Democratic watchman. (Bellefonte, Pa.) 1855-1940, July 22, 1927, Image 7

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Bellefonte, Pa., July 22, 1927.
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GHOST STORIES HELP
SELL OLD CASTLES
Find Spooks Enhance Value
of Property.
London.—Ghost stories are being
bought and sold in the London real
estate market as a result of the dis-
covery that old castles with spooky
reputations are preferred by buyers,
particularly wealthy Americans, says
Popular Mechanics Magazine. Not
that the purchasers believe in ghosts,
but there is something about owning
a home with a tradition of being
haunted that makes it worth thou-
sands more, in the estimation of many
purchasers.
England is well supplied with good
ghost stories, and the list is constant-
ly being added to, largely, it is be
lieved, because candles are still ex-
tensively used for illumination and
the dim light of a candle is very fa-
vorable, according to scientists, for
producing the condition that leads te
seeing things that aren’t there.
Ghosts have always had one draw-
pack from the standpoint of careful
investigation—they are usually seen
by people who don’t want to see them,
and almost never by persons who go
looking for them. There is a simple
explanation for that, and for the
ghosts that are heard as well as those
that are seen. The visible ghosts.
scientific investigators declare, exist
only in the eye of ‘the beholder, an?
the audible ones in his ear.
Sounds Are Amplified.
Everybody, even those who have
never claimed to have seen a ghost,
has lain awake at night and heard
queer sounds, abnormally loud, even
though they would have been inaudi-
ble to anyone else, because they ex-
jsted only in the hearer’s own ear.
The sounds were made by blood puls-
ing through the veins of the ear.
Picked up by the eardrum, which am-
plifies them just as a radio receiver
amplifies an incoming signal, the ear
sounds, heard in moments of appre-
hension or nervousness, can easily be
imagined to be the stealthy steps of a
burglar or the movements of a more
ghostly visitor, particularly if one is
sleeping in a centuries-old castle well
supplied with ghostly legends.
As for the ghosts that are seer,
they are classified medically as Pur-
kinje images or Sanson specters, both
named after their discoverers, and it
is in seeing them that the weak light
from a candle plays such an impor-
tant part. Purkinje discovered that
under certain conditions, the blood
vessels of the retina, that film at the
back of the eye which is directly con-
nected with the nerve leading to the
brain and which really sees the image |
focused on it by the eye lens. could |
produce images of its own. To do
that, though, a dim light is necessary
as a bright illumination furnishes so
much light that the blood vessels do |
not cast their shadowy reflections. It
is as when one ineets an approaching
automobile at night. If the car has
bright lights on that flood of light
blinds the eye, whereas if the dim-
mers are turned on the retina is able
to distinguish all the details of the
roadway clearly.
How It Is Explained.
Like the Purkinje image, the San-
son specter is produced within the
eye either on the front surface of
the cornea, which is at the front of
the eyeball, or on either the front or
back surfaces of the crystalline lens,
a convex lens like that in a camera,
which focuses the image on the retina.
When you look through a street-car
window under certain light conditions,
vou not only see the passing buildings
outside, but likewise images of the
people behind you, or buildings on the
opposite side of the street, the images
being formed on the window glass.
The Sanson specters are something of
the same sort, tiny images, usually
badly blurred, of things which are at
one side, out of the direct line of vi-
sion. But the optical nerves, accus-
tomed to placing things they see by
their size and relation to other ob-
jects, transmit a message to the brain
saying that these blurred specters are
ahead, and, like the images on the
street-car window, you can look right
through them and see solid objects
behind. ’
Given a dim candle flame and 8
condition of nervousness, grief, or
even indigestion, it isn’t hard to imag-
ine that you are seeing images of
ghostly figures, particularly as they
appear to be almost transparent, and
-nove and shift position as you move.
Finds Substance to
/ Prevent Blood Clotting
Baltimore, Md.—From the liver of
dogs Prof. W. H. Howell of the Johns
Hopkins university has prepared an
anti-coagulent that will keep a sam-
ple of blood in a practically normal
condition for 24 hours.
Clotting is nature's protection
against bleeding to death, but this
tendency of the vital fluid to congeal
after its exposure to the air offers
serious disadvantages in blood trans-
fusions and certain types of important
experimental work. This new clot-
preventing substance, which has been
named heparin, is of great interest,
therefore, to surgeons, pathologists
and other specialists who deal with
blood, particularly those who make
‘the various-bleod tests used in detect-
ing disease,
o we——
PLANES AND. RADIO
HELP CATCH FISH
Newest Things Help Oldest
Human Industry.
ol
Washingion.—Aircraft and radio,
the newest things under the sun, are
being recruited to the aid of fishing,
a human industry as old as hunting
and older than farming, according to
Lewis Radcliffe, deputy United States
fish commissioner.
