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1.A prizeof $15,000 has been offered by Mr. Edwin Gould for the most perfect and practicable heavier-than-air flying machine, designed and demonstrated in this country, and equipped with two or more complete power plants (separate motors and propellers), so connected that any power plant may be operated independently, or that they may be used together. conditions of entry. 2. Competitors for the prize must file with the Contest Committee complete drawings and specifications of their machines, in which the arrangement of the engines and propellers is clearly shown, with the mechanism for throwing into or out of gear one or all of the engines and propellers. Such entry should be addressed to the Contest Committee of the Gould-Scientific American Prize, 361 Broadway, New York city. Each contestant, in formally entering his machine, must specify its type (monoplane, biplane, helicopter, etc.), give its principal dimensions, the number and sizes of its motors and propellers, its horse-power, fuel-carrying capacity, and the nature of its steering and controlling devices. 3. Entries must be received at the office of the Scientific American on or before June 1st, 1912. Contests will take place July 4th, 1912, and following days. At least two machines must be entered in the contest or the prize will not be awarded. contest committee. 4. The committee will consist of a representative of the Scientific American, a representative of the Aero Club of America, and the representative of some technical institute. This committee shall pass upon the practicability and efficiency of all the machines entered in competition, and they shall also ad as judges in determining which machine has made the best flights and complied with the tests upon which the winning of the prize is conditional. The decision of this committee shall be final. conditions of the test. 5. Before making a flight each contestant or his agent must prove to the satisfaction of the Contest Committee that he is able to drive each engine and propeller independently of the other or others, and that he is able to couple up all engines and propellers and drive them in unison. No machine will be allowed to compete unless it can fulfill these requirements to the satisfaction of the Contest Committee. The prize shall not be awarded unless the competitor can demonstrate that he is able to drive his machine in a continuous flight, over a designated course; and for a period of at least one hour he must run with one of his power plants disconnected; also he must drive his engines during said flight alternately and together. Recording tachometers attached to the motors can probably be used to prove such performance. In the judging of the performances of the various machines, the questions of stability, ease of control and safety will also be taken into consideration by the judges. The machine best fulfilling these conditions shall be awarded the prize. 6. All heavier-than-air machines of any type whatever aeroplanes, helicopters, ornithopters, etc shall be entitled to compete for the prize, but all machines carrying a balloon or gas-containing envelope for purposes of support are excluded from the competition. 7. The flights will be made under reasonable conditions of weather. The judges will, at their discretion, order the flights to begin at any time they may see fit, provided they consider the weather conditions sufficiently favorable. 8. No entry fee will be -charged, but the contestant must pay for the transportation of his machine to and from the field of trial. 9. The place of holding the trial shall be determined by the Contest Committee, and the location of such place of trial shall be announced on or about June 1st. 1912. 10. Mr. Edwin Gould, Munn&Co., Inc., publishers of the Scientific American, and the judges who will be selected to pass upon machines, are not to be held responsible for any accident which may occur in storing or demonstrating the machines oh the testing ground. (Continued from page SSI.) strength plus the reduction of resistance to sliding of the dam upon its undermined base, brought the strength of the dam below the yielding point, and the water burst through. Some broken sections of the wall appeal' to have been turned completely about their toe, others have been pushed bodily downstream upon their base, remaining erect. There have been altogether too many failures of dams in this country during the past two decades. There is need for State legislative control. Individuals and private corporations should not be left at liberty to build where and how they will. The menace of a badly-designed and ill-built dam is so great, that the plans for all structures of this character should be referred to an expert board, ., appointed by the State, and strongly backed up in all its decisions. Hail Insurance THE insurance of growing crops against hail, though little practised in the United States, is an old and well-established institution in many parts of Europe. The first hail insurance company was organized in Scotland in the eighteenth century. A large mutual hail insurance company was founded at Brunswick, Germany, in 1791, and another at Neubrandenburg, Germany, in 1797. To-day there are scores of companies in Europe. The greater number of these are conducted on the mutual plan, though there are also many stock companies. In several countries hail insurance -companies enjoy a government subsidy; while in one, Bavaria, the- government itself insures agriculturists against hail. A similai-plan is in operation in the Canadian territory of Alberta, where hail insurance is conducted by the Treasury Department. From time immemorial mankind has endeavored to find some physical means of preventing hailstorms. In antiquity the custom of hurling javelins and other missiles against clouds that threatened a discharge of hail was widespread. In the middle ages the aid of the “tempes-tarii” sorcerer who claimed the power of influencing the weather—was invoked to the same end. Bells., also, were believed to be efficacious in averting hailstorms. Early in the nineteenth century metal-tipped poles, called para-grandines or paragreles, imitated from lightning-rods, were set up in great numbers in many parts of Europe, in the belief that they would draw off the free electricity of the air, which was assumed to be the