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► i Copyright, 1913, by the Star Company. Great Britain Rights Reserved. Just Why A Pitcher Can CURVE A BASEBALL Because It Is AN IMPERFECT SPHERE, Much ROUGHER THAN THE EARTH’S SURFACE T HE real reason why a baseball can be thrown so that it will describe wonderful curves during its progress through the air is that every such ball has a surface made up of mountains, valleys, craters, canyons, gorges, plains and other irregularities of the surface that, when the difference in size is taken into consideration, makes the surface of the earth seem like plate glass. If it were possible to make a perfect sphere—if it were :«jsslhle to make a baseball with an absolutely smooth surface and an exact sphere—no pitcher in the world could make it curve. The very best pitchers baseball has ever known or probably ever will know *“ould not make the ball deviate a hair’s breath in its light. And so while it is partly in the art or knack the professibnal pitcher has in holding and releasing the baseball as he throws it, it is also due to the fact that, a baseball has a wonderfully rough surface against, which the air catches and turns it, that gives it the curve. If you pass your hand over a plate glass it moveB smoothly with nothing to retard it. If you pass your hand over an unplaned board you can feel the rough ness. Splinters, we call them. You cannot move your hand as easily over the board. This is the same prin ciple w ith the baseball. There is a roughness to its surface that catches In the air and forces one side about, or retards that side. This has but one result, to make the baseball leave Its straight course and in doing this it describes a curve. This does not detract in the least from the clever ness of the pitcher who ran so accurately judge his muscular control as to make a iraseball curve up or ically ten thousand diameters and what do you see? The very thing mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. The surface is rough. It looks like the landscape in the Alps or Yellowstone Park, or the Bad I.ands, or the Grand Canyon or the Andes, or any olher rough section of the earth. It has peaks, ranges, ridges, valleys, plains and down, right or left, or, in the parlance of the fan, he throws a ‘drop” or an "in shoot" or “out shoot.” But the fact remains'that it is the roughness of the base ball that makes all his pitching cleverness possible. Take a brand new league ball in your hand. It looks to be a perfect sphere, that is, absolutely even, and uniformly round and as “smooth as glass." And it may be as smooth as glass, for glass also has a rough surface. Put a baseball under the most powerful of micro scopes, enlarge it microscop- holes, gulches and all sorts of uneven places, and if the earth could be made as small as a baseball it would be practically a perfect sphere and absolutely smooth. This is because the? highest mountains of the earth and the deepest valleys would be millions upon millions of times smaller in comparison with the rough uneven places on a baseball if either the earth were reduced to the size of a baseball or a baseball enlarged to the size of the earth. If this were not true the earth would not revolve so regularly upon it axis. (A) The Edge of a Baseball Enlarged 10,000 Diameters. (B) The Rough Edges That Strike the Air and Cause the Ball to Curve. (C) It Is Harder for a Microbe to Crawl Over a Baseball Than for an Elephant to Cross the Alps. (D) How he Ball Hits the Air and Is Forced into a Curve. (E) How the Pitcher Holds *1** Baseball for a“Drop.” It would perform an “in shoot” or “out shoot.” and curve off through space. In our drawing of a bit of the surface of a baseball, magnified ten thousand di ameters, it shows tugged mountain pes,ks and deep valleys and craters such as have never been duplicat ed on our earth's surface. The tiniest of germs, a bil lion of which might easily inhabit a drop of blood, w-ould find it so laborious climbing the surface of a dry baseball that he would succumb of exhaustion. The air strikes the rough edges like that marked (B) in the illustration. This will force it out of its straight course. Of course everyone knows pitcher controls the the ball, giving it the sort of ourve he desires by his grip of the ball, his peculiar muscle action in balding, throw ing and releasing, as in (E). Even the billiard ball has a surface much rougher in comparison to its size than the surface of the earth, and we refer to a billiard ball as about the smoothest thing known. “As smooth as a billiard hall” is a well- known slmllie. For the same reason that a perfectly smooth baseball could not be curved, a perfectly smooth and perfectly round billiard ball could not be made to curve on the table. It would not take “Eng lish,” as billiard players call it when they make a ball go forward and then roll backward, or in any direction just by the manner in which they strike it with a chalked cue. This fact of roughness causing it to spin becomes all • too evident when a player forgets to chalk his cue and ' plays several shots thereafter. If the leather tip of the cue becomes shiny, it will slip on the bell. There is no purchase with which it can take hold. But chalk is sticky stuff, arid the granules are large, so that a well-chalked cue has a very rough surface, and this rough surface of the tip of the cue fits into the rough j projections on the ball and thereby a ball can be given a lot of twist. In order to accomplish this successfully, moreover, the billiard cloth nap must be new and there fore rough. During recent experimentation with regard to the kinetic theory of gases, a Belgian scientist desired to find out how perfect a sphere could be made in order that by the clashing of these together an idea might be secured of the effect of the collisions of the spheri cal atoms that