satisfactory for the average farm. When the large power is to be supplied by the gasoline engine, the dynamo can be run at the same time, requiring a little more gasoline but no more time. Under such circumstances, the cost of electric lights will be as close to nothing as it is possible to have good lights.

The dynamo, switchboard and battery are shipped ready to set up. In most cases, a good electrician should be secured to install the dynamo and cells and do the wiring. The cells must be

watched carefully. Distilled water should be used to fill the batteries. The water must be

from the number of hours that artificial light is used now. It must be remembered. that the electric system should be large enough for the heaviest average load demanded from it, which is sometime in the winter. This does not mean that the battery should have sufficient capacity to run ail the lights on the place at one time for any length of time. On special occasions, as parties, the dynamo can be run in parallel with the batteries. A switchboard to permit this should be purchased, always.

The average house with seven rooms, cellars and closets, should burn less than three hundred watts a week. The storage battery of a ten-ampere outfit will produce three hundred watts without re

It

above the plates at all times. is advisable to purchase thin boards to separate the plates as any connection, even a flake from one of the plates, will reduce the value of the cells. The battery should be charged and discharged, occasionally, to its full capacity if the demand upon it is not sufficient to do so. If this is not done, it will not work satisfactorily.

A ten-ampere battery will operate all the lights required for a seven or eight room house as well as lights for the outbuildings. In addition, a small vacuum cleaner, electric toaster, wringer, washing machine, sewing machine, fan, or electric iron can be used.

The farmer, after determining the number and sizes of lights he desires in each room, must estimate the number of hours they will burn in the morning and evening. These figures can be obtained

charging. It It takes eight hours to charge the battery after it has been discharged, completely.

The cost of wiring the house will vary between forty and one hundred dollars depending upon the amount and grade of wiring and fixtures used. A house can be wired cheaper when it is being built than any other time. The cost of upkeep is slight. At the end of six years, new positive plates for the cells may be required at an expense of one

hundred dollars.

Another electric outfit is called the "direct-connected." The generator in this system is connected to the engine directly instead of by a belt as in the tenampere plant. A direct-connected system will cost between eight and nine hundred dollars because a special engine must be furnished to obtain an even speed and smooth lights. As there are no storage cells, the engine must be run whenever the lights are used, which would be unhandy in the mornings on a cold winter day. As the generator in this outfit has a higher voltage than the storage battery system, the wires can be strung farther from the generator.

Other systems have been tried as well as combinations of the several types. These two, however, are the most successful for the farmer, with preference given to the storage battery outfit.

spider, though the true tarantula is a large European wolf spider.

There are few more beautiful objects than a spider's web covered with dew. In symmetry, in perfection of geometrical arrangement, and in the prismatic reflection of color it is a gorgeous object. And consider the wonderful devices that our garden spider has for attending to its toilet. Was ever comb in lady's boudoir more perfect or more attractive than these combs that the spider has at the end of the claws to aid in manipulating the cobweb threads, in clinging to a rough object and as aids in walking over the web?

What an exemplification of the Darwinian doctrine of the struggle for existence is in the silky bag in which the mother spider envelopes her eggs, there to be hatched and to eat one another. She may place within this bag one hundred and fifty eggs while from it will issue only a dozen spiders although every one will be hatched. The strong have eaten their brothers and sisters. The egg-bag shown in one of the illustrations is that of the "golden ladder" spider, often seen in the garden, especially in the early autumn. It spins. a large, circular web, usually crossed by a broad

SPIDER'S TONGUE, GREATLY MAGNIFIED,

what a luscious thing would be our Eperia or Ariadne. No longer would we shudder and keep away from the horrible thing, but would say, "Come, friends, let us gather around the festive board and have a taste of this delicious spider."

a

But, seriously, is there any reason why a person should not know and admire spider? Unfortunately, though there are in any locality about three or four hundred species of spiders, only a few have common names because they are absolutely unknown by the so-called "common people." Most of us are familiar with the garden spider, the black spider, the jumping spider and possibly the running spider. But when we have done with these, if we see any big spider we can call it a tarantula because somewhere we have seen a picture of this famous

JAWS AND FEELERS OF Dolomedes. A WATER SPIDER.

zigzag band of white silk, that gives a striking effect.

It must be confessed that when it comes to the jaws of the spider and the curious palpi we have a formidable weapon of attack whose construction excites admiration. If those jaws were larger and were filled with a luscious lump of meat as with the lobster, they would probably look as attractive as any

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thing on the table. These jaws not only retain the food but give passage to a poison that enters and benumbs the prey. The face, jaws (mandibles) and feelers. (palpi) are from a water spider. These spiders are not uncommon, although we seldom see them, perhaps because we do not look. They are found near the water, and some can dive and remain below the surface for more than an hour.

T

EN years ago a man bought 640 acres of land in New Madrid county, Missouri, paying $1.25 an acre. Not an inch of the land was visible, the entire section being covered with water, ranging in depth from one to six feet. The neighbors called the man crazy; the investment might turn out all right if he went into the fish business, but so far as farming was concerned, even the primitive Ori

ental ways of raising rice would not work out here.

But the

man was

just a little bit

shrewder than his neighbors. He was not much interested in the forests of gum and oak and cypress, so dense that it was difficult to push a skiff through. He was looking ahead to the inevitable day when a drainage ditch would be dug along one side of the bog-lake and the section of land at last would be visible. The drainage ditch was dug and six years after the land had been bought for $800 it was sold to an Iowa farmer for $11,200, which is at the rate of $17.50 an acre.

The Iowa farmer likewise saw into the future with the eyes of faith. The land was yet a bog, but the owner dug lateral ditches and made the land dry enough to farm. He cleared it, sell

to pay the cost of the work. On the first 125 acres thus ready for cultivation he planted a crop of corn between the stumps. The black alluvial soil, enriched by fertilizing elements deposited by the floods for countless years, produced ninety bushels of corn to the acre the first year. Last year the Iowa farmer was offered $41,600 for the land which had sold for $800 nine years before. He

refused the offer, although it meant a profit to him of $30,400 on an investment of $11,200 in two years.

Again.

Ten years ago forty acres of inundated land in the same Missouri county likewise sold for $1.25 an acre. It was covered with a heavy growth of oak, gum and elm. Two years ago the timber was sold for $5 an acre on the stump. The land