ITEMS OF INTEREST March 29, 1913 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

What is believed to be the most ambitious expedition to the Amazon river ever undertaken started, from Philadelphia last week on the steam yacht Pennsylvania, to be gone three years. The expedition is being sent out by the University of Pennsylvania Museum. It will make accurate charts and maps of the basin of the Amazon, and will study the languages, manners, customs, arts, crafts, and history of the many races of Indians. The Pennsylvania is expected, to cover some three thousand miles up the Amazon and along its affluents. When the draft of the steamer is too great, launches will be used to go up to headwaters to chart the watershed. The desirability of this part of the work lies in the fact that there is scarcely an accurate map of the region. At present ocean-going steamers ascend the Amazon two thousand miles in ordinary times and as much as three thousand miles when the waters are at flood.

President Wilson, in a statement approved by his cabinet after two hours of discussion, announced that his administration had declined to request the group of American bankers to continue their negotiations for participation in the one hundred and twenty-five million-dollar loan desired by the Chinese government. He laid stress on the point that the request to American bankers to participate in the international loan might under possible contingencies imply the forcible interference of the government in Chinese financial or even political problems. "Our interests," he says, "are those of the open door—a door of friendship and mutual advantage. This is the only door we dare to enter."

It has been discovered at the Lowell observatory at Flagstaff, Ariz., through spectroscopic observations, that the nebulae in the Pleiades are illuminated by the reflected light of neighboring stars. This discovery is of importance to the astronomical world because of its direct bearing on the nature of thousands of other nebulae and on the evolution of the stellar system. The supposition has been that the nebulae were self-lighting, that is, that they were composed of fiery substances, but this discovery would indicate that they are cold bodies.

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