ON AN AMERICAN MACHINE STEAM CLEARS TRACK OF THE lumber regions in Northern California were overrun with caterpillars recently to an extent that made life miserable for the loggers and even interfered seriously with railroad. traffic until a clever device was originated by a railroad man to check them. Thousands of the little creatures were crushed by the wheels of the logging trains, rendering the track so slippery that it was impossible to secure traction, and not only was traffic impeded but it became a very dangerous matter to run the trains over tracks as slippery as if they had been greased. The Canadians took a number of light gun motorcycles to the European war. CANADIANS USE AMERICAN MOTORCYCLES THE Canadian troops with their Maxim gun motorcycles recently arrived in England for duty on the Continent. The chief advantage of the latest type of motor gun carriage is the extreme speed of which it is capable. Such a corps can be sent on ahead of the regular artillery and the infantry at a rate of forty miles an hour or, if desirable, the engines can be so throttled down that the corps may accompany the more slowly moving parts of a battery. In the tests held before the Winnipeg troop left for Europe, the threewheeled gun carriages crossed plowed fields, went through deep water, and had no trouble whatsoever in going where the infantry could, and in outdistancing the artillery. The machines were turned out by an American manufacturer, the American make proving more satisfactory than any other that could be obtained. The steel rails were selected as a particularly convenient thoroughfare for the insects, and the methods used to clear them were quite ineffective. Men with brooms were stationed in front of the engines, standing upon the cowcatchers and endeavoring to sweep them away. This resulted in crushing so many of the soft bodies that it did no good, and other plans proved equally futile. Sand would not do the work, and creolin helped for only a few minutes. CLEARING THE TRACK OF CATERPILLARS The two spouts sent steam in a jet onto the track as the engine proceeded. Danger from slippery tracks was thus eliminated. PANAMA SUGAR REFINERY BUILT BY NATIVES The four tree trunks used have been hewed enough to make the machine. It is built on the edge of a sugar cane field, for immediate use. Finally an attachment placed in front of the locomotive cowcatcher and connected with the boiler solved the problem. Tubes conveyed live steam and directed it forcibly upon the tracks, and the caterpillars were thrown out of the way. FOUR TREES MAKE THE Panama sugar refinery shown in the picture consists of nothing but four tree trunks, a length of jungle vine, some smaller lengths of wood, and a can. Two of the trunks are planted upright in the ground; the other two, which have been slotted, are mounted through holes, and the whole is tied together with vines. The short pieces are driven through the end of the upper roller to serve as handles, and the refinery is ready to meet the market demands. Of course, a refinery of this sort is built adjacent to a field of sugar cane. Two natives turn the roller while others bring in the cane. The syrup is caught in a can and later is boiled off, just as it is done in the sugar camps of Vermont. The only tool used in the construction of this plant was a machete, which also serves the cane gatherers for cutting cane and the native soldiers as a weapon. SCOOP CAR REMOVES DÉBRIS IN order to remove débris from a rail road track, the new scoop car is equipped with a shovel nose that can be automatically dumped. automatically dumped. Such a car was built originally a number of years ago, but was a failure because it had to be unloaded by pick and shovel men. The new device is equipped with a derrick boom attached to the front end of the scoop. When the little car which runs ahead of the trucks is filled the engineer hoists it to one side and dumps it. WORKING LIKE A GREAT SNOW PLOW The new scoop car lifts débris off the track as it proceeds and dumps it at the side. LINKS WHICH MAKE UP THE ARMORED AUTOMOBILE TIRE STEEL-ARMORED TIRE A STEEL pneumatic tire has been placed on the market after severe practical tests on the roughest of rocky, mountainous roads. The tire consists of many interlocking steel plates, with a lining of fabric, within which is the usual inner tubing of rubber, inflated with air. This tire affords the same resiliency as the usual rubber casing. The steel plates are said to offer better traction than rubber, especially on wet pavements. In addition, this new tire is really puncture-proof, and it cannot rim-cut. Neither does it deteriorate from age, exposure to light, or THE ARMORED TIRE It might be especially valuable for war motors. These transverse sections interlock on the tread, while added support is afforded at the rim. This arrangement gives perfect flexibility and strength. DIVING IN CRISTOBAL HARBOR Submarines have been stationed in the Canal Zone to be on hand, in case of hostilities, for the protection of the canal. S By CARL L. VOSS CARE heads of three-inch type in the newspapers, announcing: "TERRIBLE DYNAMITE EXPLOSION -THREE MEN KILLED", are periodic. Somewhere else in the paper perhaps you may read the statement, comparatively inconspicuous, that six men were drowned when their boat capsized. The apparent reason for this seems to be that the drowning of six men is rather a prosaic and commonplace way of having life snuffed out, when compared with being "blown to atoms" by dynamite. Often, after reading the carefully played up details of an explosion, the average reader shudders and wonders why the manufacture of such destructive stuff as dynamite is permitted, although he seems to accept the drowning of the six men as quite regular, and in the scheme of so necessary a phase of human activity as is navigation. In the face of the enormous consumption of explosives in the present terrible European conflict, the military use of explosives in the world is relatively insignificant as compared with their use for other purposes. In the United States alone, there were used 489,393,131 pounds of explosives in 1912. This vast quantity was used for industrial purposes alone the mining of coal and metals, and for railroad building. Motion pictures of the Panama Canal, and other construction work, have shown how, in a single charge, 10,000 or 20,000 pounds of dynamite have been exploded. But in the near vicinity of Chicago there are a number of large stone quarries where the explosion of a carload of 20,000 pounds of dynamite at one time is not so unusual as to cause any particular mention. In fact, the other day, when a single blast of 22,050 pounds of dynamite was ex BURNING THIRTY-THREE HUNDRED POUNDS AT A CHARGE The men retreated but a little way and the whole mass, over one and a half tons, was shot by the pressure of a button. BLOWING OUT THE STUMPS The quickest and one of the cheapest ways of clearing land is with dynamite. AFTER THE POWDER HAS WORKED the world. The copper country is also in the upper peninsula of Michigan. These mining districts, covering comparatively small area, annually consume millions upon millions of pounds of explosives. In the southwestern corner of Missouri there is a section. known as the Joplin district, where tremendous quantities of explosives are used in mining lead and zinc. In Franklin and Williams Counties in Illinois, the coal mines. blast millions of pounds annually, and yet Pennsylvania leads, by far, all the States for explosive consumption. The use of explosives is constantly embracing a larger field, and the methods of blasting are improving, not only in large engineering work, but even down to so simple an operation One of the jobs that giant powder undertakes today is to dig ditches in a hurry. peninsula of Michigan there is a quarry which, last year, consumed more than a half million pounds of dynamite. In the upper peninsula of Michigan, |