land was begun. The courts and all government offices and agencies were taken over by the provisional government-and the new era was begun.

Reasonable people everywhere hoped Ireland would take full advantage of her new opportunity, prove herself fit for the responsibilities of self-government, and set about her new tasks with wisdom, patience, courage -and good team-work.

BIRTHDAYS OF THE IMMORTALS

As February leaves us, we may well pause and ask what would Washington and Lincoln think of the America of to-day? The question will have been asked by many, in the month that brings the birthdays of the two greatest Americans. If we could be sure of the answer, it would make it easier to know what we ought to do.

Perhaps Washington would be more concerned about our foreign relations; Lincoln, about domestic affairs. Of course, that does not mean that Lincoln would be indifferent to the Conference on Limitation of Armaments and the Economic Conference at Genoa, or that Washington would have no concern for our problems of unemployment, the railroads, and the welfare of the farmers. But Washington's name suggests the Revolution, which was international: Lincoln's, the Civil War, which was national.

Whether Washington would think we were in danger of forming "entangling alliances" with Europe, who can say? Perhaps he would say as we were just so much involved in world affairs, inevitably, that we had better go still farther—and join the League! Again, who can say? I don't know, and you don't know; and the folks who pretend to know are -only pretending. And that brings us to the exact point of this discussion.

We may be quite sure that if Washington had had to meet the problems of to-day, instead of his own day, he would have met them with the same true Americanism, the same deep faith and calm courage that were his when America began its national life. The clear thinking, the clean conscience, and the strength of will are what counts, to-day as ever. The problems change; the conquering spirit never changes.

Lincoln's America was smaller than ours; there were not nearly so many people in it; not nearly so many clashing interests. Busi

ness was less complicated; life was simpler. But we must remember that the things of 1860 meant just as much to the people of 1860 as the things of 1922 mean to the people of 1922. Lincoln, like Washington, took his troubles as they came; and, like Washington, conquered them by hard, straight thinking and by fearless, effective action.

Courage and conscience do not change as the years pass; and whether we are lawmakers or law-obeyers, employers or employees, men and women doing America's work, or boys and girls getting ready to do it when their turn comes, courage and conscience are what we need to-day.

THROUGH THE WATCH TOWER'S
TELESCOPE

A NOTABLE event in January was the open-
ing of the Farmers' Conference. The Farm
Bloc, so-called, in Congress, is not a good
thing, because it emphasizes a class interest,
and Congress is concerned with the welfare
of all the people. But there would not have
been a bloc if the farmers' problems had not
been serious. The conference afforded a
welcome opportunity to get things going
right.
right. The appointment of a new member
to the Federal Reserve Board to represent
agriculture was a concession that could not
be hurtful-but the board is a financial in-
stitution, and it is not good to open it to class
interests. Why not a preacher-member, to
represent the churches, and a professor-
member, to represent teachers?
The sug-
gestion is exaggerated, but it emphasizes
the fact that the Reserve Board should really
be composed of financial experts.

WE want to see American shipping prosper, but we certainly think Secretary Hoover did the right thing when he announced that Shipping Board vessels would be used to carry grain to Russia if the ocean freightcarriers stuck to the 30 per cent. increase in rates which they fixed after Congress appropriated $20,000,000 to buy food for Russian famine relief work.

It was announced, in January, that May 21 would be the date for the dedication of the National Woman's Party headquarters, in Washington. The announcement was specially interesting to us because the building is to be called-The Watch Tower!

THE FLYING MOTOR-BOAT

HENRY FARMAN, the well-known aviator, has built a remarkable high-speed boat that is driven by an airplane propeller. The boat is of the glider type; that is, the bottom is formed with flat, slightly inclined planes, so that, as it gathers headway, it rises out of the water and glides on the surface.

The glider is thirty-three feet long and is equipped with a four-bladed propeller driven by a 140 horse-power airplane engine. It is not a racing craft, and yet it is remarkably fast. Carrying a load of 3000 pounds and with the engine partly throttled, it makes a normal speed of thirty-two miles per hour. In a recent test of speed it ran at the rate of fifty miles per hour, and this with a load of twelve passengers.

CASTING PIPE WITHOUT A CORE PIPES of concrete, steel, iron, brass, etc., are usually cast in a mold that is fitted with a core to form the internal hollow. This core must be supported from the ends, so that it will be centered in the pipe. Sometimes supports, such as lugs or pins, are fitted between the core and the outer mold and they become embedded in the material that is being cast.

Recently, a new way of casting pipe has been developed and is meeting with wonder

ful success. The core is dispensed with, and yet a perfect pipe with a smooth bore results. The material is made to cling to the inner wall of the mold by centrifugal force. This, as our readers surely know, is the force that holds the water in a pail when you swing it around in a circle, and that helps to hold an aviator in his seat when his machine loops the loop. The coreless mold is partly filled with material and then set spinning. The material is immediately thrown away from the center and forms a layer on the inner wall of the mold. The spinning continues until the material has firmly set.

