Popular Science Monthly 



347 



steam supplied from plants outside the 

 walls. But after the war, when the 

 hospital has been conv^erted into dwelling 

 houses, these houses would have to be 

 heated by stoves. The parts of the 

 hospital are adjusted with such care that 

 the buildings may be 

 taken down, trans- 

 ported and put up 

 as dwellings which 

 may eventually har- 

 bor thousands of the 

 homeless refugees 

 when they return to 

 their devastated 

 towns in Belgium 

 and France. 



BrrrrnT! 

 It's Cold! 



Turn up your col- 

 lar,thrust your hands 

 to the bottom of your 

 pockets, and read 

 about the "Cold 

 Pole" of northern 

 Siberia, where the 

 natives speak pat- 

 ronizingly about 

 Greenland's icy 

 mountains and other 

 such relatively 

 balmy resorts. At 

 the town of Verkoyansk, w^hich would 

 probably never have had any in- 

 habitants if the late Czar's government 

 had not sent occasional batches of exiles 

 thither, the temperature has been known 

 to drop to 90 degrees below zero, which is 

 a "record" for the whole world. While 

 the regions about North and South Poles 

 of the earth are cold all the time, the 

 Siberian Cold Pole gives its inhabitants a 

 comfortable let-up in summer, when the 

 thermometer frequently climbs up into 

 the eighties above zero. During the brief 

 summer season, the life-giving rays of the 

 Sun, which remains above the horizon 

 day and night for some time during the 

 height of the season, exert an intensely 

 stimulating influencing upon the vegeta- 

 tion, and the ground is covered with 

 flowers. 



A truss opened and one being folded 

 for transportation. Note how small 

 a space the folded truss takes up 



What Kind of a Dog Was It That 

 Went Into Noah's Ark? 



THE ancestry of the dog has been the 

 occasion of much cont'-oversy. 

 Many naturalists have considered that 

 it is descended from 

 a single ancestor, 

 such as the common 

 wolf of Europe. 

 Darwin, however, 

 leans toward the 

 theory of multiple 

 origin, and advances 

 much convincing 

 proof in support of 

 his belief. It is well 

 known that many 

 savage tribes have 

 dogs which appear to 

 be simply half-tamed 

 representatives of 

 the particular wild- 

 dog-like animals in- 

 habiting the same 

 regions. The dogs of 

 the American Plains 

 Indians closely 

 resemble the small 

 prairie wolf, or coy- 

 ote; the husky of 

 the north country is 

 plainly not far re- 

 moved from the gray 

 sheep dog and the 



wolf; the German 

 Samoyede are strikingly wolf-like in ap- 

 pearance. Whether our present dogs are 

 the result of crossing these many simple 

 derivatives of wolves and jackals among 

 themselves, or whether there was an 

 original ancestral dog, now extinct, with 

 which the blood of other species has 

 become mingled, we have not yet been 

 able to determine, though so many prim- 

 ordial animal remains have come to light. 

 "According to St. George Mivart, the 

 dingo is the only wild dog still existing 

 which meets the requirements of an 

 ancestor of our modern breeds. This 

 species is found throughout Australia, and 

 fossil bones which have been found show 

 its presence there from very early times." 

 (Pets, by Leo S. Crandall, Henry Holt & 

 Co., New York.) 



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