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Sirs: The picture of a stuffed dodo (TIME, Sept. 14, p. 40) is, to the writer's untrained eye, much like a stuffed restoration of the dodo which is prominently displayed in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh bird differs from the Iowa reproduction principally in having a feathered tail instead of the cottontail effect, the coloring is apparently somewhat more uniform and there are slight differences above the eyes. Why then can Iowa claim "the only Stuffed replica in the world of the dodo?". . . L. L. NETTLETON Pittsburgh, Pa. There is also a reconstructed dodo in the American Museum of Natural History, Manhattan. The Iowa Museum, however, lays claim to possessing the first U. S.-made dodo. The other two replicas— were made in London. — ED.
Press On Sirs: Kiwanians of the McKanArk district, alert to the need of a timely gesture of courage in the face of the business depression properly to launch their convention at Joplin, chose a TiMEly method when Convention Committee Chairman Harry Horner of Wichita arose at the start of the initial session and read from TIME, Sept. 21 issue, The Presidency, the full article from which the following are excerpts: "At 4 p.m. one hot day last week President Hoover kept his regular appointment with the Press. . . . The U. S. public is being unduly alarmed about the degree of hardship in prospect for this winter. . . . The psychology of fear should labelled. be . . ." exiled and a national sign hung out As he neared the end of the quotation, Chair man Horner paused dramatically, the delegates waited for the plum. He raised his voice to a shout as he voiced a platitudinous slogan, be loved of all civic clubbers, and from over the room came a shower of cards bearing the same admonition: "KEEP SMILING." Keep smiling the delegates did through ever-accumulating evidence that even the service club industry must needs adjust itself to a reduced income. A speaker neatly manipulated chalk and eraser to convert DEPRESSION into PRESS ON; from others came vague assurances that business is upping, but in its final meeting the convention adopted a significant report recommending drastic economies in club operation, euphemistically referring to "this period of men tal and spiritual unrest." ROBERT L. HUTCHISON Joplin, Mo. Dirt-Doubers Sirs: Sapient Bermudans who foretell the hurricane season in Bermuda by observing spiders weaving their skeins on low bushes instead of up in tree tops, as told in TIME, Sept. 21, have nothing on Negroes living on either bank of the muddy Roanoke River in North Carolina.
A story is told that before the Civil War, a Negro slave won his freedom and that of his family by foretelling the season for heavy freshets which destroyed all cotton and corn crops along the river, by observing the way certain species of wasps known as dirt-doubers built their nests under the river banks in the early spring.
Should the wasps build their nests low and close to the water, there would be no freshets that summer. Contrary to the Bermuda spider, should the nest be built high, then look out for freshets. W. G. Cox
Burlington, N. C.
Drexel Hillster
Sirs: