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EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANT At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. Entered as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March 8, 1875 Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mall, J6.OC a year J Payable tn advance. — —— ' Council Catching Step With i Progress B 88 B It Recently Has Given Concrete Evidence of a Real Inclination To Go Forward Toward Better and Bigger Things for Atlanta. ________________ The city council is showing unmistakable and gratifying symp- ; toms of genuine progressiveness. It recently has given concrete evidence of a real inclination ' to catch step with those who would go forward intelligently and j; steadily toward better, bigger and braver things for Atlanta. It seemingly has awakened to the fact that only the best is !' good enough for the (late City of the South—and that the best in- H evitably and invariably is, in the long run, the cheapest, anyway! Council struck a popular chord when it voted to purchase the ; land adjacent to a part of the city reservoir, in order that the city’s water supply might be protected against contamination. This was a ! sanitary precaution that Atlanta was entitled to —it was a move in exactly the right direction. The health of the city is of paramount importance always. ! Council struck another popular chord when it resolved to re- , organize thoroughly the street construction department. Atlanta is ! able and willing to pay for the best of streets —streets constructed ! to last a maximum of time. Property owners do not carp and cavil < at the price they must pay, in sharing in the cost, of good streets to ' the city. But they have a right to complain when botch work is put < upon them, and inefficiency directs the street construction. Mayor-elect Woodward and those who have been his political opponents are showing a most commendable disposition to bury the ; hatchet —to let bygones be bygones—iu approaching the civic task set before them for the next two years. The situation thus set up is full of promise to Atlanta—it in duces optimism and healthy expectancy. Wherefore, as New Year’s day comes on apace. The Georgian's inclination is to extend to the council and the mayor-elect the com pliments of the holiday season, and to wish for them an expansion, jointly and severally, of the spirit of progressiveness recently shown in them—and to assure them of The Georgian’s cordial co-opera tion in all they undertake for Atlanta’s best and highest municipal development. Mr. Taft as Teacher of Law Nobody will begrudge Mr. Taft the dignified and cloistered peace which the Kent professorship at New Haven will afford him. But some will question whether he might not do more good and less harm in some other calling than that of a teacher of law. Mr. Taft has been teaching law from the white house for nearly four years—with very doubtful benefit and success. His legal con ceptions have been laid, like a cold, wet blanket, upon the body of the nation. The supreme court has been made over in the image of his “judicial temperament.’’ The problems of commercial free dom and self-government have been made darker and more difficult by Mr. Taft’s legal literalism and blindness to the facts of life. Why should such exploits as these be taken as proof that Mr. Taft is fit to shape the minds of young men in the study of jurispru dence t Why Eggs Are Dear By G. P S DID you know that when a • chick, that 1b to become a hen, pecks open the shell and steps out to salute the kins of day with its wise little eye, It brings with It into the world, in embryo form, even’ egg that it will ever lay? That is a smalt fact, for whose truth biologists vouch, which pos sesses a great importance. You may have supposed that by good feeding and careful treatment a hen could be Induced to lay a arger number of eggs in the course of her life than she would have laid if she had been left to her own gallivaceous. or hen-like, preferences and fancies. But if so, you were mistaken. Every hen has a fixed capital in eggs handed out to her at the beginning of her life. She cun not add to the num ber. and when she has laid them all her usefulness in the world is ended, and she will not long sur vive. The bearing of this on the prob lem of tlie egg supply is plain. You can hurry up the production by special feeding, forcing and select ing processes, but you can not in crease the total number of eggs ca pable of being laid by any one hen. And. more than that, you will per ceptibly shorten her life by every additional dozen eggs ihat you tompe: her to lay. I have read somewhen the fol lowing