The propelier has a diameter of six feet and is driven by a twenty-six horsepower automobile engine. It is estimated that the engine can drive the propeller at the rate of 1,500 revolutions per minute and by actual test it has produced one thousand revolutions a minute. Although the one-hundred-and-fifty-foot track has made it impossible to test the car for speed, it is believed it will be capable of one hundred miles an hour and as work is progressing on a large circular track the speed capacity of the new invention will soon be known. By an ingenious device for raising and lowering the car, the inventor expects to take on passengers or freight from any level, thus doing away with the He necessity of elevated stations. claims that there are many advantages in this system of transportation. It would do away with grade crossings, as the cars could run through the country fifteen or twenty feet above the ground. If used in the cities, it would not disfigure the streets as does an ordinary elevated road; in fact, its appearance would not. differ greatly from the ordinary trolley poles and wires and would not shut out sunlight nor drop oil or clinkers on the street, as do elevated steam roads. The danger from collisions would be minimized, and yet it would be possible. to attain greater speed than on an ordinary surface road. As the inventor's momentum theory is, that the great would lessen the weight of the car as it flew through space, a system of tilting planes under the car is arranged for. engineer so as to get the benefit of the lifting power of the atmosphere, like the planes of an air craft. It is estimated that this system can be operated very economically and that its construction cost would be low, about $2,000 per mile to build while the cars could be built for about $1,500 each. When completed, the car will have a propeller at each end and will be furnished with a removable cover or sheaf of aluminum, with celluloid windows. In experimental runs, about forty people. have been carried at one time without any accident. The carrying capacity is estimated at ten tons. It has been suggested that the aerial trolley be thoroughly tried out at some pleasure resort, and with the practical knowledge thus gained, it could be perfected for transportation purposes on an extensive scale. A VIEW OF THE PROPELLER IN DETAIL. C By J. MAYNE BALTIMORE ALIFORNIA boasts of possessing the the largest olive groves in all the world, and this immense property belongs to the Los Angeles Olive Growers' Association whose headquarters are located in Los Angeles. One so associates the growth of the olive with the south of Europe and Oriental lands, that it comes as a curious surprise to find the greatest olive grove in the world is located at Sylmar in the Golden State. Out in the San Fernando Valley, twenty-three miles north from Los Angeles, stretching over a broad expanse at the base of the towering Sierra Madre Mountains, is the famous Sylmar Olive Ranch, comprising 2,000 acres, planted to over 150,000 trees. This beautiful little valley is sheltered by the lofty range-serving as a climate barrier, and also as a picturesque background. The Sicily olive trees obtain the height that elms usually do in England, and there are many quite one hundred feet high, and measuring twenty feet in circumference at the base. However, the trees at the Sylmar grove do not present such formidable dimensions and the vast groves of the Los Angeles Olive Growers' Association, through scientific pruning and careful cultivation, are of the convenient and uniform height of about twenty feet. Thus science makes convenient the harvesting of the olives. The olives are plucked at the Sylmar groves late in the summer and early in the fall months-weeks being required to complete the work of harvesting. The gathering is done in a very systematic manner-the many gangs of pickers being under the personal supervision of bosses-and so the work progresses rapidly. Much care is observed in gathering the fruit from which the oil is to be extracted. A canvas is placed beneath a tree and with two pickers to a tree, one mounted on a ladder, and one standing on the ground, the fruit is stripped from the branches, being allowed to drop from the hands of the pickers to the canvas. In boxes the olives are carried to the factory, and, after being weighed and run through a fanning machine, to free them from leaves and dust that are always necessarily present, they are dumped into crushers where huge wheels quickly reduce the fruit to a purple mass. The pulp thus obtained is next subjected to the power of hydraulic presses. Passing through the canvas-covered layers of pulp, the oil, mixed with the water of the olives, runs down from the press in dark-colored, sluggish streams; the water and sediment settle, leaving the turbid oil to be drawn off and filtered through cotton and gravel, after which it is turned into glass-lined cement tanks, where it is left to settle and mature. A final filtering leaves the oil clear and brilliant for bottling. Within two months from the time the olives are gathered, the oil extracted therefrom is fit for table use; however, the oil improves, like wine, with age, and may be kept for almost any reasonable length of time, if hermetically sealed and stored in a very cool place. From three hundred to five hundred gallons of pure olive oil, per day, are extracted at the great Sylmar Ranch factory during the active harvest season. INSIDE THE FACTORY WHERE THE OLIVE OIL IS MADE, SHOWING THE MACHINERY, ANOTHER VIEW OF THE LARGEST OLIVE ORCHARD IN THE WORLD. The oil and preserving factory may be seen in the distance. As to irrigation, these immense San Fernando Valley groves receive no other irrigation than the winter rains since they were planted some years ago. The soil of the ranch is composed of the wash of the Sierra Madres, and is of exhaustless richness and fertility. Evidently the olive trees are not thirsty souls, as, during some seasons, rains do not fall once in three months. Yet the thrifty condition of the trees and the yield of fruit are not noticeably affected by dry weather. The climatic and soil conditions of San Fernando Valley are peculiarly favorable to success of the olive industry. OLIVE TREE LADEN WITH FRUIT. SHOWING A PICKER AT WORK. San Fernando is the center of the great olive industry of California, though there are many large olive orchards in other sections of the state. There are the oldest olive trees in California, having been planted by the Spanish padres more than a century ago. The olive industry has been, and is constantly increasing in California since its first introduction by the early Spanish mission fathers; and the olive culture can never be overdone in that state since the olive can be produced only in central and southern Cali fornia, New Mexico and Arizona, with profitable success. The olive wood is also very highly prized by cabinet workers as the grain is exceedingly, fine and hard and susceptible of receiving an elegant finish. Italian olive orchardists look upon an olive ranch as a perpetual source of wealth, as the older the trees grow, the greater bearers they become. The trees are supposed to attain a great age-as high as 4,000 years. In the sacred groves of the Mount or Olives in the Holy Land, near Jerusalem, there are olive trees still flourishing that scientists declare are not less than 3,000 years old. The Los Angeles Olive Growers' Association have found their investment a decidedly profitable one-constantly increasing. The quality of the output of the Sylmar groves are equal to any in the Old World, and have won the grand prizes at more than one world's exposition. HOUSE MOVED IN TWO PIECES ONE of the most singular ideas ever involved in the moving of houses was recently put into practice in West Somerville, Massachusetts, where a large three-story dwelling was cut in two and moved from an eminence ten feet above the street level and set up a mile distant from its former resting place. It was found impossible to move the house in its entirety. The cut was made squarely through the center and as the house was built in a very symmetrical manner each part was an exact counterpart of the other. After bracing the house, first one section and then another was moved to the new location with jackscrews and rollers. On bringing the two reunited divorced portions together they dovetailed into such a perfect fit that the separating cut was impossible to discern. As each of the sections was 35 by 20 feet at the base and almost forty feet in height, they were liable to topple over. This was prevented by tearing down the chimneys and foundations and loading the first floor of each section to a considerable depth with brick. FIRST HALF OF THE "SECTIONAL" HOUSE AFTER |