Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/707

 Popular Scioice Monthly

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��the kiw of the inheritance of this trait. The circles represent females and the squares males. The black profiles in the circles and squares represent the alTccted females and males respectively. Chart i starts with a female — a grandmother who had three bad-tempered children, two sons and one daughter. One son married a bad-tempered woman. Two of his daughters arc notoriously ill- natured. One of them is under custodial care.

That the shrewish do not always hark back to female progenitors is well illustrated in Chart 2, which includes five generations. In this chart the first fiery-tempered progenitor of whom we can get record is a great-great-grand- father. He has transmitted tantrums through son, grandson, great- grandson to his great-great-grand daughter, whose behavior is such that she should end her days in the state insti- tution in which

���outbursts may be counteracted by physical exercise or a prolonged, soothing bath. The internal irritants seem to be destroyed or gotten rid of by these means. Much may be accomplished by establishing the habit, even at great effort, of ignoring irritating situations. When the intellect is too weak to cope with the situation or the temper is so furious as to be beyond treatment, then custodial care is advisable both from the standpoint of the individual and of society.

The Difference Between a Store Ther- mometer and an Official Thermometer

WHY does a Weather Bureau ther- mometer show lower tempera- tures in hot weather than the ther- mometer at the corner drugstore? When discrepancies exist, they are due chiefly to the fact that the official thermometer is installed in a wooden cage, where it is open to the air but screened from both direct sunshine and the heat reflected from surrounding buildings, etc. Only under such conditions does a thermome- ter measure accurately the temperature of the air. A thermometer in the sun- shine be- comes much hot- ter than the air

��she is inmate.

In addition to the inheritable- ness of tantrums, these charts dc-

-monstrate that bad temper is one of the contributory causes that fill our houses .of correction. These institutional cases come almost wholly from the unintelli- gent. Intelligent and conscientious persons will wish to do everything in their power to control temper. Abstemi- ousness in food and drink, sufficient sleep and attention to health in general, 'may avail something. The imminent

��Chart 2. Showing five gener- ations through which the vio- lent temper of the progenitor was directly handed down

��around it, and its reading simply tells us how hot the instrument is, not how hot the air is. In large cities the Weather Bureau thermometer is often in- stalled on theroof of ahigh Iniilding, where the temperatures differ somewhat from those prevailing at the street level. The object sought in this arrangement is toob- tain a record of the natural temperature of the locality in general, rather than the artificial temperatures of the city.

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