erected close to the dry-kiln and storage. houses. The vines are placed upon carriers which run them between revolving drums studded with V-shaped projections or picking fingers which tear the hops and many leaves off the vines, dropping them upon a conveyor which deposits them in a revolving cylinder. Through numerous small openings the hops and small leaves fall upon a belt traveling upward at an angle of but four or five degrees. The light leaves travel up with the belt, but the heavier hops roll down the slight incline, thus separating themselves from all trash.

According to Dr. W. W. Stockberger, the hop authority of the Bureau of Plant Industry, the machine-picked hops are cleaner even than the product of trained pickers employed by the day in order to pick exceptionally clean hops for experimental purposes. These trained pickers will average 200 pounds a day. With the aid of a machine five or six men pick

a minimum of 20,000 pounds a day, and the quality is higher than the product of the best hand pickers.

Twenty-four machines have been built and successfully operated upon the 10,000 acres of the Horst Company scattered through California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. At the Wheatland ranch, in California, one hundred men, with the aid of the machines, in the fall of 1910 gathered the crop of an area which in former years required the services of an army of two thousand hop pickers. By concentrating the machines upon the districts farthest south and moving them north with the maturing crops, the grower is enabled to get the hops off the vines at the precise moment when they are ripe. By reducing the time and the cost of harvesting and by enhancing the quality of the product, the mechanical hop picker should prove of very great benefit to all hop growers throughout the world.

T

HIS is the story of a boy with a $2,000 idea-and perhaps more. He was seventeen and just out of the Manual Training High School in Kansas City when the great thought came to him.

There was no especial necessity for his going to work immediately; he might have gone on with his studies, or found a place in someone's store, or he might have loitered around home for a year or two. His father didn't care to force him into any set plan at the time. But S. Bryson Ayres had his mind fairly well made up about the future when he left school; and the influence that created this condition was peculiar. Bryson had noticed that the florists evidently made money rapidly. He reached this opinion after buying flowers for a few select young friends. The experience gave him the idea.

"I shall grow sweet peas for the city florists," he told his astonished parents, "there's money in that business."

Happily for Bryson's idea his father owned several acres of unused land ten miles from the city and in close touch with rapid transportation. Bryson borrowed about 100 feet of it, got enough money from the bank-backed by his father-to build the necessary greenhouse so that winter should not interfere with his work, and buy seed and tools. This seed he bought from the best florists in California. He did most of the work himself because, you see, he had learned carpentry in the manual training school; and he studied at night every catalogue and all the botanical books he could get. It took some nerve at this period to go ahead because the boy's school friends and a few of the neighbors laughed at his project. When they learned that he had cleared $100 and had paid back some

of his borrowed capital they quit laughing.

One hundred dollars was a mighty pile in Bryson's opinion, that fall. He had learned something valuable about the dignity of labor and also he had a few pertinent ideas about money. He learned that with a good reputation one had good credit and with credit he could do many things. Therefore he rented more land from his father, borrowed a little more money, signed up a few more customers and went to work more eagerly than ever. At the end of the year-the second -he had paid his last note and had $400 to his own account. By this time he had two people working for him. Incidentally, Bryson's father was willing by this time to back him in anything. The boy cleared $800 the third year.

A year ago last spring the young florist rented more land-two acres in all-from his father, enlarged his greenhouses and made them thoroughly modern, employed more help and bought a large delivery wagon and a first class pair of horses.

This boy, now twenty-one, has not given all his time to sweet peas, but these were his principal product.

grew violets and lilies-of-the-valley also, but sweet peas were by far the most successful flowers on the little place. He sold and still sells his products almost exclusively to city dealers in wholesale lots. He received prices ranging from $25 a thousand at Christmas to $5 a thousand for his sweet peas in the summer midseason. Early in the spring, before the snows had gone, he got $7.50 to $10 a thousand and sold from five to ten thousand a day. The sweet peas were arranged twenty-five to the bunch. Bryson has from ten to fifteen girls for the picking and employs six or seven laborers and gardeners for the setting out and care of beds.

It wasn't boy's play, this sweet pea idea. It required something more than front yard cultivation. The seed had to be right; the largest blooms had to be saved to reproduce and the earth had to be fertilized properly and brought to a rich, loamy condition. The peas were planted in rows four feet apart and brush was plentifully used to "stick" the plants. after they were a foot and a half high. Wood, he learned, did not heat the tendrils as wire had done.

UESTION has arisen as to the title to a barren island in the Rio Grande, situated about forty miles south of Sierra Blanca, Texas. Whether the little isolated, rocky possession belongs to Mexico or is a part of the public domain of the state of Texas is yet to be determined. The island's only claim to value and distinction is that there is located thereon a famous hot spring which is said to have remarkable medicinal properties for the cure of certain kinds of disease. The hot water flows in a bold stream from the spring, and, notwithstanding the long and rough overland road that must be traveled to reach the spot it is patronized by throngs of health-seekers. These pilgrims live in tents or sleep upon the bare ground with the broad canopy of heaven for a covering. The fact that title to the island and

on and takes them off herself like any other well .regulated little girl of her mature age.

Susie was rather a wild little girl when she first came to the university. Now she sits in a chair and eats her dinner with a fork, opens and closes doors when she walks around her little domain, says good-bye with a shake of her little paw in the conventional child way and advances to greet visitors with her hand extended in the most lady like manner imaginable. Susie is now over thirteen months old, with the intelligence, alertness and sense of a child of twice that

age.

The monkey in comparison with man develops fast.

The sense of color distinction of the little chimpanzee has improved with her education, so that now she never makes a mistake when told to open the red, the blue or the white lid of a row of varicolored boxes. She will hand with unerring accuracy a cube, a ball or a square to the visitor, when told to by her owner. She will take the lid off her little box of "jacks," spread these out before her and select one, two or three, and gravely hand them over as told to.

The favored children of the neighborhood who have been permitted to come in and play with Susie are delighted with her and Susie is no less delighted with them. She plays their games with wonderful intelligence. Hide and seek came naturally to Susie. She plays this game with perfect regard for the rules and will play it tirelessly as long as a child remains with her. She will chase them round and round, run and dare them to follow and in a word has every attribute of the "kid" in her antics and her mannerisms. Only one thing seems to puzzle Susie. She cannot understand why the children are unable to climb the posts up which she darts, to slide quickly to the bottom. She tries to pull a playmate by the hand and when she has got the child near the posts endeavors to drag him or her up by main force. Then she will climb rapidly to the top, slide down, repeat the operation a few times and again try to drag the child playmate up the post. She evidently thinks the youngsters clumsy rompers, far inferior to a chimpanzee in athletic accomplishments.

IN California, "pressed wood" is a new fuel that is rapidly becoming popular. Fuel for domestic purposes has always commanded exorbitant prices in southern California, bituminous coal selling at retail at from twelve to fourteen dollars per ton, and wood cut to stove lengths at about the same figures per cord. In the high price of fuel, some one perceived the opportunity to win wealth from waste by utilizing a part of the

enormous quantity of shavings and sawdust that is annually wasted, or at best used to poor advantage, in sawmills, planing mills and similar establishments. So he patented a machine for pressing shavings, and sawdust into molds. A string through the center of the mold. helps hold the material together, and the heavy pressure to which it is subjected is all that is necessary to accomplish the

rest.