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Two or three times during the growing season, the plants must be sprayed with a solution of Paris green, to protect them from the ravages of the beetle.

end with "potato-digging time." Then the starch factories open for business, and long strings of heavily laden teams await their turn to dump their loads into the vast basement reservatories, from which the "graters" are being fed day and night.

The tubers must be immediately worked up, for 40-degree-below-zero weather is coming soon, and the cellar capacity of the county is sore taxed to hold those of the higher grades, which are being reserved for winter shipment.

From the great basement where the potatoes are temporarily stored, they are shoveled into one end of a semi-cylindrical trough, about three feet across and some ten feet long, which is kept constantly full of water by a stream entering, clear, at the farther end, and overflowing, dirt-laden, at this. Along the center of this trough, at the top, extends a slowly revolving shaft, from which project round spokes, or arms, arranged helically in such manner that, while they constantly stir the potatoes and loosen the adhering dirt so that the water may take it away, they push them slowly along toward the other end, where several of the spokes are broad and flat, serving to lift lift the now thoroughly cleansed tubers over the side of the trough; whence they fall onto an inclined surface the lower edge of which almost touches the grater.

This grater consists of a cylinder about four feet long and two feet in diameter, on the wooden surface of which are nailed strips of sheet steel, perforated in exactly the same way as was the tin grater our mother used to use in the kitchen. Against this rapidly revolving rasp the potatoes are held by their own weight on the inclined plank, till they are reduced to a pulpy mass and drop onto the higher end of a long, slightly inclined screen of fine brass wire. This screen, by a longitudinal, reciprocating motion, gently urges the pulp along its slight incline till it drops, some twelve feet from where it first fell from the grater, into a spout leading to the compost heap. In outward appearance the pulp remains much the same as when it started, but it has been freed from its starch by the constant shower of clean water that has fallen on it during the

grating and from wooden troughs with perforated iron bottoms, which extend at intervals over and across the screen along which it has traveled. This water serves to wash the starch through the screen to a tight platform below, whence it flows to a spout, just back of the one which receives the washed pulp, whereby it is conducted to the settling vats.

These settling vats are great, rectangular tanks, some twenty feet across and six feet deep, grouped about one or more smaller vats, called "stirring tanks."

One settling vat having been filled, the stream of starch-laden water is turned, by means of a gate similar to that used in irrigating furrows, into another; while the first is allowed to stand for a time, to permit the starch to settle. The time required for this varies somewhat, according to the temperature; and it sometimes becomes necessary to add ice, not so much to save time, as to prevent the mass from souring.

After several hours, a plug is lifted from a short spout which extends about six inches upward, through the bottom of the vat; and the water is drained off, leaving a compact mass of somewhat impure and dirty starch, overlaid with a thin coat of sediment partaking of the color of potato skins.

This sediment is scraped off with shovels, and the remaining mass is shoveled into the stirring tank, in which it is again thoroughly mixed with clean water by means of upright revolving shafts, with long blades crossing their lower ends at right angles, and is then allowed to settle once more. The top of the resultant mass being scraped off and copiously washed, there remains commercially pure starch, only needing to be dried in order to be ready for market.

The snow-white mass, of about the consistency of cheese, is shoveled into baskets, elevated to a floor near the roof, and thence taken in great two-wheeled barrows, along an elevated platform, to the upper floor of the dry-house, which-with a view to lessening the fire risk—is placed some hundred yards away from the other buildings.

This floor, on either side, is composed of wooden slats spaced an inch or more apart, there often being wide shelves,

composed of similar slats above; and the chunks of starch, looking for all the world like blocks shoveled from a hardpacked snow-drift, are spread thereon.

Some two feet below this floor, another rack, spaced a trifle less openly, receives the starch as it dries and crumbles; while below this is another, and still another-till, passing through spaces only a quarter of an inch wide, the now thoroughly dried and granulated product rests upon a tight shelf from which it is drawn off, with hoe-like scrapers, into a trough extending the whole length of the building at a convenient height from the floor to allow of the starch being shoveled into casks.

All these racks are enclosed by walls, occupying a space about twenty feet wide by fifty or sixty feet long, and leaving an alley about eight feet wide between them and the outer walls of the building. Below the racks, in the older factories, are placed four large stoves, or furnaces, with doors opening out of the ends of the enclosure, and with the smoke-pipes extending to a chimney in the middle. By this arrangement the driest starch and the dry pine boards of which the lower shelf is composed, come very close to the heated stoves and pipes, leading to frequent fires-so frequent, indeed, that in practically all the newly built dry-houses (and many of them are newly built, for good cause) steam pipes replace the furnaces.

The dry starch is tightly packed in casks like flour barrels, only of about twice the capacity, holding 500 pounds each, and so shipped to the large textile manufacturers, who are, in this country, practically the only consumers.

The mass of pulp which remains after the starch is washed out consists of little but woody fiber; and, though it may be used to feed stock, is of no practical value in Aroostook, where feed is cheap, and is consequently allowed to flow into. the brook or river which always passes near the factory. This seeming waste appears small indeed when it is remembered that starch and water constitute 96 per cent of the potato.

The process of making potato starch is of the simplest, and any housewife can make it by merely placing the grated potato on a piece of cheese cloth, pouring water through it, and allowing the resultant milky fluid to settle. The sediment, dried, is practically pure starch.

Prepared by a New England cook, it makes a palatable dish, though not as pleasing to the taste as corn starch; while, in the laundry, it does not give the desired gloss and stiffness. Its superior adhesive and penetrating qualities, however, together with its great elasticity, make it much better than any other for giving a smooth surface, with just the required texture, to the yarns used in weaving. Hence potatoes have a part in clothing, as well as in feeding us.

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This clump of trees was the concentration point of Pickett's charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, Pa. In this charge 15,000 men were destroyed. This battle marked the beginning of the end of the Confederacy. The open bronze book contains the record of the commands engaged.

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