GROUP OF MOUNTAIN SHEEP IN THE MUSEUM OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES SAVING THE BIG-HORN SHEEP It was eight years ago that Tom Watkins, a United States forest-ranger stationed at Ouray, Colorado, craned his neck backward. one winter morning after a heavy snowfall and, in this uncomfortable position, gazed upward two thousand feet to the edge of that miraculous granite bowl that shuts the little mining community away from the world. Just under the lip of this bowl half a hundred brown specks strayed aimlessly through deep snowdrifts. They were the big horns! "When I stop to wonder how those sheep live," he muttered, "I am ashamed to go back into my warm cabin." This was the time when Tom Watkins heard the still, small voice of conscience crying, "Feed my sheep." The hardy ranger heeded that voice, and that marked the beginning of the most romantic and interesting story of game preservation that has developed in America. With half a dozen tiny burros,-"Rocky Mountain canaries," they are called in the mining country,-Watkins, struggled up the steep trail that led to the summit, avoiding the places where snow-slides might occur, passing around precipices that forced him from the straight line between the town and the sheep. At times he broke a. trail for the burros, and again he fell in behind to prod them onward and upward. It was, enough to have discouraged the most seasoned outdoor campaigner; but in addition to the tenacity of purpose that comes to men who live in the open, the ranger had a genuine love of wild life. When at length the burros reached the spot where the Rocky Mountain sheep band had been, Watkins found only trampled snow. Exhausted by the great exertion, he tumbled the hay upon the snow and made his way slowly downward. The next morning, when the ranger stepped from his cabin, he felt a thrill of pride and satisfaction. Far above, the bighorn band was busily engaged in cleaning up the remnants of the unexpected feast. This was the beginning of a patient work which was carried on with the help of other citizens until, three years later, a great ram led a band of sheep into the outskirts of the town. Each day, the distance to which the hay was carried shortened almost imperceptibly, and the shyest, wariest, and most romantic of American big game responded voluntarily to human kindness. To the biggame hunter who has braved the bitter winds above timberline, fought snow-banks and huge boulder-fields, slipped upon the treacherous rock-lichen under the snow, experienced painful stalks and still more painful disappointments, all to secure one of those splendid heads that have come to represent the maximum of skill, hardship, and patience on the part of the sportsman, the story of the semi-domestication of the Ouray sheep herd will seem like a chapter out of the "Jungle Book." But children and wise men know that the "Jungle Book," after all, is not so far off the Trail of Truth. In spite of rigid game-laws, the big-horn has not increased as it was hoped he would when protected. Colorado has more of this variety of mountain sheep than all other States combined, but even now there are only 7,000 of them in the State. EDGAR C. MACMECHEN. years of experiment, a wireless telephone has been devised which enables us to talk through thousands of miles of empty space. One 's voice is transmitted more distinctly by wireless than over telephone wires, and even a whisper may be clearly heard. Probably within a year or so at most, you can lift the receiver of the telephone in your home or office and talk to any part of England or the Continent. One of the great advantages of the wireless telephone is its simplicity and cheapness. The charge for talking across the Atlantic will probably be about one-fourth that of talking across the United States. In the first year of the great war, a few words were transmitted by wireless across the Atlantic, but a conversation proved impossible. The voice was thrown out from the powerful oversea station at Arlington, near Washington, D. C. An American operator had journeyed to Paris, and was listening in at the Eiffel Tower to receive the message. After many attempts, working day after day, the obstacles were mastered for a few brief seconds. The voice from America was not only clearly heard, more than three thousand miles away, but was actually recognized as that of a friend. With the close of the war the electricians found more time and opportunity for their experiments, and to-day the transatlantic wireless telephone is announced as a practical, commercial affair. The oversea messages are thrown out from THE STATION OF THE TRANSATLANTIC WIRELESS TELEPHONE, NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY a powerful station at New Brunswick, New Jersey. A modest, two-story brick building houses the complicated machinery, and some of the equipment is a giant high-frequency alternator, which makes the alternating-current electricity. The alternating current used for light and power has a "frequency" of from twenty-five to sixty cycles per second. The current used at this station for the wireless telephone has a frequency of 22,000 cycles per second! The wheel of solid steel which revolves in this machinery weighs nearly three tons, and rotates at the rate of twenty-one hundred revolutions per minute. The experimental stages of the long-distance wireless telephone are said to be past, or nearly so, and we are promised the practical machine in the near fu thirteen tall masts, with many wires radiating from them, launch the invisible waves into space. The experiments conducted here were kept secret until PresiIdent Wilson sailed for France aboard the transport George Washington on his second visit. The wireless telephone was then tuned in with the apparatus on the steamer, and conversation back and forth was kept up until the arrival at Brest, France, a distance of thirty-two hundred miles. President Wilson was thus enabled to talk with Washington without interruption GENERATOR (ABOVE) AND CONDENSER (BELOW) IN WIRELESS TELEPHONE PLANT throughout the entire Atlantic crossing. The present year becomes an important date in the history of world communication. There is something almost magical in the complicated machinery which makes oversea conversation possible. An interesting feature ture. It is not generally known that the great wireless telegraph