wash his clothes. He may buy tobacco He may buy tobacco and a very limited amount of beer from the superintendent, who is constable and police magistrate. No one else will accept his money.

So, there is hardly a better place for a man who wishes to keep his pay envelope sealed. Most of the men average $1,500 a year, or more, and about $1,300 of it is left untouched. If a man cares to remain on the island five years, he can pile up $7,500 to his credit, which is somewhat better than the average man does in a lifetime with a similar salary in a city. Also, the cable man would

have accumulated a five months' vacation for a honeymoon with the girl he had left behind. The present superintendent has held his position since the cable was landed. there ten years ago. He is a genial, He is a genial, good-natured man who claims to like the island life. Besides, he is Scotch, and no one has ever asked him how much he has saved against a misty day, or when he is going to move.

The list of summer amusements on Midway makes it seem like a pleasure resort, especially as the men wear white duck suits. There is swimming, boating in the lagoon, tennis-and fish shooting. The fish most often hunted is the parrot, so named not because of its conversational powers, but for its color and beak.

The sportsman walks out on the reef until the water reaches above his knees, then as the brilliant-hued fish slowly circles about him, he fires. The water deflects the shot, but the concussion stuns the fish, and it is bagged. When the hunter has about a hundred, he stops firing and turns them over to the Chinese cook.

There are thousands of sea birds on the island, but they are so tame there is no sport in shooting them, and the meat is not palatable. Albatross, great birds. whose wings stretch to six feet, nest there in great numbers, and are as tame as chickens.

A temperature that hovers for months. around the ninety-mark in the summer makes swimming delightful. The water in the lagoon is placid, and the few sharks, being of the hammerhead variety and not more than ten feet long, do not bother the men. Neither do the men bother them, though it is said that on the mainland many a shark has been cut up in halibut steaks.

Boating is much enjoyed in summer, but the fierce gales of winter almost put a stop to it. Yet not quite, for when the barkentine Carrollton piled up on the reef New Year's Day in 1907, ten cable men put to sea in an open rowboat, and though the boat was almost swamped, the men aided the crew to make shore.

C

AN a caterpillar fly?

It sounds like an absurd question! It might be taken for a "catch query"-the answer, presumably, being that that it could fly, certainly, after becoming a moth.

But, as a matter of fact, this is not the true answer at all; for it has been discovered very recently that the caterpillars of the gipsy moth-the very larvæ themselves are able to fly, and do actually

Indeed, the scientists engaged in investigating the gipsy moth problem are now satisfied that it is by this means, with the help of the wind, that the most pestiferous of all known insects chiefly spreads.

But how? A caterpillar has no wings. By what means, then, can it fly?

The answer is that wings are not at all in question. The caterpillar of the gipsy-moth is provided, with a set of balloons, to keep it aloft, and the breeze.

One sees a son of sunny Italy on a street corner holding in his hand the strings which detain two score or more of balloons. It is easy to imagine that if he weighed one-twentieth of his actual avoirdupois, and a fairly strong breeze. were blowing, he might be wafted through the air, eventually landing many miles from where he started.

The situation of the caterpillar is exactly similar. Recent examination of the gipsy-moth larva has disclosed the surprising, and hitherto unimagined, fact that a number of hairs spring from its back, which are provided, near their bases, with spherical bulbs, supposed to be filled with a gas quite possibly lighter than air. These hairs are called "aerostatic hairs", and the bulbs are designated as "aerophores", or, in plain language, air-floats.

Here, then, is the solution of the puzzle which has so long complicated the gipsymoth question. It accounts for the appearance in remote and uninhabited parts of New England-places not even visited by travelers-of scattered colonies of the insects. The breezes bring them.

One should understand that the female gipsy-moth is unable to fly. Hence, to start a new colony at a distance, she must be carried. She may be carried by an automobile, or by other agency, but she demands transportation.

Such being the case, one easily com

A GIPSY MOTH, ITS CATERPILLAR, AND SCREEN ON RAFT IN THE MIDDLE OF A POND TO CATCH THE "CRAWLERS" WHEN THEY FLY

prehends the importance of the discovery that the young caterpillars, in the first stage of their development, may be transported hither and yon, even over great distances, by winds.

