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has been introduced, who are willing to sell direct to householders, mention being made in each case of what farm products the individual has for sale.

The Farm-to-City Service is only just getting under way but seemingly all the big problems have been solved and now it can be rapidly extended to the entire country. The problems, however, have been numerous enough. One of the most difficult was to devise egg containers that would insure the safe carriage of the precious contents and yet would not be so weighty as to run up the postage charges. Several designs of successful shock-proof egg egg carriers have been evolved and most of them are so arranged that they may be may be readily "knocked down" and returned to the farmer. Indeed the plan of returning to the rural shippers the egg containers, hampers, and other receptacles in which farm produce is shipped to the city is one of the economies which has been made an essential feature of this new system of distribution. The fact that shipments. from the country may be sent C. O. D. has also tended to reassure many farm

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In a nutshell the plan is one whereby the farmer who has produce of any kind for sale is enabled to dispose of it direct to householders in the cities-presumably at prices somewhat less than would be charged were the eatables to reach their destination through the usual roundabout route, involving profits for middlemen. It might appear a comparatively simple matter to establish such a service but in reality it has entailed a vast amount of work, particularly inasmuch as Uncle Sam assumed from the outset a paternal attitude and undertook to actually bring buyers and sellers together. In the rôle of go-between, the Postoffice Department had lists of farmers printed in the cities where the system

ers.

The Farm-to-City Service was first tried out in ten cities of varying size. Now that the innovation has proven itself a rapid extension is planned and the service has been introduced of late in Chicago, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and other cities. Arrangements are being made whereby the Government will install large refrigerators at every postoffice where the new service is in operation, in order that perishable products may be properly cared for if there is any delay in delivery. Urban and interurban trolley lines are being made to aid in the quick transit from the farms to the city homes and the Postoffice Department plans to make extensive use of motor trucks in order that no time may be lost in the transfer of butter, eggs, green vegetables, dressed poultry, etc. Some farmers are already shipping "cottage cheese" by parcel post and it looks as though ice-cream would be next.

FISHING WITH BOW AND

ARROW

CHEMISTS HASTEN THE SILKWORM

ALTHOUGH among the lowest of RECENT reports from Japan an

the primitive peoples in the social scale, the Andamanese Islanders, in the Bay of Bengal, are magnificent physical specimens, and probably have no rivals in their skill with the bow and arrow. They shoot birds and small animals, and are not averse even to attacking the tiger and leopard with these weapons, but their greatest their greatest cleverness is exhibited in shooting fish -a feat which requires remarkable

nounce that the Government Research Laboratories at Tokio are making revolutionary discoveries in silkworm culture. These discoveries bid fair to rival the epoch-making work of Pasteur in the silk industry of France a quarter of a century ago.

Under normal conditions there are two crops of silk cocoons each year, the time required for each crop of eggs to hatch and mature being about six months. The

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The Andamanese Islanders, in the Bay of Bengal, still hunt with primitive weapons, but they have acquired great skill in their use.

judgment, as allowance must be made for refraction, varying with the depth at which the fish is swimming. The bows, which are of ten feet or more in length, are of unusual shape, the lower one-third being straight and the curve confined to the upper two-thirds. The steel or flint-pointed arrows are from four to five feet in length, and are shot with accuracy to incredible distances. The Normans used bows as large and strong but the curve in theirs was continuous from end to end and hence were probably even more powerful.

Japanese laboratories have discovered. that this six months wait for the silkworm's eggs to hatch is quite unnecessary. If the eggs be dipped in a solution. of hydrochloric acid, the time required for hatching is only about two weeks and the total time for maturing is about one month. Like the treatment of bulbs in cold storage to hasten sprouting without. having to wait for the slower process of winter, the silkworm's eggs after being immersed in hydrochloric acid will hatch within two weeks and will yield twelve crops of silk cocoons per year, increasing Nature's original process sixfold.

Silkworms brought into the world by this acid method are stronger and more virile than the natural product and whereas the natural worm hatched at the end of six months spins only seven hundred fifty feet of silk fiber, the acid-produced worms spin almost eleven hundred feet of very strong fiber.

The increase in the number of crops, twelve in place of two, the extra yield of fifty per cent more silk and the greater virility of the worms, coupled with the fact that the process has not been patented but has been given outright to the people of Japan, will give an incalculable boom to the natural silk industry.

