Evening star., 1938-08-25
OF STARS,
MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook of Science Pro9ress
in Field, Laboratory
and Study.
By THOMAS r. HENRY.

By THOMAS r. HENRY.
An explorer In the desolate heights
OF the Santa Marta Mountains in North
eastern Colombia, fog-wrapped and TO-
600 feet above sea level, may see q flock
Of sheep placidly grazing among the
rocks ahead of him.
Then. looking the other way, he may
see an assembly of cowled, robed priests,
apparently in the midst of some wierd
ecclesiastical ceremony.
But when he goes to the places where
he thought he saw these things there
are neither sheep nor priests. He finds
instead two strange varieties of the
aster family, both among the real curl
osities of the plant kingdom.
Two varieties OF these vegetable
sheep" have just been described from
collections OF the National Herbarium
OF the Smithsonian Institution. They
are bushy plants which grow on almost
barren ground near the mountain sum-
mits. The individual plant, according
to the description Of DR.. s. F. Blake,
botanist of the Department Of Agricul-
ture, consists Of thickly branched stem
about as thick as the finger with dense
covering OF many layers Of long per-
sistent leaves covered with wool-like
hairs" Sometimes these leaves are so
thick that the point OF pencil cannot
be thrust through them. Some plants
may be as large as an ordinary sofa.
The extreme compactness of these
plants and their dense covering Of hairs,
says DR.. Blake is an adaptation to the
hostile conditions under which they
must live. The habitat consists of rocky
slopes where the hot. dry winds of sum-
mer and the SHOWS. low temperature and
violent gales of winter expose them to
perpetual alteration OF desert and
arctic conditions.
The vegetable sheep" have been
known before, but only from New Zea-
land. There is not, so far as known,
any Intermediates between these closely
similar plants growing on almost op-
posite sides Of the earth. The finding
of the plants from Colombia in the
National Herbarium collection offers a
real puzzle to students OF plant distribu-
ton.
There Is not necessarily, 1t is stressed,
any connection between them, other
than that they belong to the same gen.
eral plant family and that they have
responded to similar conditions with
similar habit Of growth.
The Santa Marta Mountains have been
known in the past as the habitat of
many unique plant species. which have
become adapted to that peculiar environ
ment and are not found elsewhere in
the world. In this general region of
Northern South America also are found
the strange fraijedone plants, or monk
plants, of which the Smithsonian 1nsti-
tuition has assembled a large collection.
Seen from the distance on mountain
side, especially in light fog, patch
Of these plants looks decidedly like an
assembly of several hundred priests con-
ducting some sort of religious ceremony.
Specimens OF 10 shooting stars have
been added to the collections of the
Smithsonian Institution during the past
year-62 Of them representing new falls.
This brings the total close to 1900,
or more than half Of all the meteors
known to have hit the earth. Most OF
the additions to the collection have come
from the United States. The largest
weighs close to 80 pounds and the
smallest Is a shaving about the size OF
thumbnail.
The institution is eager to obtain as
many as possible of these rock or iron
visitors from outer space, presumably
the fragments of crushed planet Most
of the hundreds OF thousands Of shooting
stars which enter the outer atmosphere
of the earth are entirely consumed by
friction miles above the surface, only
their ashes eventually reaching the
ground after remaining, possibly for
years, as part of the atmospheric dust.
~ l. hot fhp11.
sands strike the earth as solid bodies
and that an untold number OF them
are scattered over the country. The IN
stitution is glad to correspond with any
body VINO finds one. A rough. rule-of-
thumb way of suspecting meteor is
by weighing it. One of these sky visi-
tors will be notably heavier than
neighboring stone or pebble of the same
size.
So far as possible chemical analysis
Is made of the meteor fragments re-
ceived in Washington. Both the iron
and stony specimens are made up, for the
most part, of minerals familiar on earth,
although the internal structure is diff
ferent. The few combinations which
have been found only in these projec-
tiles from outer space usually constitute
only few small parts Of the whole and
can be detected only by precise chem
ical analysis.
The stony meteorites for the most
part are made up of magnesium
silicates. These also are common among
terrestrial rocks. A curiosity pointed
out by DR.. E. p Henderson, in charge
of the Smithsonian Institutions meteo-
rite collection, is that analysis very sell
dom shows the slightest trace of quartz,
one of the commonest of rocks on the
earths surface. There is no explana-
ton for this feature.
There is no reason, Mr.. Henderson
says, why fragments Of meteorites
should be more abundant in one place
than another. Up to date, however, the
most fruitful source has been through
the Midwest-especially Missouri, Kan
sas and Nebraska. A systematic search
for them anywhere probably would be
futile and mineralogists must depend
on accidental finds, except in cases
where shooting star actually is seen
to strike the surface.