Page:Popular Mechanics 1928 01.pdf/44

 



Dress designers in Paris made their sketches and, three hours later, visitors in Marshall Field's store in Chicago were looking at the drawings, for they were sent by radio and registered on a screen by the latest wireless-picture methods. The innovation was staged in connection with the celebration of the store's seventy-fifth anniversary and was made the more impressive by the models in old-fashioned costumes who paraded near the wireless machine while the latest Paris patterns were being received.

 

Hard-maple floors, in a wide variety of colors to accompany special schemes of decoration, are now possible by using a transparent stain and wear-resisting varnish. The finish is especially adapted to hard maple, since this wood has fibers so closely woven together that the stain does not change color when applied. Floors may be prepared one day and used the next because of the rapidity with which the materials dry, it is said.

 

By cultivating a wasplike parasite that destroys the codling moth, a California man hopes to reduce damage done to the walnut crop and to apples in many parts of the country. It has been known for some time that this parasite preys on the moths, but its efforts could be enlisted only where weather conditions were favorable, for the insects could not survive the winters. A plan has now been worked out whereby the "wasps" can be raised by the million and shipped to any section of the United States. Moth eggs are collected and put on coated cards in a "parasite cage" for three days. At the end of that time, the parasite has imbedded its own egg in each moth egg, which provides food for the developing insect and, at the same time, destroys the egg. These cards are easily shipped by mail so that an orchardist, bothered with the moth pests, can receive the services of an invading "army" through the post office. The parasites are said to be harmless to everything else but the codling-moth eggs.



