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which lifts an auxiliary valve, which in turn admits steam to a piston valve opening a passage to the nozzles. There is a peephole through which the fireman can watch his fire, and if everything is not going right he can help out with the scoop, as the stoker does not interfere with the regular fire door. This stoker has often fired eighteen or twenty tons of coal on a division 140 miles long, though it uses more coal than a good fireman would.

The Street stoker, which has been used experimentally on the Lake Shore since May, 1909, consists of crusher, of crusher, with swinging jaws to break up the larger lumps of coal, an elevator consisting of a double endless chain with

buckets traveling in pipes and driven by a small engine. The coal falls through a hopper into three distributors, one in the center and one on each side above the door from which it is blown over the grate by intermittent steam jets. A discharge regulator enables any part of the fire to be built up at the discretion of the fireman. Complete round trips over a division of a hundred miles have been made without opening the door.

D. F. Crawford, Superintendent of Motive Power of the Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburg, has developed an underfeed stoker which promises to produce great results when all the minor details have been perfected through tests in service. He started out with the propo

Isition that the stoker must do all the work all the time, that it must be a part of the locomotive and not an attachment to be thrown aside at will, that it must be saving of coal and that it must produce no smoke. These requirements seemed to bar all forms of overfeed stokers.

All the various styles of underfeed stokers for stationary plants were tried and failed. Then, after a series of experiments extending through years, an underfeed stoker that would work on a locomotive was produced. There is nothing in the cab and nothing visible anywhere except a large cylinder bolted to the back end of the frames on the fireman's side, which might be mistaken for a brake cylinder. The apparatus in the tender includes a plunger which breaks up the larger lumps of coal before it drops into a trough in the floor of the tender. Two bars on each side of the trough are connected at intervals by cross bars on each of which are six fingers. These longitudinal bars have a reciprocating motion. As they move back they rise so the fingers drag back over the top of the coal. On the forward stroke they dig into the coal and drag it forward. The coal falls out of the front end of the trough into two troughs 9 inches wide placed 27 inches apart from center to center and at equal distances on either side of the firebox. These troughs extend the length of the grates, sloping up from a depth of 18 inches at the back to nothing at the front. In the bottom of the troughs are three plungers in succession working in square recesses. The back plunger is the largest, the next is smaller and the front one is the smallest. This arrangement of plungers distributes the coal evenly under the grates. As it is worked forward by the plungers the coal rises and falls over on to the grates, which

Occupy the areas between the troughs and between the troughs and the sides of the firebox. A nearly uniform bed is maintained over the whole area and the whole upper surface is kept aglow. As the green coal comes up under the glowing coal the gases are consumed so that the engine is practically smokeless. The whole apparatus is worked by rocker arms and rods driven by the steam cylinder mentioned. Each stroke of the plungers delivers about twenty-eight pounds of coal to the fire. The speed is regulated by a valve so that the fireman has entire control. There is a peep hole protected by blue glass so that he can watch the fire. In a series of 81 trips between Columbus and Denison there were but 18 trips in which the stoker failed to do all the work and but 3 in which it did less than 90 per cent of the firing. In case of accident, however, the engine can be immediately fired by hand without any changes being made, for there is no obstruction in the cab. This experimental stoker has fired 5,200 pounds of coal per hour.

From all this it may be gathered that the automatic stoker is far advanced on the way toward the practicable stage. With the automatic stoker in general use it will be possible to introduce locomotives of the largest type wherever traffic is heavy enough to require them and to work them to the limit of their capacity. By this means the capacity of existing lines can be very greatly increased, for the big engines working at their maximum power will not only haul much heavier trains, but they will be able to make better speed. While the fuel bill of the railroads, already $337,000,000 a year, will be increased, other economies made possible will wipe out this increase and leave a handsome margin of saving besides.

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T is quite possible that anyone who might happen to be stranded in the canyons of the High Sierras of California, any time between Christmas and Easter, might stumble upon two or three young men whose actions in those almost inaccessible solitudes would look very mysterious. He would see them gather up great masses of dead leaves and rubbish in places where the snow had melted, sift the finer material into burlap sacks, throw the leaves and sticks away, and then hasten on to a new location. If he were curious enough to follow the mysterious strangers, he would find that as soon as the bags were filled they were loaded upon the back of a patient mule, taken to the nearest railroad station, and shipped to Sacra

mento.

Inquiry would probably elicit the statement that the young men were from the "State Bug-House,"

but the inference that they were escaped lunatics, if natural under the circumstances, would be altogether wrong. The "Bug House" is the name commonly applied to the California State Insectary at Sacramento; and the methods described are those employed by the field agents of the Insectary on expeditions for the collection of ladybird beetles. These breed in the canyons of the Sierras, where they are collected while still dormant in the winter time. Tens of millions of them are shipped to the Insectary, where they are kept in cold storage until the melon aphis makes its appearance in the cantaloupe and cucumber fields of the Imperial Valley, or until

the peach and apple aphids are reported in the orchards. Then they are shipped to the endangered region, in whatever quantities may be required to meet the emergency; and when this has been done,

the doom of the aphid pests is considered sealed.