statistical -tatement about the number of eggs that hens are capable of laying; the common hen ' an lay i y-ar from 120 to 150; h< bighorn cun lay from 150 to IH"; the Brahma something ovei But tbut is almost their »n --rire capital, and at the end of the '••ar their poo ■< , are pr-ictieallv exhausted + In a state of nature they would not think of squandering their re sources in that way. The Jungle fowl, from which domestic hens are descended lays on the average ten | eggs In a year and lives about fif teen years. The domestic hen. in the hands of her merciless master, is forced to lay her whole 150 eggs in a single year, and if she contin ues to produce sparingly during a second year it is only’ at the ex pense of the small surplus or re serve fund of germ plasm that na ture gave her to provide against the accidents of existence. The people of the United States consume in one year sixteen thou sand. million eggs! To attain that enormous annual supply the life of the hen, which nature set at fifteen years when she was a care-free in habitant of the Indian Jungles, has been cut down to a year or two. She lias been turned into an egg producing machine, driving at the highest attainable sneed. Not only’ Is she robbed of her eggs, but she is also robbed of her right to be a mother. She must not hatch out her young and show them, with motherly pride, how to pick up a living, for that would be a waste of time from her master's point of view. He will do the hatching with a kerosftte lamp and will furnish patent food for her unnursed babes, while she goes back to lay another dozen eggs and surrender another year of her life. Tills is the epic of the lien. It is a very poor epic as I have present ed it; but, for any person whose sympathies are broad enough to include other tragedies and other comedies than those of more hu man life, it possesses an appeal that •an not well be neglected. It will award thought. We are egg-born animals ourselves. • The Atlanta Georgian Bringing Home the Yule Log - By UAL COFFMAN. '• ■ 1 i ?// ■ r-A J”''"' ' AY ■■ ■ YM . MB r i ' Tv'' ! i l > : J < I i■ - ■ J <- .1 . / S • > Arizona’s Wonderful Agate Trees By GARRETT P. SERVISS. < MONG the greatest natural AA wonders of our country are the petrified forests—forests turned to stone—of Arizona. Six separate forests of this description, all lying- in the state of Arizona, have recently been surveyed and mapped by the geological survey, and a large area containing these marvels of transformation and pres ervation has been set aside by ex ecutive order as a national park, in order to save the petrified trees from the grasp of commercial greed, which can see nothing in such things except the opportunity to put money in somebody's pocket. The map of this wonderful region has just been Issued at Washington When the first reports of the ex istence of great tree trunks turned to veritable jewels began to come from explorers of the far West dur ing the latter half of the nineteenth century, many readers refused to believe them. They sounded too much like fairy tales. Even so great an authority as Professor Marsh could hardly find credence for hie story when he told of st e ing a gigantic tree trunk, twelve feet in diameter, that had been turned to stone in the hot silica charged waters of a California spring But now we know that thousands, and perhaps millions, of trees that drew their last sap through their pores hundreds of thousands of years ago have been preserved by petrification so perfectly that the most delicate tissues and cells of the wood and bark retain their form, although their vegetable sub stance has been replaced by min eral gems. Like Another Aladdin. In the petrified forests of Arizona the mineral that has replaced the wood Is a many-colored agate, which is very hard and susceptible of a high polish. In a bright light it gleams with red. yellow, blue, purple, and a hundred modified tints, so that the first discoverer, on stumbling upon these transfig ured trees, must have cried out in nstonlslurent and delight, believing that riches without limit t -re within his reach. WEDNESDAY. DECEMBER 25, 1912. •• If ever there u;>- tn explorer who -• felt like Aladdin ir tin eave of gems, it must have been he who, for tile first time, ent. red the seem ingly enchanted ground of the pet rified forests. _llow could he be lieve the bvidem e of his eyes when he saw tin ghound encum- St A/?-. hv* Ml R--w jsS*-'.