone in the dome for a few minutes. When he returned, one of them said casually: "The lens of that telescope was so dusty that I rubbed it off with my glove." The scratches caused by this seemingly harmless operation necessitated the unmounting of the lens and an expenditure of five hundred dollars to restore the smooth surface. The visitor did not know that telescopic lenses are ordinarily cleaned. but once or twice a year and then by suction process, because even a finger touch may ruin the perfect surface.

In the world of astronomy, humor and adventure may go hand in hand. When a certain observatory was erected on a high mountain in Peru some years ago, the staff in charge was considerably annoyed by the hostility of the natives. The latter evidently regarded the great rounded dome with the telescope projecting from the slits in the sides as a fort erected by the hated Americans for some ulterior purpose, and every now and then some patriotic son of the land would sneak up and take a shot at the observatory. And yet the prosaic astronomers were alarmed only lest one of the badly aimed balls might find a lodging in a telescopic lens, or do other damage to the telescope!

Only one astronomer of real fame seems to have used his imagination scientifically in seeking knowledge of other worlds. This man has made a specialty of the planet Mars, and has frequently expressed his belief that the lines across its face are in reality canals

WORLDS

The Great Nebula in Orion, which to laymen is one of the most gorgeous spectacles known to man, with its millions of miles of glowing, boiling gases.

disappears in winter-built by the people of that strange world for irrigating pur

poses. Because of this theory, ways and means have at intervals been proposed to signal to the Martians.

Aside from the language of love, there is probably but one universal language. But inasmuch as it would be entirely useless for a youth or maiden on either the earth or Mars to exchange messages no matter how ardent either might be, since they couldn't understand. each other, the attempts at communication must be in terms of the other universal language-the language of mathematics. So for interstellar communication we must fall back on mathematics. A most ingenious suggestion is, that a vast, comparatively level waste place, like the Desert of Sahara, be selected, for the purpose of laying out an enormous right angle triangle. Two of the sides might be one thousand miles in length by a hundred miles each in thickness. The third side would of course be longer. The triangle could then be overlaid with electric lights. With this triangle powerfully illuminated, it should not be difficult for the scientific Martians to read and understand the signal. They might reply in kind, and thus with variations of the triangle a system for correspondence might be built up. The two drawbacks to the scheme are that there may be no one on Mars to see such signals and to reply to them, and the enormous difficulty and expense of the undertaking. To build and illuminate such a triangle would be a greater feat than the digging of the Panama Canal. A plan of this sort is a fascinating dream to the man in the street-but to the astronomer, a mere prosaic suggestion, and one that is not received any too

well.

But, nevertheless, it may be for some such purpose of interplanetary communication that our patient, apparently impractical, astronomers may be laying up their store of knowledge for future generations. Even as it is they have proved that the matter which fills space is essentially the same; they have analyzed the metals in the sun; they have

WILLIAM H. PICKERING, ONE OF THE MOST ACTIVE OF ASTRONOMERS

His superb energy and driving force, had he chosen so to use them, could have driven a gigantic business enterprise. Instead, he has devoted his life to the "unproductive" science of astronomy.

performed miracles of science that have unquestionably encouraged the more "practical" scientists to continue their work of research and discovery; and they have awed the mind of man and stirred his spiritual depths with their evidence of the vastness, the illimitability of space. When their incessant labors finally result in some great achievements, astronomers themselves may feel that they are entitled to yield to the romance which every one else can see.

HEADQUARTERS FOR THE SALVING OPERATIONS The battleship Maryland took a crew of expert divers from the United States, in

order to facilitate the search.

T

HREE HUNDRED working men and women of New Orleans have just received as a gift from one millionaire fifty retail grocery stores, with average daily sales of $4,000, three meat markets, a large dairy plant and a truck farm. The entire gift represents an investment of $250,000, in 1909, and, today, is worth probably $500,000. The gift has no strings; the men and women to whom it went are provided for for life, and, more peculiar still, the cost of food and fuel to every citizen of New Orleans who buys his or her supplies from these stores has been cut from twenty to twenty-five per cent.

A farm of one hundred acres, just across the river from New Orleans, supplies fresh vegetables every day, and a larger plantation is being sought by the farming experts of the association, so that supplies for the new stores may be provided from their own plantation. The association now has its coffee grind ing and tea-blending departments, and is considering the addition of a cannery. Coal has been made a regular department, with a manager, and wood and kindling are sold at the very lowest prices, thus helping to solve another one.

of the problems of the poor in a climate as changeable as that of New Orleans.

The three hundred who, by a stroke of the pen, became owners of the largest retail grocery property in the Crescent City, are the members of the Nelson Cooperative Association, Inc., Food Suppliers. The slender, gray-haired, mildmannered little man who calmly handed these workers independence for life, is N. O. Nelson, and he has been doing just this sort of thing all his life. This latest gift, however, is his greatest, for with the half-million dollar gift, he gave himself to act as manager of the growing chain of stores, without salary and without expense account, until such time as the three hundred raise up among themselves a man who can handle the large property.

This is no experiment with N. O. Nelson. He drew the attention of a large part of America's working men and women to himself in 1886, when he started a small manufacturing plant at Edwardsville, Ill., Edwardsville, Ill., and adopted the profit-sharing plan with his two hundred employes. More than $250,000 worth of the stock is owned by the workmen and customers, and there is more than two million dollars invested in this plant and