No sooner did this come to be suspected than the Government Bureau of Entomology, acting in co-operation with the gipsy-moth office of the State of Massachusetts, began to make a systematic inquiry into the subject. Preliminary experiments were made by releasing young caterpillars in front of electric fans, in rooms. It was quickly realized that satisfactory trials could not be made under such restricted conditionsalthough, even thus, the larvæ drifted twenty to thirty feet-and it was decided to make the tests outdoors.

Screens of galvanized iron chicken-net, with wooden frames, were set up in a number of places deemed suitable for the purpose-a thin coat of "tanglefoot", sticky-stuff being spread over them. One was placed on top of an observatory tower fifty feet high in the Lynn, Massachusetts, woods. This was twenty-five feet above the tallest neighboring treesthe object in view being to find out if caterpillars could be caught high in the air.

Three others were suspended by ropes and pulleys from a lofty water tower on the edge of a salt marsh at Cliftondale. And yet another was anchored on a raft near the middle of Sandy Pond-a body of water at Lincoln,

Massachusetts, one mile and a half long and a mile in width, surrounded by woodland badly infested by the gipsy moth.

These preliminary experiments yielded no very definite or satisfactory results; but it was different when the tests were reduced to a scientific and exact basis by the simple expedient of setting up, half a mile from the nearest trees, a six-foot pole with a box on the top of it filled with gipsy-moth egg-clusters and larvæ. A hole was cut so that the wind might blow through the box-pole and box being utilized as a sort of central station for the winddistribution of the caterpillars.

The supposition was (one understands) that the caterpillars would be blown out of the box, and that, if they had any facilities for aerial translation, they would demonstrate the fact. To give them every possible chance, one end of the box was removed.

Would the caterpillars fly under such conditions? The best way to find out was to place in the path of the wind, small screens, six feet long and two feet wide, attached to sharpened stakes, so that the latter might be stuck easily into the ground. The screens were covered with sticky-stuff.

various distances. At 150 feet two caterpillars were caught. Two more were captured at 200 feet, one at 250 feet, and one at 300 feet. Later on two caterpillars were taken in the toils at 600 feet, with an "exposure" of half an hour; and on one screen, left over night at a distance of 1,833 feet, a single larva perished.

Taking the experiments all together, up to date, it is inferred that young gipsy-moth caterpillars, thanks to their balloon equipment, may start from a point less than six feet above the ground, and be carried at least one-third of a mile by their own means of conveyance, assisted by wind.

The first experiment on this line was with a single screen, which was placed fifty feet away from the central station, i. e., from the box and pole. Wind, light and variable. In ten minutes one caterpillar was caught on the tanglefoot; in an hour, five.

The screen was then shifted to a distance of 100 feet, and, under similar weather conditions, four were caught in a short time.

But there are other elements concerned, which enter importantly into the problem of caterpillar transportation.

One often sees, especially in early spring, papers or leaves caught up by little whirlwinds and carried hundreds of feet into the air. They rise far aloft, and frequently are borne over many miles of distance before falling. Undoubtedly the same thing happens commonly when gipsymoth caterpillars, sus-' pended from treebranches by the silk they spin, are carried off and away by the breezes.

In all likelihood the silk spun by the gipsy-moth caterpillars augments their aerial buoyancy. In view of which supposition, the government scientists have made a special study of this branch of the problem. By attaching one end of the thread spun by a gipsy-moth larva to a reel, and revolving the latter, they have ascertained that a caterpillar of this species may spin as much as seventy feet

among

them those of the
gipsy moth-to find
out whether they could
be profitably utilized for
spinning silk. Some
gipsy-moth eggs,
spilled accidentally from

a paper box left by him on a
window ledge, outside, started
the mischief. This happened at
Medford, Massachusetts. At the
present time nearly 11,000 square
miles of territory are infested by the
insect, which is almost unique in its
ability to destroy all kinds of vegeta-
tion. Other kinds of caterpillars have
their chosen food-plants, and will eat
none other, but the larva of the gipsy
moth is omnivorous, devouring every
green thing in its course, with apparently
the greatest gusto, from trees to cab-
bages.

