T

HE finest and largest baseball park in the United States, in fact in the world, is at Pittsburg, Pa. This magnificent home of the Pittsburg baseball club was opened to the public the last of June, when the Pirates measured strength with the Chicago team on the model new diamond. Taken all in all, ground and buildings included, the new ball park represents a value of at least $850,000, or something like $100,000 more than the actual invest

ment.

The stand is of steel and concrete and measures 800 feet, being in the form of a right angle with the apex directly back of the catcher's place. By facing it to the east and south the spectators will be totally free from the least glare of the sun in the afternoon, at which time most games are played.

The main stand seats approximately 20,000 people. Boxes occupy the im

mediate front of both the lower deck and balcony and there being two floor levels spectators sitting in the rear row of the boxes can easily see over the heads of those in front.

The "bleachers" are of reinforced concrete built in 43 rows of steps seating 6,000 persons. These seats are of plank set on iron braces. The enormity of the new work at the park may be realized by a few imposing figures. There is enough building material there to fill 537 large freight cars; 60 for the structural steel; 60 for the brick and lumber; 45 for the cement and terra cotta; 15 for the sand and gravel; 30 for the grand stand chairs; 21 for sewer pipe, glass, elevators, etc., and 21 for cornice iron, roofing, plumbing, rails, etc. About 1,400 tons of steel were used in the grand stand alone as against only 490 in the fine new Shibe ball park at Philadelphia opened this year. More than 2,000 cubic yards of concrete were used in building retaining walls at the lower end of the field to form merely its "back fence."

T

HE cleptograph, as may be inferred from its name, is an apparatus for the recording of theft, which automatically photographs those who break into office or house and accurately registers the hour of their visit.

The inventor of this ingenious outfit, Signor G. B. E. Camusso, managing director of a savings bank at Pinerolo, Italy, was kind enough to place at our disposal some particulars about its manner of working.

The room to be protected by the cleptograph contains a system of wires and contacts that are properly distributed over the windows, doors, safes, etc., being connected with all objects of value.

As soon as a stranger penetrates the room, a photographic camera, under the action of some contact, involuntarily and unconsciously touched by the person, will direct itself automatically towards the contact, that is towards the thief, and after having opened the objective shutter, will ignite the magnesium powder intended to supply the flashlight, and then again will close the objective after the view has been taken, to exchange the film, get a new portion of powder ready and register the exact hour.

The whole of these divers operations is completed in less time than is required to describe it, the apparatus being immediately ready for taking another view, as soon as the intruder touches some other contact, and so on. Like an invisible detective, the cleptograph thus follows any motions of the thief, in order to prepare a set of authentic and irrefutable documents, to assist the police in their search for the criminal.

The apparatus above described is bound to render the highest services to bankers, jewelers and anybody whose house, owing to valuables contained

therein, is exposed to being visited by burglars. Its adoption will be facilitated by the cheapness of its installation which, outside of the photographic camera, does not entail any higher expense than the laying out of an electric lighting system. The current required for working the apparatus is either half of that of an ordinary battery orafter due reduction through proper resistances the current derived from the electric mains. Being enclosed in a box entirely hidden from the burglar, the cleptograph cannot possibly be harmed by the latter no matter how promptly he may be alarmed by its action or however much he may wish to destroy it.

A

A NATURAL ICE-CHEST

WAY out in the central part of Oregon, in the midst of an arid, barren waste of a thousand tormenting physical antics, Nature has turned a somersault. Ask a man who has been along the southern boundary of Crook county, who has viewed the whitecrested Deschutes river, swaying and pitching in its fascinating upheaval through a deep canyon to the point where it jams pell-mell against a three-mile lava bed and loses half its volume; who has stood on the crumbling top of Lava

Butte in this same region and looked down into its desolate crater; who has seen a tributary of the Deschutes spring from the side of Black Butte with no apparent source of supply; who has sat down on the crusty, uncertain surface of a discouraging lava field with no water. visible for miles, yet heard its refreshing gurgle way down beneath his feet; who has traveled miles in this region and beheld a national wonder for every mile traversed-ask this man what he considers the greatest natural wonder in this valley of wonders. He will meditate a moment and then tell you the ice cave.

