Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/747

 Popular Science Monthly

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��Sharing Your Flowers with Distant Friends

SINCE the parcel post system has been instituted it has become possible for suburbanites and dwellers in rural localities to share a number of their good things with their city friends or others at a distance. Even flowers ma\- be sent as far as the fourth zone without parting with their fragrance or freshness on the journey, provided they are correctly packed. But not all flowers are good travelers. There is little use in tn,ing to share the beauty of a bed of poppies, cannas, moon- flowers or others of like texture, with distant friends. Roses, too, are rather delicate to send on long trips. But if they are picked when only partially blown and are kept in cool water until the petals and stems are full, they will not wilt badly and will revive readilv at the end of the

���journey.

Flowers intended for send- ing away should be cut early in the morning while still wet with dew and allowed to stand in cool water for the re- mainder of the day so that they will absorb plenty of moisture. Choose a corrugated box, if pos- sible. The long, slender variety of pasteboard box in which flowers are usually sent from the florists will not do for long trips by parcel post. They are liable to bend in the middle or to be crushed. Line the bo.x first with ordinary paper and then with wax paper. If you wish to finish it off very nicely, a layer or tvso of white tissue paper may come next. Lay the flowers carefully in the box, long stemmed ones first, and fold the coverings in neatly.

���The explosion of sticks of dynamite blasts the hole clean in a fraction of a second

��The djaiamite sticks are tied to a pole and are fired off when buried in the ground

��Blasting Holes with Dynamite — It's Cheaper and Quicker than Digging

DIGGING pole holes with dynamite is a comparatively new practice, which is fast supplanting the slow and costly hand method. It has two main advantages as compared with hand digging, in that it re- quires the services of fewer men for any given number of holes and leaves the holes clean.

Instead of long-handled shovels a long punch bar and a sledge or a soil auger are used. After the position of the hole has

��been determined, a hol- low from six to ten inches deep is dug with an ordi- nary-shovel. This hollow has the same diameter as the hole required, and its sides are trimmed straight and clean to relieve the pressure of the explosion and prevent shatter- ing of the surface soil. This forms a kind of crater around a smaller hole.

The next operation is to bore a small hole in the center of the hollow by means of the auger. Then several pieces of stick dyna- mite are tied to a small lath at inter\'als var\ing from six to twenty-four inches, as shown in the oval above, and the lath is inserted in the hole.

A blasting cap is attached to the topmost piece of dynamite and the whole charge fired from a short distance awa\' by means of the usual detonator.

The shock caused by the explosion of the top section of dynamite sets off the other pieces, the force of the explosion throwing out much dirt and loosening the remainder so that it may be easily cleaned out with a shovel in two or three minutes. The amount of dynamite necessary for each hole depends upon the depth of the hole and the character of the soil in which it is to be made. Rocky soil requires more, of course, than plain earth.

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