-. ■*».» Jlg&siSjjyvir' ® --w n $ se wit*' I wk*-’ JF Jill GARRETT P. SERVISS. bored with broken trunks of trees which dashed in the hot sunshine of that arid region with the pris matic reflections of vusi heap- of Jewels. I'nless he was deeply learned in the secrets of chemistry, it must have seemed to him that he - was looking upon a work of magic, for his common sense, based upon his ordinary experience of things in this world, would tell him that no natural*. power could turn a tree Into a hugt piece of bijouterie. And when, looking closer, he saw the delicate rings of the wood drawn in contrasted colors, and some times gemmed with mimie dia monds, turquoises and pearls, as minute and bright as the circlets of Jewels on a fairy’s finger, he must have felt that he had stum bled into n playground of demigods. Yet there is nothing mysterious about the matter. To a certain e.\t> nt it is- possible io imitate tile petrifaction of ~,i n H labora tory. Only nature does it on a ■ grander scale,, and with a mastery of details which we can not attain. In the ease of the Arizona forests the trees were submerged, possibly a million years, or more ago, in a soil which was subsequently pene trated by hot waters .containing silica in solution. Silica is a min eral which is familiar to all in the form of flint. Hot water can hold largo quantities of it in solution. As the water comes to the surface and cools the silica is deposited in a kind of rock. How Nature Worked. \\ lien the siliceous water came into contact witli the buried tree trunks it began to deposit its silica in the place of the decaying wood. I'or every particle of the latter that was removed a particle of silica was substituted. So perfectly was this work done that the stone sub stitute followed every minutest curve of the giain of the disappear ing wood. Each wooden cell was ' thus replaced by a cell of solid silica, and every line of grain or of growth in the tree trunk was faith fully imitated and reproduced by the mineral deposit. But in one respect tile imitation wr..- made more beautiful than the original, owing to the presence of coloring matters the petrified trunks were dyed witli the hues of the rainbow, not scattered at random, hut arranged in a most wonderful manner, in accord with the graining of the wood. Not merely is this a process of Infiltra tion by which the cavities left by the decaying wood ar filled up with mineral matter, but a substi tution also takes place in the plant cells, and, curiously enough, the precise nature and color of the sub stituted mineral vary with the part of the cell which it replaces, the cell walls always differing In color and composition from the interior portions. Hence, the magnificently beautiful effects that are produced by the petrifaction.\ It must be a subject of congratu lation for ail Americans that these masterpieces of nature in one of her rarest moods are to be pre served for the enjoyment of all the* people, and kept out of the hands of companies and syndicates which would only too willingly grab them for profit. Business is not the last word >f human progress. THE HOME PAPER DOROTHY DIN Writes on I ' Estates fe 1 Why Parents Should Not Turn Over Prop- f.t. Y z ertv to Children— By So Doing 1 hey Tempt Sons and Daughters to Become Un grates ul. By DOROTHY DIN. r r'rlE other day the newspapers j told of a suit brought by an old woman against her son to recover from him the property she had given him in consideration of his agreement to provide tor her as long as she lived. The woman" had been comfortably off, but no sooner had she deeded her home and her bank stock to her son than he began to neglect and mistreat her, and was finally about to send her to the poor house when she ap pealed to the law to give her back the money out of which she had been virtually- defrauded by his un kept promises to cheer and comfort her old age. Not many sons, let us hope, are so avaricious and heartless as this one, but the case, unusual aS it Is, sounds a note of warning that all parents would be wise to heed, while humanity is constituted as it is. money will,always be a eharm to conjure with and as long as any one possesses it he, or she. is abso lutely certain of consideration from those about iter, or him, whether these others be the melnials of a hotel or one's own children. Don't Trust Gratitude. Therefore, there can be no folly greater than that of parents who turn over their entire estates to their children, on the assumption that their children's appreciation and thankfulness and sense of filial duty will prompt them to do every thing possible for the '‘happiness and well-being of their old father or mother Gratitude has been defined as a lively sense of favors to come, and this is Just us true in one's own family as it i, elsewhere. So if, _ when you are old, you want to bo sure of an ever welcome place at your son's or daughter’s fireside, if you want your