There are other ice caves in the west

and in the east, but they do not hold distinctive characteristics as does this one in Central Oregon, whose formation and existence remain today unaccounted for.

If Crook county's natural ice-chest had but the single unique feature of being situated fifteen miles from the nearest visible water-the Deschutes river to the westward-that in itself would be sufficient to excite wonder. But in addition, this great cavity in the earth's surface is at an elevation of 4,200 feet. Round about is a level table-land of bunch-grass and sage-brush. The whole is an immense, tropical, arid region where scarcely more than a thimbleful of rain descends yearly.

For centuries-ever since the physical elements in their fiery combat turned, tore and twisted the country into a shapeless mass, threw up volcanoes. which in turn belched forth streams of lava that spread over miles of territory, heaved up the mighty Cascades and left the basin immediately to the east a dry, unproductive expanse-the ice cave in Central Oregon has been the one oasis in an area stretching from Crooked river south to the Paulina mountains and east

ward from the Deschutes to the confluence of the Crooked and Ochoco rivers.

The main cave is a declivity some fifty feet deep. A cave, more particularly in the sense that apparently the earth here has caved in, leaving a great cup in the surface. At the bottom of the cup are the ice chambers.

One comes upon it suddenly in a fringe of small pines. Mounting a gentle rise in the roadway, it opens out before you like a great animal's mouth expanded in a yawn. At the surface the temperature-say it is August-is resting comfortably at 105. The earth is hot and parched and sends forth shimmering undulations of heat that depress the visitor.

Four dozen feet below, however, there is a marked change. One steps from the incline of the precipitous embankment leading into the mouth of the natural refrigerator directly upon a floor of ice. It is thick and as solid as the forbidding rock walls that surround and shut out from the ears the faintest whisper of sound from the breezes above. This is the first chamber. Fifteen feet across the ice the walls narrow down to a

small aperture through which one has to crawl to gain entrance into the second chamber. The latter is about the same area as the first-fifteen feet square.

Until a few years ago, these ice reservoirs were used extensively for furnishing water to herds of cattle and bands of sheep passing to and from the summer ranging grounds grounds in the Cascades. Stockmen built a trough on the bank above and by using a windlass drew up huge cubes of ice, after cutting them from the floor of the chambers. These were allowed to melt and thus water was supplied yearly to many head of sheep and cattle.

When, a few years ago, a private irrigation company established its headquarters at Bend, a little town nineteen miles

northwest of the cave, and began the task of reclaiming some 300,000 acres of desert land, the ice-chest which Nature had so thoughtfully placed within reach was immediately put to better

use.

Today the housewives. in Bend are supplied with ice from this natural cold storage warehouse. The land surrounding the cave was homesteaded with the advent of Bend, which sprang up over night when irrigation dawned, and the owner of "Bend's Cooler" came into possession of an independent ice dealer with all the product made to order without effort on his part. The immense squares of congealed water are carted from the cave to a store-house in Bend, there cut into required sizes and distributed during summer days.

The ice in the chambers is cut from the edges of the floor. Within a few hours from the time that cubes weighing from 200 to 500 pounds are lifted to the surface the cavities fill with water, which forces its way from below, freezing is again in process, and a new cube formed to take the place of the one sawed out.

Members of the geological and geodetic survey, who visited Crook county's cave, do not account definitely for the rapid transformation of water, the latter apparently coming from nowhere. The theory is advanced that the water supply is derived by seepage from the Deschutes river, whose restless body circles miles to the southward and at an elevation above the cave. Beneath the surface, whose soil is decomposed volcanic ash, the earth is porous-a honeycomb of lava rock still in the slow process of disintegration.