Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-05-30

| less skin of the human being proves
that he originated in a warm climate
seeming to lose sight of the fact that
the monkeys of the torrid zone have
always had the hair covering.
Climatologists declare that there Is
nothing true in the theory that our
forefathers were healthier than we are
because there were old-fashioned win
tiers and summers then. They say that
the decline of national health must
be traced to other sources; that there
has been no change in the average win
ter or summer. Since the systematic
preservation of temperature and rain
fall records there has been no appre-
ciable change anywhere. Some winters
are colder than others, and some sum-
mers dryer than others, but they av-
erage about the same as they did in
the earlier days to which the old folk
delight to bark back.
This is true in North America as we'll
as In every other part of the earth. In
the Bible one reads of how Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob had to fight for water
ing places for their herds. In that
same region today the struggle still
goes on. The meteorologist declares
that enlightened man may adjust his
ways to given climate, but that the
climate will never adjust its ways to
him. A most interesting and UNIQUE
the climate of a country changes or
not was hit upon by a French climato-
ogist. He tabulated the dates of the
wine making seasons in France back to
the fourteenth century, and in all the
500 years he found no material change
insthe climate as shown by those dates.
He did find that the weather is in
clined to move in cycles, some years
being a little behind the average date
and others a little ahead of it. These
backward and forward years seemed to
occur in such sequences as to Indicate
cycles in the weather. By some these
cycles were placed at eleven years and
can be established that these cycles do
occur, it will be a big feather in the
cap of the long-range forecaster.
The work of the Genealogical asso-
citation is in entire harmony with that
of the weather bureau. Someone has
said that the weather for 365 days
makes the climate of place. The
climatologists get their weather data
from the weather bureau, and thereby
determine the climate. No other coun-
try approaches the thoroughness with
which Uncle Sam studies the weather
Spending a million and half dollars
year to be weather wise, he is learning
many secrets of the atmosphere which
have never been known. His station at
Mt. weather. on the Blue Ridge noun
tains of Virginia, has been equipped
with every sort of instrument human
ingenuity can devise to pull down the
secrets of the upper air. Grown men
fly kites there in a way that would
make the heart of the small boy green
with envy.
Not long ago a box-shaped kite, car
rying a kit of instruments, was sent up
into the air 23,111 feet-a little over four
miles. One of the instruments it con-
tanned was a self-recording thermom-
eter. 1t showed a temperature of five
degrees below zero at that elevation,
although it was not at all cold on the
mountain. Another instrument was
made of a single hair from woman's
head. All the oil had been taken from
the hair and one end was tied to a
stationary strip while the other had
a little fountain pen attached to It,
This pen was filed with non-freezing
ink, and marked the expansion and
contraction of the hair as humidity in
creased and decreased. Still another
instrument registered the direction Of
the wind, and another the velocity with
which 1t moved In studying the tenn
peratures of the atmosphere the wealth
er station must have thermometers
which will register 100 degrees above
freezing point and 100 degrees below.
Ir contrast with this wide range the
magnetic laboratory must have rooms
in which the temperature does not vary
more than one-tenth of a degree the
whole year round.
MANY of the instruments through
which the weather men are trying to