The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-06-18
MEASURE, AMOUNT
 OF SUNS HEAT ON
 SURFACE OF EARTH
Solar Rays Used for Heat ing and Cooking Heat
 is Not Constant.

Boston, June 17-Progress in the work of exact determination of the amount of heat received by the earth from the sun, which has been the ob- Ject of experiments recently conduct ed by Messrs. c. G. Abbot, F. B. Fowls and l.. B. Aldrich of the Smith sOnian Institution, at Washington, is described by these scientists in the June number of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
 They have found that the amount of heat is Is 3 calories per square centi- meter per minute; that is to say, enough heat is received from the sun on each square yard to heat a pound of water to boiling in two and one half minutes. The heat which is re- ceived at the earth's surface is some what less than this, namely by the variable amount that is absorbed by the earths atmosphere. The re- markable discovery has also been made that the heat received from the sun is not constant but variable from month to month or year to year by perhaps as much as 10 per cent. This variation might be expected to make pronounced differences in the growth of vegetation or in the general climate from year to year; but for some req son, perhaps through the variable ef- fects of the earth's atmosphere, the variations in the heat received from the sun seem to be iuninnportant so far as crops are concerned.
 The National Academy of Sciences has recently made an appropriatio on of $250 to pr. Abbot for the purpose of enabling him to complete and test on Mount Wilson in California, an ap- paratus- consisting of a concave cylin- drical mirror of about 100 square feet surface for concentrating the suns heat on tubes containing oil, which is then made to circulate through a reservoir containing ovens and water pipes, SO as to utilize solar radiation for cooking and heating, water for domestic purposes
 The National Academy of Sciences announces some interesting results on the breeding of pigeons. There has been. a general belief amng pigeon breeders that. from the two eggs, which are laid for hatching,s one male always, at any rate, in most in stances; that of this pair the male matches from the egg which is laid first; and that-for some reason in the adult pigeons there is an excess of male birds. Elaborate records kept for a period of seven years. first at the Rhode Island Agricultural Exper- iment Station and later at the Expert ment Station at Madison, Wis, and now printed in the Academy Proceed ings by L. J. Cole and w. F. Kirk patrick, settle 8 number of questions connected with these beliefs of breed CTS. -S
 The observations show that there are matched about 105 males to 100. females, and that there is a higher mortality among the young adult fe- males than among the males. These facts justify the common belief that there is a considerable excess of males in the adult population. It is found, however, that there is no male and one female are matched in each brood ;on the contrary, the num- Der of the ibroods in which the two squabs are both male or both female, exceeds that in which the sexes are equally divided. Finally, there is no is matched from the first egg laid and the female from the second.
 An announcement made in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science tells of the progress which investigators at the Rockefeller In stitute for Medical Research in New York are making in the study of su- gar in human blood and the function of the pancreas in eliminating it.
 In diabetes the amount of dextrose (sugar) in the blood is higher than normal, and, when it is sufficiently high, 1t escapes through the kidneys. AGessrs. Kleiner and Me1tzer of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Re search announce that experiments on animals from which the pancreas has been removed show that the ability of the animal to get rid readily of surplus of sugar injected into the veins is greatly impaired, and that the ability to get rid of the sugar can be temporarily restored by injecting a pancreatic emulsion into the veins. The authors are still at work upon the problem, but appear satisfied that the internal secretions of the pan creas determine the ability of an anil nal to regulate the sugar-content of