From the December 21 & 28, 1935, issues

CALIFORNIA, LAND OF SUN, IS PROUD OF CHRISTMAS SNOWS

Snow and California would seem at first glimpse to be mutually irreconcilable ideas. Yet Californians are proud of the snows that fall in their state. And with right: saw you ever a lovelier Christmas landscape than this, in Yosemite National Park? These winter snows of the Yosemite, indeed, are not only beautiful in themselves; they are indispensable for the maintenance of the park’s summer beauty as well. The waterfalls that seem to drop from the sky itself, the firmament of flowers on the valley floor, the dark and awesome giant trees, are all the offspring of the white, brief glory of the snow.

PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

Outstanding 1935 achievements in 10 fields of science as selected by Science Service are:

• Aeronautics—The spanning of the Pacific by a commercial air line and the 14-mile-high stratosphere flight.
• Archaeology—More discoveries of 10,000 B.C. man in America, including home life and art of Folsom man and Old Stone Age tools of Gobi type in Alaska.
• Astronomy—Study of Nova Herculis with increased knowledge of stellar atmosphere and the finding of a peculiar radio disturbance on the illumined side of the Earth every two revolutions of the sun.
• Biology—Maintenance of animal life without either the paternal or maternal nucleus in the germ cell.
• Chemistry—Concentration 99 percent pure of heavy neon, mass 22, and the creation of super-heavy element atomic number 93.
• Earth Sciences—Earthquakes felt in eastern United States and Canada and in the Helena, Mont., region, stimulating seismological research in those areas.
• Engineering—Completion of the Normandie and its trans-Atlantic record voyage.
• Medicine—Isolation of the tobacco mosaic virus as a crystalline protein, indicating that viruses may not be living substances in the ordinary sense, and apparent identification of the human influenza virus and its cultivation outside the body.
• Physics—High pressures of a million pounds per square inch revealing new properties of materials.
• Psychology—New knowledge of the specialized functions of certain brain areas with implications for the treatment of mental disease.

3,500 LAMAS GREET AMERICANS

When the Cutting-Vernay American Museum Expedition visited Tibet’s second city, Shigate, they were greeted by a gathering of 3,500 lamas at a great lamasery. The party succeeded—after 5 years negotiations—in attaining its special aim of entering the sacred city of Lhasa to collect anthropological and botanical specimens. Mr. Suydam Cutting has returned with reports of scientific success and with fine photographic studies made by the expedition. The cover picture shows strolling players photographed in Lhasa. These men actors and dancers sometimes give performances lasting 3 days, the expedition found.