Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/343

Rh but facilities are freely afforded for the prosecution of purely scientific studies; and it may be noted that an unusually large number of able investigators have availed themselves of the advantages which the laboratories of the Commission afford. Among the recent acts of Congress pertaining to the scientific work have been the appropriation of a liberal sum for special experiments and investigations regarding the clam and lobster; the establishment of a new marine laboratory at Beaufort, North Carolina, and the creation of the position of fish pathologist.

results of the early investigations by the Commission soon led to the institution of artificial propagation as the most feasible and effective form of aid that could be rendered by the Federal Government for the maintenance of the food-fish supply; and for many years fish-culture has been the leading branch of the Commission's work. Thirty-five hatching stations in twenty-five States were operated in 1900, and new hatcheries are established at nearly every session of Congress. The output of young and adult fishes reached the extraordinary number of 1,164,000,000, which represent practically all the important food and game fishes of our rivers and lakes, and several marine species, those receiving most attention being the shad, the salmons of both coasts, the various trouts, the whitefish, the walleyed pike, the black basses, the cod, the winter flounder and the lobster. The important feature of this work is that a very large proportion of the ova which are handled, being taken from fish that have been caught for market, would have been lost but for the Commission's efforts; in the year covered by the report, fully nine-tenths of the output were from this source. The Commission is one of the most popular of the Government bureaus, and its popularity will undoubtedly increase as the objects, methods, limitations and results of its work become more generally known.

of economics are familiar with the apparently far-fetched hypothesis that periods of economic crises or hard times may be related to the fluctuations of the sun-spots. There is now reason to believe that the hypothesis is not a rash guess based on some specious coincidences. Sir Norman Lockyer and Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer have investigated the connection between sunspots and the weather, and claim, in a paper read before the Royal Society on November 22, that increased and decreased areas of the spots on the sun may be indicative of fluctuations in the heat it gives out and that the solar conditions they indicate are approximately contemporaneous with pulses of greater rainfall. The Lockyers found that when the area of spots was greatest the unknown lines of the spectra of the sunspots were widened; when the area was least the known lines were widened. From this they infer that a maximum area of sun-spots goes with a great increase of temperature. They thus find periodic changes of solar temperature, a maximum being followed by a mean condition, and that by a minimum. The years 1881, 1886-7 and 1892, for instance, would be, according to these spectrum records, years of mean temperature condition. The fluctuations in rainfall in India, Mauritius, Egypt and elsewhere were then compared with the spectrum records. Heavy rains generally occurred in India in the year following the mean condition, that is in dates near but somewhat earlier than the maxima and minima for sun-spots. The fall of snow followed the same rule. Between these pulses of great rainfall there are periods of drought, which correspond to the intervals between the maxima and minima of solar temperature indicated by the fluctuations in the spots. All the Indian famines since 1836 have occurred in such intervals, if we assume that maxima have appeared every eleven years. The famines of 1836, 1847, 1860, 1868-69, 1880 and 1890-92 fit almost exactly with the central points or mean conditions between minima and maxima