make up a gas. The project had to be abandoned at last, because no machinery could be con structed that would turn out a perfect sphere artifi cially and Nature has no perfect sphere of large size in all her many forms of matter. Perfect disks could be made, but a round ball was beyond the limits of human accomplishment. How CROSS EYES May Be CORRECTED IN INFANCY B EING cross-eyed is dangerous as well as unbeauti- ful. If it can be prevented the eyesight will be preserved as well as the appearance. And ac cording to ihe latest researches of a New Y’ork spe cialist, there is no reason that any one should be cross eyed, .if properly attended to. The squinting infant is the cross-eyed man or woman, with all that means in loss of attractiveness, superstitious prejudice, and worst of all, loss of visual power. The trouble in a large number of cases is that par ents are very careless about the child's eyes and that the mother can hardly be persuaded that her little in fant is “looking cross-eyed,” If she continue to ignore it, very dangerous results may follow, and the oblique uess of vUion will become fixed, whereas it could have been remedied, and the full strength of the eye pre served, so that no pne would ever guess that there had been such a tendency. It is in line with the general tendency of prevention that infants should be carefully watched and their eyes tested for this unpleasant and costly defect. The testing of the infant’s eyes for obliquity of vision is not as easy as in older children or adults, but there are some special tests by which even the youngest child may be tried. It is difficult at times to tell which is the eye that crosses. The crosing of the eyes cannot, be proved before the seventh month, as the child is learning to use its eyes for the first six. It can see. hut uses its eyes carelessly for the first few months. because it is gradually learning to use both eyes to gether, and get what is called binocular vision. You know when the child is using this double vision by holding up a bright object and noting whether the child directs both eyes toward it,, or only one. Cross- eyes are caused either by some inequality in the eye muscles, or by ffevers which have weakened these mus cles, or even by convulsions, or severe frights. Hered ity also plays a part, for it has been found that as many as 52 per cent of cross-eyed children had parents with defective eye muscles. This specialist among the eye specialists, who has made so extended a study of cross-eye in infants, calls attention to the fact that in the beginning the squint is not constant. It appears toward evening, or when the child is tired. The child seems restless and irritable. This is due to the effort which the eye muscles are mak ing to maintain binocular vision. Then the squint be comes more frequent, and it is uncertain which eye crosses. The parent thinks thai the child does it pur posely and scolds the child—bu{ in vain. At last one eye becomes permanently crossed, for the muscles haae given up the task in wftich they should have been as sisted at the right time by treatment. When uncertain as to which eye crosses, take the child into a dark room, hold a lighted candle three feet from his eyes. He will Immediately look at it, and the reflections will be plainly seen on the cornea of each eye. In the normal eye the flame will be reflected in tlm exact centre, while ill the squinting eye it will be far to one side. The mistake made by many parents is to attempt nothing for the child until it begins to read, but it has been using Its eyes under heavy strain all the time, and by that time the treatment is much more difficult, and the cure often means lifelong spectacle wearing. The most good can be done with infants. Each eye is tested separately by covering up the other. White marbles are taken, ranging in size from % inch to 1*4 inches in diameter. The largest marble is thrown on the floor with a twist to make it “break'’ its direction; then the next smaller, and so on until the smallest has been used. The eye of the child is watched in each experiment to see if it follows the marble. In this way the perfection of vision of each eye is tested, and then each eye is examined under a special instrument. When it has been decided which eye is the weaker, treatment follows. The specialist puts *4 to *4 per cent solution of atropine in the better eye to paralyze it so that the child will be compelled to use the weaker-eye. in this way strengthening the muscles by use. When the in fant is a year old he may be given spectacles withou* any great danger if they are properly made, and in this way the weakness of the muscles of the weak eye will be overcome, and both eyes will do the -work thev should. Other exercises may follow as soon as the child can be made to understand what, is required of it, and thus by proper treatment the weakness may be completely overcome and in many cases the eyeglasses can be put aside, because the eyes have become normal. Why WOMEN Do Not Fall ASLEEP IN CHURCH I F you have ever taken much notice in church of those of the congregation who nod drowsily or even go to sleep, you will have found that it is the men who do this and not the women. It is doubtful if one woman to a thousand men go to sleep in church, and people have long held an entirely wrong impression of this. It has been said that the men are a bit more stupid, that they do not pay enough at tention to the sermon, or do not compre hend it sufficiently to retain their interest and hence get sleepy. It has also been said that women are brighter, quicker to under stand and have more self control and so do not lose interest and close their eyes in slumber while the minister is preaching. But all this is quite wrong. A German professor has been making a study of this and he declares that men fall asleep in church because