Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/110

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AMA, in Northern Syria, referred to in the Old Testament as Hamath the Great, is justly famous for its huge water wheels. The city lies some one hundred and ten miles north-east of Damascus on the River Orontes, and upon its banks are four huge water wheels used for drawing water for irrigating purposes and also for supplying the town. The wheels are driven by the flow of the river on what is known as the undershot principle; that is to say, the wheel is moved by water passing beneath it.

The largest, shown in the accomingaccompanying [sic] photograph, has a diameter of seventy-five feet. Upon its outer rim is a series of buckets which raise the water and deposit it in the aqueduct at the top. Like its companions, the wheel is built of mahogany, with an axle of iron. The creaking of the wheels is incessant, day and night, year in and year out, for they never stop.

It is interesting to note that wheels built on this same principle are in actual use in this country, in one of the fertile valleys of California, as described in the December issue of the

MONG the hundreds of patents issued every week occasionally one stands out above all others as being entertainingly original and ingenious. Such a patent is one issued recently for a golf tee. It is intended that the tee shall be shattered to tiny fragments when the ball is struck, and to act as a fertilizer after having been broken.

The tee is manufactured in a conical shape with a cupped top, into which the ball fits. It is made of green gelatine, so that, contrary to the condition which exists in the paper and rubber tees, the golfer can keep his eye on the ball without the usual distraction. When the club strikes the ball, the gelatine tee is simultaneously struck and shattered to a veritable powder. These small green fragments scatter on the grass and are dissolved at the earliest rain.

As gelatine is an excellent fertilizer, the shattered tee serves a very useful secondary purpose.