SCIENCE-SUPPLEMENT 



4,000,000 acres of idle land ia New York and 

 about 85,000,000 acres in the United States (a 

 tract about as large as New York, Pennsylvania, 

 Ehode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey) are 

 waiting for tree planters. 



THE SPEED OF STARS 



Soience Service 



Two HUNDRED miles a second is the speed at 

 which some stars are racing through space. Dr. 

 Walter S. Adams, acting director of the Mount 

 Wilson Observatory, declared in a lecture at the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington. 



The rapidity with which the stars move depends 

 upon their stage of development, their true or 

 intrinsic brightness and probably their mass. The 

 giant stars are moving more slowly than the dwarf 

 stars and the increase of velocity with decreasing 

 mass is a regular one. But these individual stars, 

 he pointed out, are not moving at random. They 

 move in great streams and the speedway of the 

 heavens is in the plane of the Milky Way. 



"None of the rapidly moving stars are going in 

 the same direction as our sun," he said. "The 

 speed of the sun is about twelve miles a second 

 when referred to the slowly moving stars and over 

 one hundred miles a second with reference to tlie 

 exceptionally speedy stars. 



' ' Prom a kuawledge of the spectrum of stars 

 we have been able in the past to learn both their 

 ehemicall constitution and order of evolution as 

 regards temperature and physical state, and their 

 motions toward or away from the earth in miles 

 a second. In recent years we have been able to 

 add a third use to which the spectrum may be 

 put, and we can now determline the true or intrin- 

 sic brightness of a star directly. This quantity 

 combined with a knowledge of its brightness as it 

 appears to us enables us to determine its dis- 

 tance in a very simple manner. ' ' 



The method has nearly tripled the number of 

 stars for which we know the distances. Dr. Adams 

 said, and a knowledge of the distances has made 

 it possible to determine the true motions of these 

 stars in space. 



FLYING CHEAP TRAVEL 



Soience Service 

 If aiirplanes conld get enough business, passen- 

 gers could be carried much more quickly at little 

 greater cost than by railroad, Archibald Black, 

 aeronautical engineer of Garden City, N. Y., told 

 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 

 wliile discussing the proper design for commercial 

 flying machines. "For example, the distance 



from New York to Chicago by the Pennsylvania 

 Railroad is 908 miles, or a flying distance of from 

 750 to 800 miles," he said. "Were it possible 

 to load the airplane fully each trip, the operatinig 

 cost would be 6.5 cents per passenger mile or 

 $48.75 to $52 per passenger. This compares vrath 

 the railroad rate of $51.30, including fare, excess 

 fare and Pullman. Allowing for the trip to and 

 from the fields, as well as an intermediate stopj 

 the time by air would average about nine hours 

 as against twenty hours by the Pennsylvania 

 Railroad's 'Broadway Limited.' The only rea- 

 son why airplanes can not carry passengers at 

 such rates to-day is that it costs too much to get 

 the business. ' ' 



Moderate size madiines only, he emphasized, 

 could be efficiently operated at this low cost and 

 the requirement of ability to fly on one of two 

 engines is utterly impractical for commercial air- 

 planes because of the prohibitive cost. The com- 

 mercial plane should be designed for jumps last- 

 ing not over four hours, while high speed is un- 

 desirable and high climbing ability unnecessary 

 and impractical for the commercial craft. 



A MARVELLOUS ARCHEOLOGICAL 

 DISCOVERY 



London Times 

 The earth holds in her recesses the rich memo- 

 ries of our race, and sometimes, as though the 

 effort of the reflective and inquiring mind of 

 modern man had siiddenly flashed forth in a re- 

 vealing intuition, a discovery comes that lights 

 up the obscurity of the distant past. One such 

 discovery we are privileged to record to-day. Our 

 Cairo correspondent tells us 'how, after sixteen 

 years of patient toil and research. Lord Carnarvon 

 and tiiat distinguished excavator, Mr. Howard 

 Carter, have been rewarded by a marvelous find 

 in the Valley -of the Kings near Thebes. All the 

 mysteries of this famous valley had been dis- 

 closed, so it was thought, long since. Mr. Carter, 

 witli the pertinacity of the gifted archeologist 

 who scents discoveries from afar, dug on per- 

 sistently until at last, in the royal necropolis of 

 the Theban empire, he came across some tempting 

 signs below the tomb of Bameses VI. Lord Car- 

 narvon went out from England, and he and Mr. 

 Carter together opened the sealed doors of a hith- 

 erto unnoticed chamber. When opened this cham- 

 ber revealed an amazing spectacle. There were 

 gilt couches, inlaid -ivith ivory and precious 

 stones; innumerable boxes, inlaid and painted 

 mth entrancing hunting scenes ; a wonderful 

 throne; a chair encrusted with precious stones and 