Not only is this a simple means of forming pipe, but a better pipe results, because the material is made denser by the centrifugal force. In one experiment a twelve-inch mold was filled solid with concrete rammed in as tightly as possible, just as if a solid column were to be cast. Then the mold was set spinning at about three hundred revolutions per minute. As a result, when the cast was examined it had formed itself into a pipe with an inside diameter of 3 inches. In other words, the centrifugal force packed the concrete so much tighter than it could be packed by hand that a 3 inch bore was formed in the center. Concrete pipes up to six feet in diameter are now being successfully made in these revolving molds.

Spinning molds are also used for casting iron and steel pipes, and here, too, the density of the metal is greatly increased by centrifugal force. The product of the spinning mold is more than twice as strong as a pipe of the same size cast in a stationary mold with a central Thinner walls can be cast in a spinning mold, but care must be taken to center the mold perfectly, because if it is the least bit out of balance, the wall of the cylinder will be thicker on one side than the other.

core.

A. RUSSELL BOND.

NEPTUNE THE THIEF

His min

NEPTUNE, the sea-king, is a thief. ions, the rivers, steal treasure from every land and carry it for miles, dumping it at last into the deep green cellars of their robber chief. Here and there one of these hurrying minions, rushing toward the sea, "falls," as the one in the picture is doing. (Don't you wish that you could fall as gracefully?) According to the United States Geological Survey, nearly three hundred million tons of soil, pebbles, and loose rock are carried by the rivers into the sea from the United States each year, an average of ninety-five tons for every square mile in the country. Is it any wonder, therefore, that I say old Neptune is a thief?

Many newspapers have copied these figures, and have added that at this rate our national home will be entirely worn away in about a million years. But there are opposing facts which we should not forget. Sometimes, for instance, Neptune's servants drop their booty just as they reach the ocean's edge; and where this happens year after year, the shores are, of course, built out farther and farther into the sea. Much land about the delta of the Mississippi has been added in this way.

Then too, there are places where Neptune himself is wont to lay down plunder he is tired of, instead of breaking in as he often does and carrying bits of the land away. In other words, along many gently sloping shores the waves are constantly depositing sand which they have brushed up from the floor of the sea-this is happening at Atlantic City, on the New Jersey coast, and also on the west coast of Florida. Usually, sand reefs or islands are formed first, out where the larger waves break, and then, very slowly, the shallows or lagoons between them and the original shores are filled in. Thus permanent additions are built on our national

ONE OF NEPTUNE'S "MINIONS" RUSHING TO THE SEA

by little pushing up the land in many places, if not in most places.

So you see there are two sides to the story. I don't believe that Neptune will ever rub us entirely off the map, do you?

PAULINE BARR.

THE CLEVER DUNLIN

THE game of cheating the sportsman by pretending to be dead is played by many animals. Akin to it is the pretense of the partridge that her leg or wing has been broken, by which device she entices the intruder to pursue her, and thus secures time for her young brood to take cover under leaves and ferns.

A naturalist in Siberia had been searching for the eggs of the little dunlin and came upon

a nest. The bird quietly slipped off and began to walk around the man, now and then pecking on the ground as if feeding, seldom going more than six feet from him and often approaching within eighteen inches. The tameness of the bird was almost ludicrous. She seemed so extremely tame that the man almost thought for a moment that he could catch her, and, getting on all fours, he crept quietly toward her. As soon as he began to move from the nest, the bird's manner entirely changed. She shuffled along the ground as if lame. She dropped her wings, as if unable to fly, and occasionally rested on her breast with drooping wings as if dying. Finally, when she eluded him and darted into the undergrowth, he found he had lost the location of the nest.

EDWIN TARRISSE.

THE CONSTELLATIONS FOR MARCH To the southeast of Orion and almost due south at eight o'clock in the evening on the first of March lies the constellation of Canis Major, The Greater Dog, containing Sirius, the Dog-star, which far surpasses all other stars in the heavens in brilliancy.

Sirius lies almost in line with the three stars that form the Belt of Orion. We shall not have the slightest difficulty in recognizing it, owing to its surpassing brilliancy as well as to the fact that it follows so closely upon the heels of Orion.

Sirius is the Greek for "scorching" or "sparkling," and the ancients attributed the scorching heat of summer to the fact that Sirius then rose with the sun. The torrid days of midsummer they called the "dog-days" for this reason, and we have retained the expression to the present time. Since Sirius was always associated with the discomforts of the torrid season, it did not have an enviable reputation among the Greeks. We find in Pope's translation of the Iliad this reference to Sirius.

Terrific glory! for his burning breath
Taints the red air with fever, plagues, and death.