chief cause of hailstorms. About 1896 the custom of “hail-shooting” was introduced in Europe, especially in vine-growing districts, and soon became immensely popular. This consisted in bombarding the clouds with various special forms of cannon. In the year 1900 five hundred of these cannon were in use in France and Spain, 2,000 in Austria-Hungary, and 10,000 in Italy. This custom still flourishes.. In Austria and Italy it has been investigated and reported upon unfavorably by scientific commissions, appointed by the respective governments. On the other hand, in France and in parts of Russia it has the approval of official or quasi-official authorities. It is, however, of)en to the fatal objection that, even should it prove efficacious, the expense entailed in systematic protection by this method is in excess of the benefits to be obtained. This has been well demonstrated by Baermann for Bavaria and Wiirt-temberg, and Hahn for the whole of Germany. Thus, assuming the necessity of installing one cannon per square kilometer, the cost of a complete installation for Bavaria would amount to $7,500,000; and the annual cost of operating would be about $1,750,000. In the absence of any practical method of actually averting the destructive effects of hail, the agricultural population must look to insurance to mitigate the loss to the individual sufferer. At the present time, however, hail insurance, although as stated above has been practised for over a century, is founded upon a far from secure basis of information. Statistics of the distribution of hailstorms in space and time, and of the damage inflicted thereby, are systematically collected .from year to year in but few countries. For the most part, the companies have been obliged to gather their own information as best they could; and doubtless, in the legitimate desire to protect themselves having regard to the uncertainty of the data available, they .have as a rule imposed higher premiums than would be justified if accurate information were at hand. That the aggregate loss due to atmospheric visitations of this class is exceedingly heavy is well known. Thus it is stated that during the year 1897, in the kingdom of Wiirttemberg, a total area of 42,427 hectares—3.7 per cent of the cultivable land of the country—-was ravaged by hail, the damage amounting to over $4,750,000. In the last forty years the loss to agriculturists from this cause in the grand duchy of Baden has aggregated $25,000,000. The annual loss for the whole of Germany is estimated at between 70,000,000 and 80,000,000 marks (i. e., from $17,000,000 to $20,000,000). The annual loss in France is about the same. In Italy it amounts to $12,000,000, according to a recent estimate. These enormous losses do not affect the agricultural class alone. In many cases the national- ' revenues ape seriously curtailed from this cause, as it : is found necessary to remit a portion of the taxes in the regions afflicted. The first steps toward improving the organization of hail insurance and extending its benefits to all countries have been taken during the past year by the 'International Institute of Agriculture; At a meeting of the permanent committee of the Institute, November 24th, 1910, the Bureau of Economic and Social Institutions was charged with the task of drawing up a complete report on the present situation of this form of insurance in the ' several countries. The report, prepared by Dr. Giuseppe Ro'cca, has now been published, * and is a most useful contribution to a subject the literature of which is ' at present extremely meager. Dr. Rocca gives statistics of the companies engaged in the business of hail insurance in Germany, Austria, France, Hungary, Italy, and Switzerland; the laws bearing on the subject in those countries; the technique of this class of insurance; and finally a number of suggestions looking to a uniform system of gathering Information of damage by hail and to uniform legislation. This report was submitted to the institute at its recent general meeting, and recommendations based thereon will be transmitted to the several governments. As the recommendations of the Institute will probably lead to the organization of hail insurance companies in this country it may interest some of our readers to know that a number of books has been published in Germany for the guidance of persons engaged in the task of assessing the damage due to hail. A list of them will be found at ttie end of the article “Hagelversicher-ung,” in Meyers Grosses Koiiversations-Lexikon, sixth edition. The Colors of the Earth THE two great elements of difference II the same landscape in winter and summer are, of course, the presence of snow in winter and of leaves and grass in summer. If we could look at our globe from the moon the. variation in its aspect due to seasonal changes would perhaps be even more striking than it appears to those on the surface. In fact, we sometimes lose sight of the very important part which vegetation plays in giving color to what might be termed the countenance of the planet. It is not the higher forms of plants that always produce the greatest effect in this way. Some of the most striking scenes upon the earth owe their characteristic features to mosses and lichens. The famous “crimson cliffs” of Greenland. ' .which extend for miles northward from Cape York, derive their splendid color from the growth of red lichen that covers their faces. The cliffs rise between seventeen hundred and two thousand . feet straight from the water's edge, and being composed of gray granite, their aspect would be entirely different from what it is but for the presence of the lichen. The rocky pass called the Golden Gate in the Yellowstone National Park owes its rich color and its name to the yellow lichen covering its lofty walls; and the indescribable hues of the great hot-spring terraces arise mainly, from the presence of minute plants flourishing in the water that overflows them. Considered as a whole, the vegetation of a planet may give it a characteristic aspect as viewed from space. That its broad expanse of forest and prairie land causes the earth to reflect a considerable quantity of green light to its neighbors is indicated by the fact that at the time of the new moon a greenish tint has been detected overspreading that part of the lunar surface which is then illuminated only by light from the earth.