These ladybird cohorts, directed and controlled by the parasitologists of the State Insectary, probably saved the extensive melon growing industry of the Imperial Valley from entire destruction, and have prevented the loss of orchard fruits worth millions of dollars in many widely separated districts throughout the State. This, however, is simply an illustration of the sort of work the parasitologists of the Insectary are doing. As an institution, the State "Bug House," as it is usually called-for of course anything in the nature of an insect is a "bug" in the popular mind-is absolutely unique, and without a peer in the world. Superintendent Carnes, and his coadjutor, Acting Superintendent Maskew, do not antagonize spraying, dipping, washing, and fumigating as methods of ridding fields, orchards and gardens of insect pests; but they keep up an unceasing search for something better-in other words for natural checks that will render these makeshift expedients unnecessary. Never since men began to practice agriculture and horticulture have mechanical means brought under permanent subjection and control a single pest of this nature. The orchard that has been sprayed or fumigated, and the field that has been treated with Paris green or other insecticide, this year, must be similarly treated next season, and so on for all time to come. These operations are expensive, and never result in more than a temporary victory for the horticulturist. The basic idea of the new science of parasitology, then, is to employ bugs to fight bugs: to pit predaceous or parasitic insects against those that destroy the crops, in the absolute certainty that nature never created a pest without an efficient check. The Insectary,

It is

then, was established for the purpose of collecting, propagating and distributing beneficial insects in sufficient numbers to be of commercial value. It is in charge of scientists of exceptional attainments, and of more than national reputation, upon whom is laid the task of translating pure science into a commercial commodity, for the benefit of California. agriculturists and horticulturists. a subdivision of the State Horticultural Commission, which keeps an explorer in the field, who traverses every country on the globe in search of beneficial insects, sending such as he thinks likely to prove serviceable to the Insectary. There they are bred, studied and observed, and, if proved to be valuable, an effort is made to breed them in sufficient numbers to meet all legitimate demands. Insects whose good offices have been conclusively demonstrated are for free distribution in the State, to persons having need of their services; and demonstrations are given in the orchards, gardens and truck farms, showing the farmer just what sort of help he is justified in expecting from his insect allies, and just how he must co-operate with them in order to secure the best results. "Larger crops of cleaner fruit at a less cost of production," is the slogan of the department,

A SACKFUL-AND A FEW EXTRAS." Ladybirds collected in the Sierras.

as stated epigrammatically to the writer, by Acting Superintendent Maskew.

One statement made to the writer by Mr. Maskew, at first thought appears startling. It is this: "In all the world there is a permanent surplus of but one thing: that is life itself." So superabundant is life that nature takes almost as elaborate precautions to insure its destruction as to secure its reproduction; so that for every form of life there is one or more other forms to prey upon it, and prevent it from becoming redundant."

By this interminable

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series of natural checks upon the endless number and variety of forms of life, a fairly even balance is maintained. But man, in providing for the wants of a complex and highly artificial civilization seriously disturbs this nattural balance or equilibrium-to his own undoing, unless that equilibrium can be restored. This equilibrium may be disturbed in various ways. For example,

A TRAVELING "BUG
HUNTER.

George Compere, of California.

in the Imperial Valley the natural lifebalance has been upset by irrigation, bringing vegetation to luxuriant growth at a season when the whole region, in a state of nature, was a parched and burning desert. The ladybird beetle is native to the valley, but it issues in January, when the various aphids indigenous to the same region also issued, when natural conditions prevailed. But by irrigation and cultivation the melon vines are made to grow in April and May, supplying an abundance of food to the aphids, and causing them to multiply with the rapidity characteristic of that order of insect life, at a season when their natural check in that life-zone is inactive. To restore the equilibrium, ladybirds must be imported from the snowy canyons of the Sierras into the tropic fields of the valley.

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sitic enemies to limit its increase, it propagates with inconceivable rapidity, develops into a pest, and causes widespread destruction. When a pest of this kind makes its appearance in California, war is immediately begun upon it by means of insecticides, dips, sprays or poisonous gases, in an effort to prevent its spread and to limit its ravages. But while these crude and inefficient chanical checks are not neglected, the parisitologists of the State Insectary are exhausting every resource at their command to find its natural check, introduce it into the State, breed it in sufficient numbers to be of use, and distribute it where needed. Nature never makes a mistake, and never does things by halves; and it is just as sure as fate that for every insect pest there is a natural check. To put it in another way; the Intelligence that created the universe is quite capable of running it, and never gave to any form of life the power to destroy without placing a definite limit upon its powers of destruction. The mistakes in the distribution of insect species that bring widespread destruction. are man's mistakes: not nature's. when man makes a mistake of that kind it is up to him to correct it by finding nature's remedy. That is precisely what the parisitologists of the State Insectary are doing for California.

mistake, and the equilibrium,

But a more common, and usually more serious, disturbance of the natural life-equilibrium is due to the importation of foreign insects. A new variety of fruit, for example, is imported from Australia, or Japan, or South America; and it is quite likely that the almost microscopic eggs of some insect that thrives upon that fruit are brought along unnoticed. In its natural habitat that particular insect probably did no noticeable damage, because its natural check kept it within bounds; but in its new environment, with an abundant food supply, and with no predaceous or para

And

The inception of California's plan of campaign, to fight bugs with bugs, dates

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