ATHIN wall of granite holds the

enormous weight of the Lake of the Incas in the Chilean Andes and prevents it from breaking loose and sweeping from its height of ten thousand feet into the valley of the Aconcagua below. A dangerous possibility lurked in the fact that an earthquake or a snowslide was

liable to precipitate

the flood at any time, but American engineers have tunneled

up to the bed of the lake and are using the water for power to serve the valley and to remove the greatest danger of catastrophe. The cities of the province below will be served by the turbines which are being installed at the mouth of the tunnel tapping the lake. A great earthquake would still be apt to send a flood roaring down on the thousands

CINEMATOGRAPHS
FOR LINERS

OVING pictures are being established on transatlantic liners for advertising and for the amusement of the passengers. Regular dramatic films will be shown during the trips and the cost will be covered by the advertisers who will have films picturing their places of business to the people traveling to strange countries. Arrangements are being made whereby a film which a hotel company or a drygoods store has taken for exhibition in the salon can be shown in one or

all of the ships of a certain line. Many advertisers. may join in the production of a single reel, a lecturer giving detailed information, as to where and what the foreigner should buy. American films will be shown on the western passage and European views on the eastern passage.

Advertising men say that for actual returns an indirect advertising plan, the moving picture thus used should prove to be absolutely unsurpassed as a result getter.

BLIND AUTO REPAIRMAN SUCCEEDS

NEVER has Ray

an

Fortney seen automobile. But he can take one apart and put it together again with the carbureter in perfect "tune" and every cam in place and the gears where they ought to be. Fortney is a blind man who "sees" with his fingers.

Repairing pianos has been his occupation, but recently he started to learn the automobile repair business. He now does much of the work on cars left at the automobile school for repairs. In a few weeks he will be graduated from the school as an expert automobile machinist, having demonstrated that eye

sight is not necessary in the repairing of

He grew tired of twisting his neck sideways to watch the drill mark. So he cut a two-by-four just as long as the drill is wide and fastened one end of it directly behind the center of the drill, running a wire from the middle of the timber to the left side of the drill. With a little wooden runner fastened to the outer end of the timber, weighted down so that it would cut into the ground, the marker was complete. He drives so as to keep the little wheel on the mark made the round before.

SEEN ON THE LONDON STREETS

It looks as though it were built for the war office but in reality it is merely an honest attempt by an English engineer to build the right sort of a car to contend with the British climate. The only battles it will have to pass through are those with wind. rain, snow, sleet, and mud, for all of which Great Britain is famous. As it is the little car can sail through almost anything which presents itself.

THE "WAMPUS" OF THE TRACKS

LOCOMOTIVES with smoke

stacks next to the tender and the cab at the front end are used in hauling heavy passenger and freight trains up the steep grades of the Sierras. This avoids the blinding and choking of the enginemen by smoke while going through the miles of snow-sheds and tunnels. The passenger engines have twelve high drivewheels and doubleheaded can take the heavy trains over steep grades at high speed. The freight engines have sixteen drivewheels of smaller diameter. They are built for power, their capacity being rated at nearly two thousand tons each up a two per cent grade at ten miles per hour, ten times their own weight. Both types use oil for fuel. These engines are known among railroad men as "wampuses."

The railway station men still enjoy the novelty of seeing the huge locomotives top a grade, the big cab square in front like an interurban car, the smokestack belching exhaust steam from the rear, just in front of the tender.

The "Wampus" is a pronounced stride forward in the engineer's problem of putting trains over the steep mountain grades of the West.

F the average length of life of mankind continues to increase at the same percentage of gain of the last century, the time is not far distant when one hundred and fifty years will be the usual span of a human life. This may seem a remarkable statement but it is no more remarkable than the facts upon which it is based.

The average longevity in the United States at present is placed at 44 years. Records kept in the New England States show that in 1789 the average life was 35 years; in 1855, 40 years; in 1895, 45 years; and in 1903, 47 years. The increase of longevity in Europe is still more significant. In Switzerland, in the sixteenth century, the average life was only 21.2 years, but in the seventeenth century it had reached 25.7 years. The eighteenth century was marked by an average of 33.6 years, while the nineteenth century saw an increase to 39.7 years.

Let the estimates of Professor Finkelnberg of Bonn University answer those skeptics who gloomily gloomily assert that people do not live as long as they used to, that we are becom

lings, and that civilization is proving the undoing of mankind. The average life over all Europe in the sixteenth century, was 18 years. Now it is 40 years, a gain of more than one hundred per cent in three centuries.

The more progressive and civilized a nation, the longer is the average life. there, for it is shown conclusively that the countries of the United States, England, Germany, France, Sweden, and others have greatly lengthened the chain of life, while the average in India at present is only 23.6 years. In 1881, the average in India was 23.7 years and

two hundred years ago the average was 19 years. China's average human life is but fractionally different from that of India.

But the increase of the past does not indicate the increase of the present or the future, for all authorities agree that the more highly civilized nations are actually doubling the percentage of increased longevity, due to discoveries of the last ten years in causes and cures of diseases, enforced observance of the hygienic and sanitation laws, pure food, length of work