Canada, England, Scotland, France
and Japan are among the countries
making use of airplanes for locating
schools of fish, whales, etc, and for
maintaining patrols against illicit fish-
ing. The Danish government is also
reported to be contemplating an air-
plane fish patrol off the coast of
Greenland, where there is a stretch of
205 miles of fishing waters which a
single surface vessel cannot ade-
quately guard, but which could easily
be kept under supervision by a fast
flying and far-seeing plane.
The United States was the pioneer
m this work, having used planes and
dirigibles as early as 1919, but lack of
funds and the disorganized condition
of the fisheries have prevented fur
ther development in this country.
In Spain efforts are now being
made to interest fishing-vessel owners
to install radio telephone receiving
and transmitting apparatus and at
least one fishing vessel has been
equipped. In addition to the benefits
in case of storm or disaster, it is
claimed that the addition of this
equipment will enable the fishing ves-
sel to keep in touch with the market !
and thus return at more advantageous
periods; that canneries may be noti-
fied of expected time of arrival and
extent of catch.
Undersea Relief Maps
of Pacific Made by Navy
Washington.—An achievement of
the navy during the cruise of the
battle fleet from San Francisco to
Australia two years ago has just
come to light with publication of
undersea relief maps of the route
the ships followed on that historie
voyage of more than 7,000 miles.
Graphic representations of sound-
ings taken at the time by the battle-
ship Maryland, the light cruiser Mil-
waukee, and the destroyer Hull are
shown. They are expected to be of
incalculable value to navigation in the
Pacific as well as to the advancement
of the science of oceanography.
Equipped with sonic electric depth-
sounding devices, it was an easy mat- |
ter for the ships to chart the bed of
the waters as they passed over. They
accurately mapped the deepest ra-
vines. Sheer pinnacles rising 24,000
feet in some instances were located.
Along other stretches of the route the
maps disclose queer outlines of the
Pacific’'s-bed, suggestive of an impres-
sionistic picture of the skyline of 8 |
great city.
In the opinion of some navy hy- *
drographers, the bottom of the oceans
and other bodies of waters may be
charted, though they be concealed
miles below the surface even before
man concludes his age-old task of
mapping the exposed portions of the
world. And this, they say, is possible
without ever dropping a lead line from
a ship.
One-Horned Rhinoceros
Is Found in Java Jungle
Berlin.—A scaly monster of the pre-
numan ages of the earth, surviving
into modern times on the swampy
fastnesses of southern Java, is report-
ed to the scientific journal, Die Um-
schau, by Dr. P. Vageler.
It is described as a one-horned rhi-
noceros, related to a form already :
known elsewhere in the East Indies, |
but differing from it in that its hide
is closely covered with small, horny |
scales. It also has enormous front
teeth, like those of the hippopotamus.
It has often been described by the na-
tives under the name “Tanggiling”
which means “scaly beast,” but Euro-
peans were incredulous. Finally photo-
graphs were brought out of the jungle
showing the animal.
Likes “Poker Face”
London.—The tennis expert of the
Westminster Gazette is quite enthusi- |
astic over the fair Helen of California.
Her victory over bare-legged Billie
Tapscott of South Africa the critic
describes as “a miracle of hitting” by
“gq demure figure of gracious effi-
ciency, without parade, without the
suspicion of side, without a fragment
of fanfarade.”
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iT es 4d ied
Briton Bags 280 Lions
on Hunt in Africa ;
London.—The world’s biggest
record for big-game shooting, J
which is held by Leslie Tarleton,
companion of Theodore Roose-
velt on the late President's Afri-
can hunt, is now being threat-
ened by an English hunter, J.P.
Lucy, who has just returned
from Africa with 280 lions to
his credit, Tarleton’s record is
286 lions. ”
Lucy will soon return to Ken- 3
ya for another hunt, after which
he expects to claim the cham- J
pionship. He believes that not
even Tarleton has equaled his
record of 26 lions in three weeks.
Lucy also has killed 84 elephants
and 100 rhinoceroses in other
expeditions,
Clewtng PEP eyalof
School of the Futare
The little red schoolhouse is poetic
in songbooks and semtimental orations,
but it exacts an appalling toll in the
health of children condemned to spend
much of their youth within its insan-
itary walls, a writer in the Chicago
Dally News asserts. The schools of the
future will be bullt primarily to serve
the health needs of the growing child
end the reward will be a generation
af sturdy citizens with color in thei”
cheeks and a spring in their steps.
Such is the picture painted by Dr.