On the occasion of the first serious outbreak in Medford and Malden, beginning in 1889, and again during the more extensive plague of a few years later in the same district, not only forest, shade, and ornamental trees, but orchards, gardens, and fields were devastated. And when the food supply was exhausted, the starving caterpillars, by force of their mere numbers, were a frightful pest, rendering the streets impassable to pedestrians, massing upon and invading and invading houses, and infesting bedrooms and kitchens. The very dining tables were acrawl with them. Everyone was positively helpless in the face of this nauseating and terrifying invasion.

Such conditions, happily, no longer prevail. The area of infestation is vastly greater, and is steadily increasing, but the severity of the plague is diminished. Three causes are accountable for the improvement-first, the perfection of systematic methods of repression; second,

the introduction of insect enemies of the gipsy moth from abroad; and third, the development of a very fatal and highly contagious disease, called "wilt", among the caterpillars.

The gipsy moth is a common insect all over Europe, and also in Japan. But in those parts of the world it is not of much economic importance, because its numbers are kept down by insect foes. Of these latter no fewer than thirty species have been identified by entomologists, and all the most promising

ones have been brought to this country and colonized. Several have accommodated themselves to their new environment and with progressive multiplication and dispersion, are steadily gaining efficiency as destroyers of the pest. Over extensive areas in Massachusetts fully 50 per cent of the gipsymoth eggs, larvæ, and pupæ were demolished by them in 1912, according to an estimate made by experts.

The territory over which these friendly imported insects have spread (its center a little north of Boston) is not very extensive as yet, but is rapidly growing from year to year. Before long they will catch up with the gipsy moth, in a geographical sense, and, becoming more numerous, will reduce the pest to relative harmlessness. Indeed, with the additional help of the "wilt" disease, the gipsy moth as an economic problem bids fair to be fully and satisfactorily settled before long.

This peculiar malady, by the way, resembles the "flacherie" which is so deadly to silkworms. A seemingly healthy caterpillar sickens and dies, the entire contents of its body being resolved into a black liquid containing countless myriads of the germs of the disease. Foliage soiled by the liquid is eaten by other caterpillars, and thus the complaint is spread. A bacterium, called gyrococcus flaccidifex, does the mischief.

M

ARS is credited, by some of our astronomers, with being inhabited by a race of canalbuilders. That, you know, is not meant for a reflection against intellectual progress. Rather it hints that the Martians are not far behind us in ingenuity; and, if they are spending as much time studying our canals, as we are spending in speculation over theirs, they probably recognize at lusty rival in the United States.

Americans may be said to be "canal crazy". Our newest home project in canal building is the Lake Washington canal at Seattle-itself no puny undertaking. Here Uncle Sam has entered into partnership with King county, and together they have capitalized the job at $5,725,000. Of this sum "Uncle" subscribes $4,225,000 for building the canal and locks, while the county subscribes the $1,500,000 necessary for excavation. Some idea of the magnitude of this work may be had from the time required to accomplish it. Work was commenced in September, 1911, and the task is not to be completed until 1915-the year the world's masterpiece is to be thrown open to the commerce of the earth. As in the case of the Panama project, an army engineer, Major J. B. Cavanaugh, has charge of the work.

The Lake Washington ditch will be five and one-half miles long, with a depth of thirty-seven feet, and a breadth, at the bottom, of one hundred feet. There will be two locks, one large and one small one, lying side by side. A number of dredges, steam shovels, locomotives, and automatic cement mixers are working at top speed excavating the four million cubic yards of earth, walling_up the ditch, and building the locks. The largest of the locks is no toy affair. It is exceeded in size only by those at Panama, and is being built by day labor.

The coffer-dam, surrounding the site of this lock, is already in place and is one of the largest undertakings of the kind ever attempted. It is 2,400 feet long, and is big enough to house a brigade of soldiers. Both locks are to be made of reinforced concrete. The large one will be 80 feet by 800 feet and 25 feet over all, with a depth over the sills of 36 feet. It will be used by large sea-going ships. The smaller lock will be 30 feet by 150 feet. It is designed for the use of small crafts of all kinds, including pleasure yachts and motorboats. The big chamber will be divided into two compartments by a center gate, one, 350 feet and another, 475 feet long. The gate will be one of the largest double-leaf gates in existence.