they do pay more attention to the sermon than do the women. Further, he declares the average woman does not be gin to grasp the purport of the sermon, that, she is far slower of understanding than man. The man will watch the minister every minute, he will concentrate all his mind upon the preacher and what he is saying, he will watch his every gesture and every mo tion of his lips and listen to every word until finally he drops off to sleep simply because he had watched so steadily, gazed so in tently that he has actually hypnotized him self. If the woman does not grasp the meaning of the Sermon so readily, if her mentality is not quite so keen and quick, one w-ould think she would fall asleep. But 'the fact re a , mains that she has plenty to interest her. A \ , man cannot look about the church and be interested in John Jones’s cravat or William Smith’s vest, or Sam White’s cuff buttons?* He doesn’t care anything about them, but a woman will sit quietly In church, she will hear what the minister is saying without giving much thought to it but she will b, interested in everything every other woman is wearing, from . the feathers and ribbons i , and buckles and flowers of their hats to their ’ dresses and laces and jewelry and furs and wraps or laces and frills, and there is enough to keep her just moderately enter tained and wide awake. And so, according to this German professor, the wife should not blame her husband for being dull and stupid and falling asleep; she should know it was because he was listening too intently to the sermon and thinking too deeply on it until he fairly worked himself into what appeared a sleep but was in reality a sort of hypnotic daze. The Reason FORESTS Are So HEALTHY Why “BOTTLED UP” TEMPER Is Always HARMFUL T HERE is another thing besides economy in the conservation of forests, and that is health. The hygienic value of a forest is little known and generally under estimated. but the fact remains that our forests have considerable to do with the health of various communities and sections. One manner in which forests contribute to ♦he general health is by breaking the force of steadily blowing winds. They also lessen the heat in Summer by means of the great, amount of evaporation from their leaves which occurs throughout the day. And while they lessen the heat in Summer they also lessen the cold in Winter by keeping a way- cold winds. Frosts are never in or around -forests, as they are in ihe open. Forests promote rainfall. This is well known and has long been used as an argu ment in the appeal for the saving of the forests. It is as well known that rains are as valuable to general health as to vegeta tion But probably the most notable thing about forests is their value as refuges in times of cholera. It is well known and has been repeatedly proved that cholera will visit an open district and evade a wooded district. The plague may circle around and about a forest, attacking people on all sides, but sel dom if ever penetrating into the thickness of the trees. A certain road in India leads for sixty miles through a dense forest Farther on it runs for ninety miles through a barren plain. Hundreds of persons travel the entire road daily. Now, in the first or wooded section, cases of cholera seldom occur, while within the latter it has been of frequent occurrence. One year cholera raged in Allahabad. Sol diers whose barracks were on a hill suffered the most from the epidemic; those in bar racks surrounded by four rows of trees much less; but not a single case occurred among the soldiers whose barracks were in a thicket. It was the same the next year. T HE destructiveness of an explosion is in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted against the expansion which it produces. This analogy holds true to a very great extent in the matter of tem per. Anger is an emotion, that is to say, it is a def inite physiological state, induced by a condition of the mind. The balance of the body is so delicately ad justed that at a time when there is no unusual excite ment In the mind, the impulses and the organism ac commodate themselves to each other. But if either be over-stimulated at the cost of the other, trouble is bound to ensue. The power of a machine—to give a simple illustration—is adjusted to a certain load, and if that load be lessened or increased a great strain is put on the machine; as, for example, the “racing” of a steamship’s screw when her stern is pitched out of the water, and the necessity for changing an automo bile to a low-speed clutch gear when going up a hill. When, as the result of anger, the energy of the human machine is increased, it follows that the load must be increased in order to keep the balance level. That rage increases energy is w-ell known, for people will perform feats of strength in a fit of fury which they never would dream of doing in quieter moods; and there is always a strong desire to express that violence of passion by some violence of movement, or action. If that action be roughly and rudely prevented by a sort of policeman of the will called “Keeping- Your-Temper,” there is Immediate resistance and the body suffers. The punishment usually takes the form of extreme fatigue. “Nothing is so tiring,” it is said, “as losing your temper.” But fatigue, it must not be forgotten, is only a natural condition when it is the result of a long series of fatiguing acts; when it fol lows as a result of a fit of rage it is Nature’s means of trying to recover from the shock that the restraining of the temper has caused. Think for a moment what a strain it must be which is capable in a couple of moments of causing tiredness to a man or woman who is competent to resist the fatigue-producing forces of a day’s labor! There is another reason, too. Anger has the effect on the nature of man that a “negro on the safety- valve” used to