Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/377

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���The Rat-Guard Is a Circular Disk of Galvan- ized Iron About Eighteen Inches in Diameter

��A Guard for Mooring Ropes to Prevent Rats from Landing

TO prevent rats from bringing the bubonic plague into New Orleans a city ordinance requires all boats from tropical zones to "fend off" about twenty feet from the wharf and to put a rat-guard on each mooring rope. The rat-guard is a circular disk of galvanized Iron about eighteen inches in diameter which keeps the rat from using the rope as a bridge and making a landing on the wharf.

In the accompanying photograph one rat-guard appears as a white circular spot near the bow of the boat. Others ma>- be seen attaciied to nearby ropes. The boat at dock is the Highland Prince with a cargo of coffee from Brazil.

Formerly these incoming ships brought as great a cargo of rats as they carried of grain, figuratively speaking, which proved to be a nuisance as well as a grave menace to the health of the port and of the surrounding countr\-.

��Sorting and Packing Apples by Machinery

.\ apparatus has recently been perfected which does away with he unreliable process of sorting apples b\- hand. Moreover, it gives the farmer an excellent opportuni- ty to be honest, for instead of putting large apples on the top and small apples in the rest of the barrel, he can sort them according to an honest standard, and eventually get better prices, for people will learn that his large apples arc large all the way down, and that his small apples don't get any smaller as the bottom of the barrel is reached. The machine which accom- plishes so accurately and simply this task of sizing in\olves the use of two queer looking belts which are di\ided up into many small segments, the segments each having a wide mouth in their center. As the belts move from one end of a flat table to the other the mouths open wider and wider, and the apples which have dropped upon the segments, finally fall through the widen- ing niniitlw. They fall at different

places accord- ing to their dif- ferent sizes.

���The Two Belts Are Divided into Many Small Segments Each with a Wide Mouth

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