opinion listened to with respect, and to be treated with tender • consideration, keep your purse strings In your own hands. Between Grandma and Grandpa who are dependent, and Grandma and Grandpa who are the source of a constant stream of presents and benefactions, there is all the differ ence between a happy and a miser able old age. Sometimes the pressure brought to bear upon a parent, especially upon an old mother, to induce her to turn over her property to her children, on the vague proviso that they will take care of her, is well nigh irresistible, but under no con ditions in tin- world should she yield. , For one thing, the very fact that tlie children are selfish enough to want to place their parents in a de pendent position, and that they- are so eager and covetous, and their fingers itch so for the money that they can not wait until their par ents die to pos ess themselves of it, shows on its very face that they Don’t Write It “Xmas” Editor The Georgian: AMONG all the Christmas “don’ts” advanced, no one is more worthy' of attention than. “Don’t write it Xmas!” There is no speh word as “Xmas. ’ It is a meaningless jumble of mere letters, and .signifies nothing what ever to an intelligent person. Ra ther is it an affront to Intelligence, and a shock to appreciative minds. Christmas is Jesus Christ's birth day. Christ Is a word that means "anointed.” Jesus Christ is the “anointed” Jesus—the consecrated One. "X" does not mean "anoint ed"—and “Xmas" can not be a word that signifies His birthday. In some sort of a far-fetched fashion, to be sure, “Xmas” has been held to mean “Cross mass”— tlie “cross’’ signifying Christ. But Christmas has nothing whatever to •• are not to be trusted. As oon as they get possession of what they want they will begin to begrudge paying the price of tlieir bargain, and to show tlie old father or moth er that he, or she, is considered burden. Want Parents Independent. Any son, or daughter, who lias the right sort of love for his, or her. parents will want the old people to have the happiness of being inde pendent, and tlie freedom that hav ing money of one’s own gives. Tiiw. no matter how good and dutiful one's own son or daughter may be. there is always tlie in-law problem to consider, and it is utterly beyoix the power of any woman to guar antee that lief husband will treu: her parents witli proper considera tion, or of any man to prevent :i ■ wife from making the lives f Im father and mother utterly misera ble if he takes them to live In Ills own house, and ills wife happen to be of a mean ahd eati’sh dispo sition. Hence it is tiie pious of senii< imbecility for parents io beggai themselves during their lifetime for tlieir children, but. on the other hand, it is monumental .■mhishiif.s.- and folly that make parents hold on to every cent they have with sucli a miserly grip tlr.it nutiiing but death can loosen it. There are plenty of rieii nrnn .1 are hoarding money In banks . :i their children struggle with ab. lute want, and aie deprived ■ every comfort and luxury i.i 'i Such a father makes a fat i •. take, because he alienates in dran from him. They in v a right to resent his sellishnes. town them, and lie has no call ■ > ■' grievance that they look for •> liis (tenth \vitli pleasure ir - ■ grief. Should Run Own Estate. Tlie great Chicago philauti.m Dr. Parsons, declared tli man should be his own eacuto and administer his estate is still alive. This is a wis way ■ looking at the subject. When man grows old he should so that he has secured a sufficient in come to himself to provide <"i. fortably for his own and his wit' old age. and then if lie would be happy, he should divide his ty among hH children in s way as will help them best, time when they need it must. Surely there can be no happh -s more perfect and complete than that of the old man who sees abou him his family comfortable liar prosperous, and feels that lif and his efforts have helped . the pathway for them, and . children and his children's < h > rise up and call him bless - . •' do with the “cross,” save very general application oft! s - vior’s deatli years after Hi brought Into tlie world. Christmas brings Jesus to dr ; as a little babe—an innocent li' l '- far removed from thoughts of His tragic taking away 33 years after , ward. Why, then, "Cross mas” Why the suggestion of the on Calvary in the celebration His corning into this world'.’ The cross may attach specii' l 1 to Easter and Good Friday, bu: to Christmas. Don't write it "Xmas." tlie Savior’s natal day of >o sweetness —it is ail but bin inous, indeed! Christmas is the festival <■ Anointed Jesus—-the Christ, vior—and His birthday ’s . erated to it. J. B Atlanta, Ga