Max Seham, professor of pediatrics
at the University of Minnesota and a
leading authority op fatigue in chil-
dren. Doctor Seham, in Chicago In
connection with recent baby week ac-
tivities, holds that while America has
been piling up riches beyond those
have been drifting toward physical
bankruptcy.
“One million children have be-
ginning tuberculosis. Four hundred
thousand have leakage of the heart.
One million suffer from spinal curva:
ture and other deformities. Two wil-
lion have defective hearing, and five
million reveal malnutrition,” Doctor
Seham cited these figures as warrant
for a vigorous effort on the part of
the state to reorganize its educational
program so as to build up the healtk
of future citizens.
“Sixty per cent of the 25,000,000
school children of America attend
rural schools. Hardly a rural com-
munity is without one or more in-
sanitary, indecent, unfit schools. Chil-
dren are compelled to pass their days
in buildings in which no employer
would think of asking workmen t-
toil.”
The schools of the future, rural as
| well as urban, “will hawe fresh-air
rooms, lighting will be from the sun,
seats and desks will be adjustable,
lunches will be served at least one
wholesome, rational meal a day, phys-
fecal education under the leadership of
experts will be compulsory and unj-
versal, Doctor Seham believes.
*The weak and defective child,
Arough corrective exercise in small
special classes, will get its full oppor-
tunity for normal development. There
will be clinics for the diagnosis of
mental as well as physical ailments,
with full-time physicians and nurses
watching the health of the children.
wThe teachers will be prepared to
mstruct in practical hygiene as well
as in academic subjects. All of this
will be linked up with the home—the
|
| school being considered the day home
{ of the child.”
Wrens Require Space
for years it has been recommendea
| that the entrance to a nest box for
| house wrens should be only the size
| of a 25 cent coin, or about seven-
| eighths of an inch in diameter, says a
| federal report. This advice was on
the theory that the wren needs pro-
tection from larger birds that might
| oust it from bird houses. The wren
| itself, however, may have other ideas
about the matter, for of several bird
boxes with seven-eighths inch en-
trances tried out by the biological
survey of the United States Depart-
| ment of Agriculture last summer on
the experimental farm at Glenn Dale,
Md., not one was occupied. Ten broods
‘of wrens were reared, however, in
. houses having from 11 to 1% inch
entrances, a fact that clearly indicates
the bird's preference for more ample
entrances.
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1
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It Wasn’t an Accident
' fhe dead speak to a chemist and
‘tell him the truth. The father of a
| family went to work one morning as
| usual. An hour later a son went to
his mother's room and found it full
| of gas from a broken fixture and his
The coroner made a
! routine examination and discovered
‘ nothing, but a chemist found no car-
mother lifeless.
{bon monoxide in the blood, positive
| evidence the victim was dead before
' the gas was turned on. There had
been no suspicion of murder up to
! this point. Next it was found the
| hack of the woman's neck hore finger:
| prints. She had probably been suf-
: focated by holding her face dewn in
| the pillow. The gas fixture was then
, broken to hide the crime. Her hus-
i band was convicted of murder.—Cap-
, per’s Weekly.
| Coming “Air Train”
_deronautical engineers in Germany
are working on plans of an “air train”
as a possible means of travel in the
future. The locomotive will be a pow-
erful airplane snd the ‘“pullmans” a
row of gliders coupied to the locomo-
tive and to each other, as tie cars.
of a train, only with considerably
greater spacing between the units.
Passengers in each glider will be
destined for some particular town, |
and as the alrdome of each town is
approached the glider for that desti-
nation will be released from the end
of the string and settle gracefully
down with its special pilot and {ts
passengers.
Wright Caustic
“Peter Wright, the slanderer of
Gladstone, is a caustic chap,” said a
New York publisher. “I heard him
once, at the Bath club in London, de-
pouncing all our popular novelists.
“He denounced Sinclair Lewis be-
cause Lewis advertised himself re-
cently by daring God to strike him
degd, and by refusing a small prize.
“Then he denounced Arnold Ben-
nett, Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells
for their long-windedness.
“Those men,’ he sald, ‘think they
can make their books immortal by
waking them everlasting.”
of any nation in history, its children |
CLAIMS BLOOD OF
NOW EXTINCT RACE
Believed Only Survivor of Nah-
Dah-Ko Tribe.
Anadarko, Okla.—Blood of an ex
tinct race flows in the veins of Harry
Shirley, believed to be the last of the
Nah-Dah-Ko Indians, who attained a
degree of civilization as long as fow
centuries ago.
His father, Pat Shirley, was a white
trader, but his mither was a Nah.
Dah-Ko. With his white wife and two
children, Shirley lives on a farm near
Anadarko. He is fifty-five years old.