In Egypt, however, many temples were dedicated to the worship of Sirius, for the reason that some five thousand years ago it rose with the sun at the time of the summer solstice, which marks the beginning of summer, and heralded the approaching inundation of the Nile, which was an occasion for great rejoicing among the Egyptians. was, therefore, called the Nile Star and regarded by them with the greatest reverence.

It

Sirius is an intensely white hydrogen star; but owing to its great brilliancy and to the fact that it does not attain a great height above the horizon in our latitudes, its rays are greatly refracted or broken up by the atmosphere, which is most dense near the horizon, and as a result, it twinkles or scintillates more noticeably than other stars and flashes the spectrum colors,-chiefly red and green, like a true "diamond in the sky"a magnificent object in the telescope.

Sirius is one of our nearest neighbors among the stars. Only two stars are known to be nearer to the solar system. Yet its light takes about eight and a half years to flash with lightning speed across the great intervening chasm. It is attended also by a very faint star that is so lost in the rays of its brilliant companion that it can only be found with the aid of a powerful telescope. The two stars are separated by a distance of 1,800,000,000 miles; that is they are about

So

as far apart as Neptune and the sun. They swing slowly and majestically about a common center, called their center of gravity, in a period of about forty-nine years. faint is the companion of Sirius that it is estimated that twenty thousand such stars would be needed to give forth as much light as Sirius. The two stars together, Sirius and its companion, give forth forty-eight times as much light as our own sun. They weigh only about three times as much, however, and the companion of Sirius, in spite of its extreme faintness, weighs fully half as much as the brilliant star.

There are a number of bright stars in the constellation of Canis Major. A fairly bright star a little to the west of Sirius marks the uplifted paw of the dog, and to the southeast, in the tail and hind quarters, are several conspicuous stars of the second magnitude.

A little to the east and much farther to the north, we find Canis Minor, The Lesser Dog, containing the beautiful first-magnitude star Procyon, (Pro'se on), "Precursor of the Dog," that is, of Sirius. Since Procyon is so much farther north than Sirius and very little to the east, we see its brilliant rays in the eastern sky some time before Sirius appears above the southeastern horizon, hence its

name.

And long after Sirius has disappeared from view beneath the western horizon in the late spring, Procyon may still be seen low in the western sky. Procyon, also, is one of our nearer neighbors among the stars, being only about ten light-years distant from the solar system. Like Sirius, it is a double star with a much fainter companion, that by its attraction sways the motion of Procyon to such an extent that we should know of its existence, even if it were not visible, by the disturbances it produces in the motion of Procyon. The period of revolution of Procyon and its companion about a common center is about forty years, and the two stars combined weigh about a third more than our own sun and give forth ten times as much light.

Canis Minor, unlike Canis Major, is a small constellation containing only one other bright star, Beta, a short distance to the northwest of Procyon. Originally, the name Procyon was given to the entire constellation, but it was later used only with reference to the one star. Procyon, Sirius, and Betelgeuse in Orion form a huge equal-sided triangle that lies across the meridian at this time and is a most conspicuous configuration in the evening sky.

Directly south of the zenith, we shall find Gemini, The Twins, one of the zodiacal constellations. It is in Gemini that the sun is to be found at the beginning of summer. The two bright stars Castor and Pollux mark the heads of the twins, and the two stars in the opposite corners of the four-sided figure shown in the chart mark their feet.

Castor and Pollux, according to the legend, were the twin brothers of Helen of Troy and members of the Argonautic expedition. When a storm overtook the vessel on its return voyage, Orpheus invoked the aid of Apollo, who caused two stars to shine above the heads of the twins, and the storm immediately ceased. It was for this reason that Castor and Pollux became the special deities of seamen, and it was customary to place their effigies upon the prows of vessels. The "By Jimini!" of to-day is but a corruption

interesting because it is a double star that is readily separated into two stars with the aid of a small telescope. The two principal stars are known to be, in turn, extremely close double stars revolving almost in contact in periods of a few days. Where we see but one star with the unaided eye, there is, then, a system of four suns, the two close pairs revolving slowly about a common center of gravity in a period of several centuries and at a great distance apart.

The star Pollux, which we can easily distinguish by its superior brightness, is also the more southerly of the twin stars and lies due north of Procyon and about as far from Procyon as Procyon is from Sirius.

The appearance of Gemini on the meridian in the early evening and of the huge triangle, with its corners marked by the brilliants, Procyon, Sirius, and Betelgeuse, due south, with "Great Orion sloping slowly to the west,' is as truly a sign of approaching spring as the gradual lengthening of the days, the appearance of crocuses and daffodils, and the first robin. It is only a few weeks later, as pictured by Tennyson in "Maud,"

When the face of the night is fair on the dewy downs,

And the shining daffodil dies, and the Charioteer And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns Over Orion's grave low down in the west.

ISABEL M. LEWIS.