Evening star., 1941-04-08
OF Stors, Men
And Atoms
Notebook of Science Progress
In Laboratory, Field
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.

Georgia-so the stories go-rich planters
buried their silver and jewels to save
them from the invaders.
treasure legends still are rife
around the coastal plain country. Last
year boy was plowing q cotton field
when his plowshare suddenly struck a
hard object about feet below the
surface.
In the deep red clay of that level coun-
try stones big enough to stop a plough
are practically unknown. The lads heart
jumped. He had hit a treasure chest.
He tugged at the object but could not
dislodge it. All he recovered was bit
of iron about the size of a half dollar.
This he reported to his employer. 1t
aroused considerable local interest, and
finally came to the attention of W. H.
Powell, the county health officer. Mr..
Powell investigated and found what the
heavy object really was. He reported
the find to the secretary of the Chamber
of Commerce of Waynesboro, Ga, who
Immediately got in touch with the
Smithsonian Institution. The boys
plowshare had hit something far more
valuable to the world than an iron chest
filled with treasure. The buried object
was an iron meteorite, weighing nearly
a ton, the second largest ever found
east of the Mississippi and one of the
largest yet known in the New World.
The great chunk of heavy iron, pre-
sumably fragment of the core of some
disrupted planet. has been brought to
Washington, where 1t is on exhibit at the
National Museum. The question of its
age is of considerable theoretical inter-
est because this particular area Is marked
with curious depressions. or bays, which,
when first noticed, were attributed to
impacts of shooting stars which fell
long before mans appearance on earth,
but within recent geologic times.
The field where the chunk of sky iron
was found had been under constant culti-
vation for at least SO years, and the spot
had been plowed over many times. AL
most certainly the fall could not have
taken place during the time this country
has been inhabited by white men be-
cause the impact with the earth of such
an immense fiery ball would have found
a place in local tradition, either white
or Indian.
1t must have struck with terrific force,
sufficient to have buried it to a far
greater depth in this relatively soft soil,
says E. P. Henderson of the Smith
Sonian staff and C. w. Cooke of the
United States Geological Survey, who
have just returned from studying the
site. A conservative estimate is that it
would have penetrated at least feet.
Erosion in this relatively level coun-
try removes perhaps less than an inch of
soil in century, so that by normal
erosional processes it would require over
soil from the surface so as to bring this
chunk of sky iron close enough to the
top to be caught by the pillow point
The investigators are advancing hy-
potheSis that it may have fallen about
100000 years ago, when the country
side was covered by shallow sea- The
force of the meteorite's impact would
have been broker by the water and it
would have settled gently to the bottom
and been covered by sediments.
II
During the past decade there has been
an inexplicable gain in the height and
weight of American children.
Those between and II years old at
the experimental school of the Univer-
elf of hot 1927
average three forth of an inch more
stature and 3 pounds more weight than
the school population there between
1920 and 1927. This has just been re-
ported to the American Society of Physi-
cal Anthropologists here by DR.. Howard
v. Meredith, director of the school.
In this study more than l 400 children
were weighed and measured four times
year as long as they remained in
| school. All were drawn from better-class
homes of Iowa City and the vicinity.
Nearly all were of old American or
Northern European ancestry. Their
fathers were college professors, doctors,
merchants and farmers.
In these families, DR.. Meredith said,
surveys showed the diet and amount of
care given the children had not changed
between the two periods. If anything,
these were worse during the depression
| years of the 30s than during the boom
years of the 20S. The only difference,
which Dr. Meredith believes is entirely
inadequate to explain the change, is that
there has been somewhat more attention
to prenatal care and care in early in
fancy.
1t probably means that the children
will grow into bigger men and women.
Previous studies of college students have
indicated that those of the present were
bigger than those just before the turn
of the century. This has been inter-
preted as due to better diet and medical
attention, but these changed only
negligibly for the Iowa children be-
tween the two decades while gains in
size were negligible.
Comparison of Civil War soldiers and
draftees during the first World War
showed, on the other hand, that in 10
years stature had decreased about half
inch. This was interpreted as due to a
greater mixture of Southern Europeans
in the population. There was no change
in the racial makeup of the Iowa chill
dren
There are two dominant theories, says
DR.. Meredith. The first is that the hui
man race has been growing bigger pro-
! gressively through history-although not
at steady pace. The other is that