Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/115

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Popular Science Monthly
87

there were a pair of cyclops, one pair of twins and one hundred and ten normal. In the second lot there were nine typical Cyclops and seventy-eight normal. The twin Funduli were most closely observed and were killed and preserved on the sixteenth day only because it was evident that they were about to die. The cyclops was the smaller of the two; the eye on the right side was apparently lacking.


One-Eyed Animals and Men

Dr. Chichester also describes three instances of Cyclops in mammals, one in a rat, and the third in a man.

The man had an hour glass eye in the center of his forehead. The rat had no external or internal indications of an eye; the pig had no eye-ball nor lens, but had three lids, the two upper ones being fused almost completely. Neither the pig nor the rat had a proboscis.

Obviously, monsters and freaks are now in a fair way to be explained without cursing nature for a visitation, which is experimentally traceable to human ignorance, accidents, disasters, and the circumstances that interfere with the natural gravitation of living things toward an even keel, a symmetrical development and the stablity of health and a balanced figure.


Maude, the Motor Mule, on
Our Cover

"MAUDE, the Motor Mule," whose portrait appears on this month's cover, is an automobile which has been performing the latest dances upon various racetracks over the country. Before the racers commence their whirlwind circling of the speedways, the band plays a tango or a one-step, and "Maude" appears upon the track, rearing upon two wheels and cavorting to the tempo of the music.

A photograph and a brief article were reproduced in the December Popular Science Monthly, but a few additional details of "Maude's" way of working will be interesting here. The car was built especially for exhibition purposes. Running beneath the body is a small track upon which moves a heavy weight. Another weight is fixed on the overhang behind the rear axle. When the driver, Roy Repp, pulls a lever, the heavy weight beneath the car moves forward or back as desired, the center of gravity is upset, and the car, suddenly stopped or slowed down, rears up on its hind wheels. The counterweights are so delicate that the car may be run while balancing upon the rear wheels, as shown on the cover.

Each of the rear wheels is fitted with a separate brake. When one of these brakes is engaged the wheel is locked, and the differential gear drives the opposite wheel alone, causing the car to swing. By means of these independent brakes the car may be made to wheel and dance in time to the music.


Six hundred pounds of almost pure silver

Nature's Horde of Solid Silver.

RECENT development at some of the mines of the Cobalt district of Ontario, Canada, has resulted in the production of more of the wonderfully rich silver ores for which the camp was famous during the days of its first working. At the Temiskaming mine there has been found some rock which makes a special record for high value.

The six hundred pound slab shown assays about ten thousand ounces of silver per ton, being therefore about one-third pure silver. There is no gold in the ore, that being one of the general peculiarities of the ores of the Cobalt district.