The Latest Scientific News

• The ribbon-decked sea serpent — Fishermen weave many legends about the huge bearded whales and about sea serpents. There has lately been exhibited in the Natural History Museum in Chicago (the fish hall) a great, huge, ribbon-decked fish that might be called a sea serpent, and the fishermen there have taken this fish as proof of their legends. This fish has been described as snake-like, 50 feet in length and weighing approximately 250 kilograms, striped with a flame-like red crest running from its head to its tail, and with black lines, so that to one who studies it the fish appears as though clothed in hair or feathers.

• The modern ink pen: — At the Reynolds international pen company in Chicago they have made an ink pen of aluminum which can write without interruption, on a single filling of ink, for two weeks; and if you write with it ten minutes a day it will serve five years before you refill it. It ends in a small steel tip from which the ink neither streams too freely nor drips; it therefore writes cleanly and saves a quantity of ink.

• Preserving pipes from corrosion: — The industrial and chemical-engineering company has tried a new chemical process for preserving metal pipes running underground from corrosion. Wires of magnesium are buried near the pipes; the pipes and the wires then take the form of a battery, an oxidizing current runs between them, and the wires corrode away while the pipes are preserved.

• An artificial storm to fight insects: The chemical company in New York has made a new machine whose work is to create a storm of air laden with insect-killing substances.