First Quarter

The U. S. world flyers (TIME, March 24, et seq.) landed at Kasumigaura, 90 miles from Tokyo, about one-quarter of their course completed. A loud chorus of banzais from a thousand throats, belonging to Japanese officers and bluejackets who were beribboned and bemedalled, greeted the aviators as they stepped from their machines. Hundreds of school children waving American flags shouted shrilly hundreds and hundreds more banzais. Major General Yasumitsu, Commander of the Army Air Service, was there, accompanied by Admiral Komoku, Chief of the Naval Air Service, American Army attaches, Governor Tsugeta of Ibarki Province and a delegation of 20 prominent citizens from the nearby town of Tsuchiura, all draped in the Stars and Stripes and dressed in their best kimonas. The aviators were then escorted to a hangar in which were tables spread with chestnuts and dried fish. These are old warrior tokens--the chestnuts signifying triumph, the dried fish, good luck. At Tokyo the U. S. aviators were lionized by the U. S. colony, official and aeronautical Japan, the populace. They were presented with cigarette cases by the American Society of Tokyo, and with harmonicas by the Young Men's Harmonica Clubs. Japanese mechanics busied themselves putting the Douglas World Cruisers into perfect condition and replacing the Liberty motors with new ones; taking off their sea legs in the shape of pontoons and putting on their landing gears, whereby they will become lighter on landing and speedier in the air.

Two Offers

Lieutenant d'Oisy, French world-flight aviator, hit the Shanghai golf course with a resounding smack. His equipage was wrecked.

While wondering what his next step should be, two startling offers were made. Lu Yung Siang, Tuchun (War Lord) of Chekiang and General Ho Fen Ling, Governor of Shanghai, both offered him planes to enable him to continue his flight.

Perplexed, he wired the French Legation at Peking for instructions. Having secured permission from the Peking Government to accept the gifts, the Legation telegraphed: "Take your choice."

He took Fen Ling's offer.

Oysterology

Since Sheridan wrote "An oyster may be crossed in love," no one need be surprised at certain experiments now being conducted with the bivalve by the New York State Conservation Commission at Bayville, L. I.

Coaxing oysters to mate is not so easy as it sounds, chiefly because they are not by nature passionate. To get a Cape Cod oyster to look at a Blue Point is difficult enough, but to tease them into falling in love seems absurd. And when it comes down to imploring a Cape Cod or a Blue Point to notice the existence of the bourgeoise such as the East River family, or the "sidey" Chesapeakes, the task appears wholly ridiculous. Oysters are very snobbish and clannish. A Cape Cod never by any chance received an equally aristocratic Blue Point, and vice versa. Nevertheless, the State Conservation Commission is determined to democratize oysterdom.

Hitherto, captured oysters have declined to breed. Where exception has been made, the young, inheriting the cold disdain of life from their ancestors, have resolutely declined to live. Along came William Firth Wells, noted oysterologist, discovered a scientific way of undermining their stubborn resistance. This is how he does it:

Takes 16,000,000 eggs from a single lady-oyster. Puts them into 16 jars full of salt water. Mixes with them some hundreds of millions of particles of male fertilizing material, taken from gentlemen of the various oyster families. The jars are then agitated until every egg is impregnated with the male particles. When the agitation is over, the eggs sink breathless to the bottom of the jar. At the end of six hours, up to the top float "dear little baby oysters."

Every two days for a fortnight the babies undergo the perils of journeys through a cream separator. This is to take away the impure water; the babies, having enough sense to stick to the sides of the separator, are scraped off and replaced in their jars, which are filled with fresh salt water. At the end of a fortnight the oysters have grown to one two-hundredth part of an inch and can be lifted out of the impure water by fine nets. When their shells begin to form they are permitted the delightful treat of attaching themselves to thin plates of asbestos coated with lime. From this stage they go to the tidewater experimental ponds and thence to the oyster beds at the bottom of the sea.