stations which have been built all over the world may be used for the transmission of wireless-telephone messages. A great deal of preliminary work of preparation is therefore already completc. By installing power-stations and using these towering masts. along our coasts, the wireless telephone is ready for business. There is a great saving of time and money in the wireless telephone over WIRELESS TELEPHONE RECEIVER the now old-fashioned system of transmission by wire. The expense of laying costly cables across the broad oceans is, of course, saved. To talk across the Atlantic Ocean, it will only be necessary to talk to the coast by the ordinary telephone system, and there the wire can be connected up with the wireless station. On the other side of the Atlantic, the wireless station there will, in turn, be connected up with the land wires, thus making a complete connection between the telephone subscriber in any part of the United States and any telephone in England. Later, the system will be extended to the continent of Europe. A man in Chicago, for example, who wishes to talk to England will merely raise the receiver of his telephone and ask for "long-distance radio," just as today he asks for ordinary long-distance. He will then give the num A MUSICIAN OF THE AUTUMN USUALLY we think of springtime as the song time of the year, but this does not apply to all singing creatures; there are some whose singing season is in the autumn. In this class are a few of our insect friends-the cicadas, grasshoppers, and crickets. " Strangely enough several of these autumn musicians are night singers. Though the grasshoppers and cicadas are day singers, the crickets hold the night world without much opposition, and of these perhaps the most wonderful musicians are the little green treecrickets. These frail little pale-green creatures, belonging to the genus Ecanthus, do not follow the ways of the commoner field-crickets of the ground, but live in the trees. In appearance and shape the two are little alike, the tree-cricket being slender with long legs, long wings, and very long antennæ, contrasting oddly with the other's blackness and stoutness. The tree-cricket hides among the leaves, and seldom comes nearer the ground than is necessary to frequent the currant or raspberry bushes. The apple-orchards of both eastern and western America seem to be their best TREE CRICKET, A MUSICIAN OF THE AUTUMN, AND HIS MATE ber of the telephone in England, and hang up his receiver. A few minutes later his telephone bell will ring, and, on raising the receiver to his ear, a voice will say, "This is Mr. Jones, strongholds. Here they are more easily found than among the wild shrubbery. They really are hard to find in either place. Their coloration is exactly fitted for hiding them among the leaves; they are active, running nimbly up or down the stems; and also they have a cunning way of hanging to the under side of the leaves, thus avoiding prying eyes. When routed, they spread their wings and sail off much after the manner of some of the grasshoppers, coming to earth within a few feet. But it is by their songs that we know these little musicians best; indeed, to many people, the tree-cricket is but a voice and a mystery. They know that in early autumn a chorus of "Roo-roo's" begins to come from the orchard, that it increases in volume, and by and by fades with the coming of the frost; and that is all. As in the case of the other crickets, only the males sing. The two sexes are rather unlike, for, as shown in the two photographs on the preceding page, the female is more slender, with narrow wings, while the male has a wing spread (folded) that gives him a broad, flat back, tapering toward the head. On the inner surface of each wing are two tiny instruments which might well be called a scraper and a rasp, and it is the rubbing of the two that produces the vibrant, stridulous note that serves as a song. The wings are elevated almost to the perpendicular, and somewhat spread, as the strange note is rasped out on the air. It fills To the human ear it is melodious. the August day and night with pulsating melody. To stand in the orchard on a still warm night of early autumn and hear hundreds of these voices in chorus is to hear one of Nature's strangest orchestras. Though all the singers or fiddlers do not strike the same note, varying by several tones, they fall roughly into tune and produce a pulsating, rhythmical sound that becomes tremendously strong in volume and power; the air fairly booms. While there is a steady undertone, resulting from the voices out of tune, the majority sing so correctly in time that the air throbs with a mighty, rhythmical, "Roo roo-roo!" Yet when we isolate a singer and watch him at a few inches, we are instantly struck with the insignificance of the individual song. It seems one of the magic sounds for this apparently quiet song may be heard at a very great distance. A curious and interesting thing about this creature is the varying of his song with the temperature. If we know how to read him he is a perfect thermometer. During a warm August night he will fiddle out about 100 "Roo's" to the minute; at near-frost temperature he becomes silent, In the west-coast orchards his fiddle ceases about the end of October, and through the later days of song, his tune runs from twenty-eight, his minimum, to some fifty "Roos" per minutes. At the close of his season he tunes up just before sunset and sings for only an hour. In the East, his song dies away in autumn slightly earlier, depending of course on the severity of the autumn frosts. HAMILTON M. LAING. "THE DEVIL'S SLIDE" AND NONNEZOSHE WHAT kind of welcome would you expect if you should step up to the clerk's desk in a first-class Eastern hotel, and register from Devil's Slide, Utah? Nevertheless, that is the unique name of a little station on the Union Pacific Railroad, a few miles east of Ogden. A short distance from the settlement, across a narrow river, two parallel walls of rock slope from the top of a steep hill down to the stream. This is the famous "Devil's Slide." Apparently the town fancied the name, as it has taken it for its own. Millions of years ago, when huge reptiles were in vogue and set the pace for the rest of creation, the region round about Ogden was a deposit of mud at the bottom of a great interior From time to time, the sea would clear ocean. |