T

HIRTY thousand dollars extracted from twelve acres of ground every year, of which at least twelve thousand dollars the farmer puts in the bank as profits after paying all expenses! This is the record of a farmer near Cleveland, Ohio, who was formerly a city man, but who went back to the soil and made good. His name is Martin L. Ruetenik.

From the city with its blare of noises and its dusty streets this man sought out a little farm, settled down and is now making as much money as the head of many a successful business corporation. After a weary struggle of several years the ground gave forth its bounty and today he is clearing over a thousand dollars a month, owns and operates two automobiles and several carriages-has a cozy home and a happy family.

In one year 1907-the farm returned

twenty thousand dollars in profits, the gross receipts being about double that sum. For this year Ruetenik hopes to realize a total of about fifteen thousand dollars in profits, after all expenses are paid.

Thus this enterprising farmer is making one thousand dollars an acre per year from his land. It is true that he has become a specialist, yet it is also true that every cent is made from the soil itself. Nothing is manufactured except with the assistance of soil and nature.

Ruetenik's little farm contains eighteen acres in all, but only twelve acres are under cultivation. Eighteen men are employed on these twelve acres, every square inch of which is made to produce revenue in the way of vegetables.

Martin Ruetenik is a brilliant example of a man who has. learned to use his

brains. Beginning on a piece of land without any special advantages as to fer

stantly at work seeking to improve the quality of his vegetables and to discover new means for getting them to the people when the prices are highest.

Back in 1883, H. J. Ruetenik, President of Calvin College, Cleveland, grew inexpressibly weary of city life. He decided to go back to the soil and rest his brain and exercise his body. He had a sixteenyear-old son, Martin L. Ruetenik, whom he decided to take with him.

The Rueteniks started in to do some scientific gardening. They read up the newest methods of fertilizing their land, discussed the best ways of planting, cultivating and harvesting their crops.

When the college professor and his son balanced their books at the beginning of the first year, they discovered that they had lost about five hundred dollars. The

same thing happened the second year. The third year the balance was somewhat smaller. So it was the fourth year. The fifth year they broke even and thereafter the profits began to appear.

The younger Ruetenik began studying the use of hothouses in raising farm crops. Doing a general gardening business from the very first the young man discovered that more money could be made from certain crops and as money was what he was after, he promptly began to specialize in those crops celery, tomatoes, asparagus, lettuce, pie plant, beets and several other vegetables. The main crops, however, were celery, tomatoes and lettuce.

It was about 1888 that young Ruetenik built his first greenhouse. It was ten by fifty feet in size and has since been torn

down. He started growing lettuce and tomatoes for the early spring and later fall markets, when it could not be obtained from other sources.

The greenhouse didn't pay its way the first year nor the second year either. A little thing like that, however, didn't discourage Ruetenik, who about this time purchased his father's interest in the farm and began running it alone. He kept right along and the third year the greenhouse broke about even on receipts and expenditures. Thereafter it began

to pay big money. Ruetenik built three or four greenhouses each year for five or six years until he had a total of about twenty-five houses in 1900, since which time he had made no new extensions, being kept busy looking after their contents and always maintaining them in first-class order. He had 120,000 square feet, or nearly three of the twelve acres of land under glass.

In a number of these houses crops of lettuce are raised all winter. Beginning about the end of July the little plants, some 255,000 of them this year, were set out. The crop was in shape for the market about the end of August and from that time until the first of the next June lettuce is being sent to market almost every day. The garnish on the roast at Thanksgiving or Christmas in many a home comes from Ruetenik's hot houses. He plants and raises three crops of lettuce in his hot houses each year. In the fall, he sells a case of forty heads for as low as 35 cents or as high as $2.00, according to the season, the supply and the demand. Lettuce which he sells to the Cleveland wholesaler for five cents a head the grocer sells to the consumer for about fifteen cents, so that there is considerable profit for others from Ruetenik's business.

Tomatoes are another of Ruetenik's profitable crops. He sows his seed in the hot houses about February first. While the snow is swirling above the glass roof the tender plants shoot up, the temperature being kept from sixty to eighty degrees as required. The little

plants are carefully tended and trained in one tall vine, being hung with twine to a series of wires above. Some vines grow six and eight feet high, with tomatoes hanging ripe and red every three or four inches. A year ago Ruetenik sold 12,000 baskets of ten pounds each from fourteen greenhouses at $1 a basket, or a total of $12,000. The crop which is sowed early in February is marketed from June fifteenth to August fifteenth

long before home-grown tomatoes are available in the Cleveland territory and when they sell at from eight to twenty cents a pound.

Cucumbers are another profitable crop raised by this gardener. He begins his crop in the early spring and harvests it late in May and early in June. His crop the past year consisted of 500 bushels which he sold at $2.00 a bushel, realizing $1,000.

Four of the nine acres outdoors are set to celery, some 200,000 plants being grown. These plants are put out in June and July and are harvested in September, October and November, when they sell for about $2.00 per 100 plants. Such a crop is worth to Ruetenik about $4,400.

Pie plant is raised on sections of the twelve acres which are on a hillside and which cannot well be cultivated for other purposes. Over $200.00 a year per acre is realized on the pie plant. Each plant of rhubarb lasts about five years and is then replaced. Each year about fifty tons of manure, costing $1.00 a ton, are scattered over the area devoted to pie plant.

Several acres are devoted to asparagus, beets, carrots and other vegetables, which are set out just as early as possible so they can be marketed a few weeks ahead of the regular crop. A patch of about an acre of sweet corn was grown this year and sold at 25 cents a dozen ears. Three weeks later a neighbor living almost next door sold his sweet corn on the Cleveland market for two cents a dozen! Such is the difference in men. Ruetenik uses his brains and the other fellows don't.

T

HE discovery of the X-ray and its use for examining the interior of the body doubtless ranks fore

most among recent achievements of the human mind, and the pre sent advance of medical science is in great part due to the valuable aid yielded by these wonderful rays to which

most of our tissues are transparent. Now, as there are limitations to everything, even the Xray has not proved to be perfect. While, in fact, in many cases inspection from all sides. would be desirable, the X-ray only allows the body to be inspected in a given direction.

A German scientist,. Professor W. Spalteholz of Leipzig University, has designed a process allowing transparent anatomical preparations to be obtained. This result he reached by surprisingly simple means

-a purely physical process, that leaves the bulk of tissues entirely intact. As shown by comprehensive experiments, a certain optical law, which has long been known in the case of mineral substances, also applies to organized animal vegetable-bodies. According to this law, a given body will reflect a

or

minimum of light and possess a maximum of transparency, if surrounded by and soaked in a substance, the index of

refraction of which equal the average refraction of the body. It is true that the various tissues of an animal or vegetable organism possess rather different indices but each tissue, each organ and even each body, has an average refraction on which the optical process can be The question

based.

now is, to find out chemically indifferent liquids which will neither decompose themselves nor alter the tissues.

The body to be made. transparent is preferably inserted in a rectangular glass vessel with polished faces, avoiding any diffusion. and losses of light that may be due to an irregular surface. By properly mixing two special liquids, the index of refraction is readily varied so as to make any given tissue transparent.

An interesting point brought out by Spalteholz's experiments is the discovery of the existence of certain laws controlling the index of refraction of a given tissue with various animal species and various ages of given species, refraction being as rule

a