Virtual annihilation of the Nah-
Dah-Kos was completed when Shirley
was four years old, and his knowledge
of the fate of his people is vague. The
band, which was a branch of the Cad-
do tribe, was not great In numbers,
and he believes it was annihilated in
an internecine war when he was a
child, He was taken to Texas by his
father when hostilities broke out, ang
did not return until the war ended.
The town of Anadarko is named
for the vanished tribe. Legend has
it that the elder Shirley's Irish pro-
punciation of the tribal name was re-
sponsible for the corruption of the
name from Nah-Dah-Ko to Anadarko,
Although the present town Was not
founded until 1901, an Indian agency
of the same name was located nea”
tere as early as 1838.
The original home of the Nah-Dah-
Ko band was in Louisiana. Records
of a Spanish explorer reveal that in
1542 the Indians lived in houses,
farmed extensively and owned cattle.
They were driven westward by the en-
croachment of the white man and
gradually lost their identity through
absorption into other tribes and losses
‘n warfare.
New Diamond Fields
Attract Farm Labor
Pretoria, Transvaal.—More than 60,-
000 Europeans and 120,000 natives
are working on the newly discovered
diamond fields in the Lichtenburg
area, according to Dr. H. A, Lorentz
Dutch counsul general here.
The lure of lucky strikes is respon-
sible for a great dearth of farm la-
bor, and Lichtenburg farmers are be-
wailing the fact that kaffirs cannot
be induced to do farm work when they
can earn 30 shillings a week in the
diamond fields.
No less than 43 per cent of the
diggers belong to the agricultural
classes, and only nine per cent ars
diamond miners by trade.
Curious tales of fortune hunting
{ abound. Some who believed they had
| the richest claims suffered disap-
| pointment, while, on the other hand,
an old man who sat down when he
saw he was being beaten in the race
for claim pegging, dug where he s&
.4hé struck-a-rich pateh.- - —- =
In another case a digger curse
when he sprained his ankle, falling
that is now panning out rich.
Find 100-Foot Worms
Off California Coast
Berkeley, Calif.—Species of sea
worms classified as “amazing crea-
tures,” some of which are said to be
100 feet long, have been seen and
studied in the Pacific ocean near San
Diego by Prof. W. R. Coe, Yale uni-
versity, as guest research worker at
the University of California, Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, at La
Jolla, he reports.
These remarkable sea denizens,
«nown by the scientific name *“nem-
erteans,” have been examined by few
biologists of the world. Doctor Coe
is believed to be the only living scien-
tist knowing much about them.
To zoologists the worms are espe
cially notable for their length, some
| of the more common species extending
a yard, their bodies being only a frac-
tion of an inch in width. Certain of
the nemertean species are reported
to be longer than any known animal,
100 or more feet. Even the whale has
not been found to reach quite that
length, says Doctor Coe.
Soot From Smudge Pots
Colors Grave Monuments
Dloppenish, Wash.—Sextons are busy
with sponge and chamois cleaning
grave monuments after the sootfall
from the smudge pots burned in cen-
tral Washington to fight off frost.
Polished granite has an affinity for
heavy soot and most of the tombstones
in cemeteries resembled charred tree
trunks in fire-swept forests. The
heavy smoke and soot did much tem-
porary damage, but through it all the
fruit and prosperity were both saved
to the apple growers.
Honey Burden Weighs
Down Roof of House
Gomshall, England. — There's
so much honey in the roof of a
Fifteenth-century farmhouse
here, called “Cole Kitchen farm,”
that the ceiling of the room im-
mediately underneath is giving
way beneath the weight after
100 years’ service as a gigantic
beehive.
T. H. English, the awner, says
nobody ever tried to get the
honey because it would necessi-
tate removing the roof.
In the swarming season the
place is smothered with bees.
Insure against such delays
Recently a woman complained to us about the Executor
of an estate, in which she was interested. Almost a year and
a half has passed since the probate of the will but she ‘has
not received her legacy, or had any word from the Executor.
Such a condition weuld not exist if this bank had been
made Executor. We do business on time. The testator could
have felt assured that the provisions of his will would be
promptly and conscientiously carried out.
Consult us about this important matter.
The First. National Bank
BELLEFONTE, PA.
2 Source of Pride |;
;
3
2 t is a great source of pride to /
5 this Bank to have been the J
: means of helping many mer- “ii
: chants and individuals, and making its ;
z . service especially fitted to their re- le
: quirements. Accounts subject to 7
J check are invited. 2
5 /
2
| THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK |
: STATE COLLEGE, PA. |
MEMBER FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM pz
TAS oS CASS EAS NERA ER SNA)
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over a tuft of grass, but later dis
covered that he had fallen on a claim |
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