Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/363

 Popular Science Monthly

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��steam supplied from plants outside the walls. But after the war, when the hospital has been conv^erted into dwelling houses, these houses would have to be heated by stoves. The parts of the hospital are adjusted with such care that the buildings may be taken down, trans- ported and put up as dwellings which may eventually har- bor thousands of the homeless refugees when they return to their devastated towns in Belgium and France.

��BrrrrnT! It's Cold!

Turn up your col- lar,thrust your hands to the bottom of your pockets, and read about the "Cold Pole" of northern Siberia, where the natives speak pat- ronizingly about Greenland's icy mountains and other such relatively balmy resorts. At the town of Verkoyansk, w^hich would probably never have had any in- habitants if the late Czar's government had not sent occasional batches of exiles thither, the temperature has been known to drop to 90 degrees below zero, which is a "record" for the whole world. While the regions about North and South Poles of the earth are cold all the time, the Siberian Cold Pole gives its inhabitants a comfortable let-up in summer, when the thermometer frequently climbs up into the eighties above zero. During the brief summer season, the life-giving rays of the Sun, which remains above the horizon day and night for some time during the height of the season, exert an intensely stimulating influencing upon the vegeta- tion, and the ground is covered with flowers.

���A truss opened and one being folded for transportation. Note how small a space the folded truss takes up

��What Kind of a Dog Was It That Went Into Noah's Ark?

THE ancestry of the dog has been the occasion of much cont'-oversy. Many naturalists have considered that it is descended from a single ancestor, such as the common wolf of Europe. Darwin, however, leans toward the theory of multiple origin, and advances much convincing proof in support of his belief. It is well known that many savage tribes have dogs which appear to be simply half-tamed representatives of the particular wild- dog-like animals in- habiting the same regions. The dogs of the American Plains Indians closely resemble the small prairie wolf, or coy- ote; the husky of the north country is plainly not far re- moved from the gray sheep dog and the

��wolf; the German Samoyede are strikingly wolf-like in ap- pearance. Whether our present dogs are the result of crossing these many simple derivatives of wolves and jackals among themselves, or whether there was an original ancestral dog, now extinct, with which the blood of other species has become mingled, we have not yet been able to determine, though so many prim- ordial animal remains have come to light. "According to St. George Mivart, the dingo is the only wild dog still existing which meets the requirements of an ancestor of our modern breeds. This species is found throughout Australia, and fossil bones which have been found show its presence there from very early times." (Pets, by Leo S. Crandall, Henry Holt & Co., New York.)

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