Strawboard experts say it will revolutionize their business in a few years, while the farmers of the wheat belt, as well as the rice growers, see in this old abandoned cotton press a means of saving them thousands of dollars in straw which heretofore has been burned for lack of a profitable market. The main advantage of this form of compress is in the increased weight per volume which it makes possible.

The capacity of the compress used in the Stuttgart tests developed an average of about fifteen tons daily. The demonstrations were carried on outdoors for several days during more or less inclement weather and comparisons of efficiency were made with a square bale hay press in an adjoining field. The average cost of baling with the round press was one dollar and thirty-five cents a ton, as compared with about two dollars and twenty-five cents a ton for the square press, the capacity of the latter being less than ten tons a day, or one hundred and eighty bales. Of course, there were variations from day to day, but the average named is believed to represent a fair test.

While the daily output with the cotton press averaged but one hundred and twenty-five bales, the tonnage handled was nearly double that of the ordinary hay, and straw press. The finished round bale weighed two hundred and forty pounds, or forty-eight pounds to the cubic foot. These bales were eighteen inches in diameter and thirty-six inches long. A few bales half this length also were made. They were held together by a single strand of heavy wire.

Some idea of the saving obtained from

BALING RICE STRAW WITH A ROUND BALE PRESS

The tank on the high pole supplies hydraulic pressure.

833

the round bale in shipping and storage is gained when it is remembered that the ordinary square-shaped straw, or hay, bale averages forty-two inches in length, twenty-two inches in width, eighteen inches in height, and contains nearly one. hundred pounds. Twelve tons is considered a carload of the square shape, while forty-two tons were put into the first car loaded at Stuttgart with the round. bales. Owing to the increased density of this round bale over the ordinary square straw bale, a reduced freight rate averaging fifty cents a ton was obtained, thus opening the way for a broader market for straw.

Practically the same results were obtained with hay as with straw. The efficiency of the round bale press in the hay fields, however, is yet to be thoroughly worked out, though a few of the machines are said to have been used to a limited extent, locally, in some sections of Texas. Some of these round hay bales were shipped to South Africa during the Boer War and arrived in excellent condition, despite their long water voyage.

most as

match these. sult that were

Enthusiasts of this new process of baling straw and hay declare the bales are practically indestructible, being alhard as a brick. A was touched to one of straw bales with the reafter the "whiskers" burned off, the flames died therefore, contended that, the increased density of pack over the square bale, enabling the straw to be stored in a much smaller space, storage

THE

FLY-EATING LIZARDS

HE agitators of the "swat the fly" movement in this country would do well to import a few thousand of the little house lizards common to the Philippines. The creatures are the color of human flesh, and in a strong light are almost transparent. They can destroy more flies in a day than an army of "swatters" can gather in a month.

These little reptiles inhabit the walls and ceilings of all Philippine houses, and residents never think of harming them. It is due to their work that the islands have so few flies. Sometimes they will scamper across the ceiling like lightning, scooping up fly-food as they go; again,

they will

creep upon a

fly craftily, in

exact imitation of a

cat after a mouse, curling

their tails in anxiety as if afraid

the prey might escape. When within a few inches of the object, they leap upon it. It is rarely that one of the little fellows falls to the floor.

THUNDERSTORM
COMING?

AGERMAN com

pany has constructed a thunderstorm indicator which works on the principles of wireless telegraphy. The instrument consists of antennæ, spark gap, coherer, condenser, battery, relay, coils, and a gong. Every electrical dis

THUN

DERSTORM INDICATOR

A BED ON WHEELS

This bed was mounted on wheels and used for advertising purposes in a parade at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

charge in the atmosphere will cause a spark to jump the air gap. The coherer then establishes a circuit and the gong rings. According to the successions of the strokes of the gong, the distance of the storm can be

WHY SWAT
THE FLY?

To this lizard it is a delicacy.

estimated. Instead

of the

a

gong, ticker may be

inserted into the cir

cuit and the discharges of the air gap are then registered on a paper band.

OCEAN-BED CHANGES AND EARTHQUAKES

T has been shown that many of the violent changes that occur under the surface of the oceans produce effects that are distinctly, and sometimes disastrously, felt on the land.

It appears that, wherever a profound cavity exists in the bed of the ocean near land and wherever the border of a continent slopes off into a deep sea, great slides are apt to occur, and these often cause earthquakes.

In Japan a large number of earthquakes come from the deep sea off the mouth of the Tonegawa, the largest of From time to the Japanese rivers. time the accumulated deposit slides into the depths of deep hollows, shaking even

This new and somewhat astonishing bit of commercial enterprise is due to the fast vanishing supply of the world's ivory and the wholesale extinction of the African elephants, the tusks of which have hitherto furnished the greatest quantities of ivory.

The accompanying illustration pictures the enormous curved ivory tusks of the Siberian mammoth, thirteen feet long and

worth some three hundred dollars each. Only a year or so ago some nomadic Yakut natives who roam and hunt for fur-bearing animals in Arctic Siberia, thousands of miles from civilization, found the tusks of a mammoth protruding from the ground, having been exposed by the melting of the ice.

These were brought on their reindeer sledges to the Russian town of Yakutz,

fect freezing

and cold storage process through being buried in the frozen soil and covered by a shell of ice hundreds of feet in thickness. The mammoths died out owing to a change in physico-geographical conditions. Their bodies were deposited in a cold region and gradually buried in loam

T

WO ancient negroes were sitting on the river bank at Kansas City, when two long, booming blasts of a siren came echoing up the river. "Heah comes de steamboat," said one. "Huh, steamboat!" said the other with a contemptuous sniff. "Steamboat? Dat ain't a steamboat. Dey ain't a niggah ont' it."

Which remark quaintly expressed the old steamboat idea, and the new, as exemplified on the Missouri River. The negro is the real picturesque feature of steamboating. Also, he is its most expensive adjunct, which explains why the new Missouri River steamboat “ain't got a niggah ont' it."

At every river city in the country, except one, steamboats still are loaded and unloaded by "rousters" who carry the cargo aboard the boat, and off again, on their shoulders. These roistering, jigging, cakewalking, care-free darkies are the picturesque element of the river traffic, but they are costly, and their cost is one of the reasons-the main one in fact that has contributed to the retirement of the steamboat as a transportation factor.

And sitting there on the river bank at Kansas City, the old negro with his contemptuous sniff at the "niggahless' steamboats,

summed up in a few words the story of how Kansas City is making a go of a steamboat line that was doomed to failure by every old steamboat man in the country. It has eliminated the "niggah" factor. Within a few yards of the old negro was the first modern river terminal built in the United States for the exclusive use of river steamboats.

Where the negro roustabout used to parade across the gangplank in the old days, a modern electric hoist reaches down into the hold of the packets of the big flatnosed barges and yanks out more at one load than two dozen negroes could cary. Before the roustabout could sing a quatrain about the exploits of the mythical "Steamboat Bill", a big electric telpher has grabbed the burden from the hoist and is humming along its road to waiting wagons, or piling it up in the big steel and concrete warehouse to await the pleasure of the consignee.

At a few river cities the steamboat companies maintain wharfboats for the storage of incoming or outgoing freight. A few towns have publicly,

or privately, owned wharfboats used by all the steamboats that call at the port. These are merely floating storage sheds with absolutely no equipment for handling the freight. All of that is done