have on the Mississippi River steam boats in the olden time. It increased their speed at the same time as it increased their chances of being blown up. Certain unconscious warnings, known as inhibitions, act largely as the safety-valves in the ex ercise of human strength and anger supersedes these inhibitions; in short, it sits on the safety-valve. That is why an angry man seems stronger during his rage than at any other time. He isn’t really stronger, of course, but the checks to his full exercise of his strength are removed. Of course, if temper be left unrestrained, and the character of the action be one of ftiuscular exertion, fatigue will also set in, but this is a purely physical tiredness and is instantly recog nized as not being comparable to the nervous exhaus tion of losing one’s temper and yet “holding in.” Whenever muscles are excited, a poison is freed more rapidly than the \>ody can absorb it. An angry man will clench his fist, will grit his teeth, will arch his back and bring the whole muscular frame of his body tense. Muscles are energy producers, and this tension sets free the fatigue poisons. It is this that • makes bad-tempered people yellow and jaundiced, the frequent constrictions caused by the psychic state^ preventing the free action of the ducts. The same factor makes some men grow red and others pale when angry; both are due to constrictions taking place at different points in the blood system. It’s a good thing not to lose your temper oftener than you need, but when you do, don’t bottle it up. If you suppress your temper too frequently you wil|| leave your body in a dangerously weakened condition. i A-Sanitary SWIMMING POOL, with Artificial Waves, 200 FEET ABOVE the HUDSON RIVER A SWIMMING pool has just been com pleted that includes all the charms of a pure-water lake, with waves, diving Island aud various depths and at the same time overcomes tint greatest of all dangers of swimming pools, unsanitary conditions. it is located at Palisades Amusement Park, high on the New Jersey palisades, yet close to the heart of New Y’ork, being opimsite the -One Hundred and Thirtieth street ferry. The Originator is Nicholas M. Schenck. who is general manager of the park, and he has incorporated in this pool devices for the safety of the public many things that owners of elaborate swimming pools elsewhere would do well to take advantage of. It has been repeatedly proven that in a great many swimming pools there is danger of contagion. Only a few years ago a multi millionaire had an elaborate swimming pool in his Summer home on the Main-* coast. His guests used it with great enjoyment, but his daughter contracted typhoid fever from germs in the pool and died, it has been found that small swimming pools where the facilities are poor for making the water pure and for changing the water constantly are a menace to the health, for all sorts of germs will be washed from some of the swimmers and lodged in others, thereby causing the con tagion Hut Manager Schenck has done away with all this danger in his nrfvel swimming pool. He does not use the dirty Hudson River water, with its dangerous sewage and other means of uncleanliness; nor does he take any chances with ocean water, as one would have to go miles and miles out to sea to get ocean water that was pure. Instead, he takes his water from the Hackensack reservoir, which is well filtered and supplied to thousands of people in those suburbs for drinking water. Y’et, to make doubly sure that those who us- (his swimming pool are in no danger at all from germs, this well-filtered drinking water is again filtered before it is run into the pool. And, in addition to this, the water in the pool is changed every day, whether the pool Bird’s Eye View of the Swiming Pool. is used or not. This insures absolutely pure water. The pool is an immense affair capable of holding a thousand people. There are sani tary dressing rooms and bath rooms adjoin ing it that will accommodate 600 people. In this manner the pool is made as clean and sanitary as it is possible to make one. The swimming pool is not exactly square, being somewhat narrower at one end, to en able the wave-making machine to operate. It is 500 feet long and 150 feet wide at the nar rowest width, spreading out at the shallow end. At the narrower end the water is twelve feet deep, sufficient for diving purposes. At this end there are two platforms four feet wide, and each half the width of that end. These rest upon the surface of the pool, and, by means’ of machinery that works with a cam motion, these platforms are literally pumped up and down on the water, much as a child would slap the water in a bath tub with the palm of his hand. These, of course, are protected from the swimmers, but the alternating up and down motion of these platforms on the surface furnish artificial waves as perfect and enjoyable to disport in as any waves nature ever tossed up on a beach. The shallow end begins at an ankle depth and grows very gradually deeper. All about the shallow end are located fountai. of vari ous forms and sizes, which are not only for the beauty, but serve as shower baths where the children and the feeble may enjoy the spray, while the more robust may use the more forcible sort. In the middle of the pool, or a little toward the deep end, is an artificial island with a diving tow-er. Here the swimmers may dive from springboards and all sorts of appliances from almost any height. The swimming pool is open day and even ing. People can enjoy a plunge in the arti ficial waves of absolutely clean water after a hot day's work. Not only that, they can paddle about through the artificial waves by artificial moonlight. As an amusement enterprise, it is one of the biggest and best, but as a really safe and hygienic swimming pool free from all dangers of contagion it is most noteworthy. 9 - \ !