ELECTIONEERING
WITH FACTORY
WHISTLES

TOOT! Toot!! Toot!!! At

ten o'clock in the morning on the day of the recent election in California the whistles of factories, together with the horns of autos, cyclecars, and fish wagons reminded the voters in three cities of that State to vote "Yes" on three amendments which provided for state buildings in the cities of Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Eact toot, honk, screech, or blast thus emitted in the form of three short consecutive notes was a direct plea for the improvement, voiced by the owners of

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any sort of a noise-making device, and was probably the first case of electioneering by factory whistles on record. This was a matter of official arrangement as the proclamation of Mayor Rose of Los Angeles indicates: "Fellow Citizens: It has come to my knowledge that the cities of Sacramento and San Francisco

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THREE FOR A DOLLAR AND A QUARTER

A remarkable mushroom growth.

by proclamation of their respective mayors have prevailed upon their citizens to make use of factory whistles, steamship whistles, and automobile horns at ten o'clock Tuesday morning to remind the voters of the desirability and necessity of indorsing the state buildings amendments, Nos. 35, 36, and 38, at the polls. As Mayor of the City of Los Angeles, I believe it to be my duty to reciprocate the action of northern cities, which are promoting our interests as well as their own.

the

"I therefore urge upon

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AS BIG AS A COFFEE CUP

Mushrooms at forty cents apiece can be grown by the expert.

every factory owner, every automobilist or other possessor of noise-making devices, to give or cause to be given three loud and distinctive blasts in rapid succession at ten o'clock on the morning of election day, the demonstration to last ten minutes."

DRY "MOVIE" FILMS BY ELECTRICITY

THE constant

effort on the part of film manufacturers to beat each other out on big releases has led to the adoption of electricity in another department of the motion-picture studio, as it is

now used in the dryingroom of one of New York's up-to-date filmmanufacturing plants.

Not long ago a veteran in the motionpicture game, who is in charge of a large studio on the outskirts of the city, found he had several films which had to be rushed out by a certain date. The weather happened to be particularly humid just at that time, and the films, which were draped over the. drums in the drying room, were taking from ten to twelve hours to dry. The drying room has always stood in the way of fast work in the film manufacturing business, because all artificial

means of drying tried hitherto had resulted in the destruction of the reels experimented' with. When fans or ventilating systems were introduced the action of the air in the drying room resulted in scattering fine dust over the soft emulsion side of the films. This dust dried into the emulsion and produced spotty films.

of em

But the veteran developer decided that if he had to leave the releases ten hours before they were dry he would never get his work out in time. While pondering what to do, he hit upon the idea ploying electric heat in the drying work. For an experiment, he secured four three-thousand-watt beervat driers, similar to those used in large breweries, and had them installed in the drying room of his studio. Much to his gratification, the steady, even temperature of the electric driers dried the films in half an hour. In this way he had cut from three to five hours off the time required to manufacture photo plays. Moreover, he found that films dried by electric heat remained very tough and durable, whereas the films. left to hang for hours became water soaked and, as a result, easily torn.

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DRYING THE "MOVIES" Hurry films are being prepared in a beer-vat electric drier by a New York company.

T

FLAME

By

C. W. PERSON

HE largest electric lamp in the world was lighted the other night at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and simul

taneously the War Department's wireless station sent the following message to the dreadnaught Utah, anchored in Hampton

Roads, one hundred
nautical miles away

from the navy
yard: "Beck light
turned on. Can
you see it? If so,
where?-Navy
Yard." The mes-
sage received in five
minutes was: "Per-
fectly visible, south by
southeast. Utah."

This great light is kept cool by an alcohol flame. Very small carbons are used and tremendous heat developed, heat that would melt the

THE LIGHT COOLED WITH FLAME The alcohol vapor tank can be seen at the side.

lamp fittings and vaporize the carbons were it not for the little, almost invisible flame that cools the apparatus. The stream of alcohol vapor which makes the flame is supplied from the exterior of the lamp and the electrodes are kept revolving so that they are evenly cooled and burned. The cup on the end of the carbon, which is the source of light, is thus kept central and the area of the source kept very small, which are the two essential requirements for the production of enormous

candle-powers. Just as ice in an icecream freezer will freeze the mixture which the cook has prepared, the little alcohol flame, so much cooler than the arc itself, cools the latter as the ice does the cream.

The lantern, which is the invention of Heinrich Beck of Meiningen, Germany, is not only three to six times as powerful as those now in use in the army and navy but there is no other lantern like it in existence. Measured at two miles from the lamp 450,000,000 candle

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WITHOUT THE LAMP HOUSE The electrodes are revolved by an ingenious arrangement so that they will burn evenly.

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