Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/689

 Popular Science Mot^ikl^

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��of the cocoon it had formed a tube of this hardened shme. This led to the outer atmos- phere and furnished air to the lungs while the fish slept there. The clod was cut from the river bed and was carried thousands of miles, but nothing disturbed the inmate until it was placed in tepid water which melted the cocoon. Then the fish awoke, to find itself in the aquarium in the hall of fossil fishes in the Museum ; but whether or not it realized any difference in its environment could not be ascertained. Perhaps it merely supposed it had reached the next stage in its evolution and was sur- prised that the change was so slight.

���The miniatu:>. ideal it represents.

��p IS true in every detail to the Even escort wagons and mviles are shown

��A Stencil-Cutter Is the Typewriter of the Shipping-Room

THE old pot and brush method of painting addresses on cases to be shipped has been superseded by the use of stencils in the majority of business houses. The addresses are cut out on stiff paper by the cutter, and the stencil is placed against the case. The paint is applied through the cut-out spaces.

In the letter-cutting machine the punches and dies which stamp the letters are carried on circular beds, one bed above the other. One bed carries the punches and the other carries the dies. The paper is placed between the two. The beds are rotated by a wheel until the

��proper

�letter-

�punch is

�m posi-

�tion. This is

�i n d i c a

�ted

�when

�the

���The stencil is prepared by forcing letter- shaped punches and dies through stiff paper

��pointer on the wheel stops in front of the corresponding letter on a sta- tionary' scale. The punching-lever is then pressed, and the punch and die come together and force the outline of the letter through the paper. Stencils made in this manner cost but a tenth of a cent each. Each stencil can be used many times. They are so clear-cut and legible that some steamship companies will not accept packages marked in any otherway.

��A Toy Field Hospital for an Object Lesson

A MINIATURE camp with tents about one foot high was erected during the past summer for demonstration purposes in the center of a real camp of about 18,000 troops covering nearly 1,000 acres of ground at San Antonio, Texas. It was made and set up by a field hospital company of the National Guard of Florida, just to show how a model field hospital should look. The tents were made of regulation khaki-colored canvas with the pre- scribed number of guy- ropes and tent pins. They included the pyr- amidal tents such as are used by the staff of a field hospital com- pany and the large wall tents of the so- called "hospital" type, which house the wards for the patients, and the operating rooms.

Miniature army escort wagons that were made according to scale were parked at one end of the model camp and near them was a picket line where a number of toy horses and mules stood with their noses buried in tiny bundles of hay.

Within the ward tents were cots and other furnishings and in front of the camp stood a flag pole from which a national emblem and medical corps flag fluttered in the breeze. Even the snrallest details of the regulation hospital camp, were faithfully reproduced.

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