Those eager enough to finger the moist covers of reading period assignments yesterday found the pages curling under the impact of close to 100 degree temperature, as a heat wave stretching from New England to Nebraska continued unabated for its third consecutive day.

Janitors at several houses and Yard dormitories reported an exodus of baggage-laden students leaving hot Cambridge in desperation. But for those who stayed behind to face the oven atmosphere, Howard W. Emmons, associate professor of Engineering, had some words of encouragement yesterday.

He termed "a complicated and unexplainable phenomenon" mysterious cool wafts of air south of the Yard along Massachusetts Avenue, and he advised the heat-heeding students to stay off cobblestones and concrete surfaces.

Living Things Refreshing

These, he explained, reflect heat waves upward like a Turkish bath. Living things, however, such as trees, grass, and well-filled strapless bathing suits absorb the sun's rays, and proximity to them makes for a cooling effect.

Stillman infirmary, which reported no cases of heat prostration, and a sight of the Charles River bank yesterday afternoon, showed that the College was instinctively responding to the scientific dicta of Emmons.

Weld boathouse, if not an energetic scene, was at least well patronized with men concentrating hard on the idea of pushing a pair of oars. Tennis, at 1:30 o'clock which was officially the hottest piont of the day with a mercury reading of 97 degrees, attracted two fatigued figures leaning on the nots of a Business School court. At the same hour a clerk at the Harvard Trust Company came up with a reading of 110 degrees, but there was some question as to whether he was compounding interest on the original figure