Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/379

 Popular Science Monthly

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��for a single year. Besides, the water of this lake contains, in solution, borax as well as potash, and the separation of the two salts is not simple. Borax, being alkaline, renders potash objectionable to agriculture and useless in industries. There are a few other sources of potash. Sea-kelp yields a small amount; the alun- ite deposits in Utah contain potash salts of alumina, but no soluble potash; the cement works are producing a little; some is contained in the refuse from the beet sugar refineries; but outside of Germany, the total annual output of potash is not over 50,000 tons as against 12,000,000 tons of the crude ore running from 30 to 40 per cent, of pure potash, produced in Germany each year. Since the embargo of January, 1915, the price of potash has risen from $30 per ton to $450 for the same amount.

��A Gasoline Engine Used to Load Sugar Cane

THE old problem of handling a large sugar-cane crop soon after it has been cut, and before the cane dries and its sugar evaporates, has been well solved on a Louisiana plantation. A gasoline engine power outfit is utilized for this work and does it at a fraction of the cost of man labor, and more quickly.

Suitable grabs and hoists pick up the cane from the small heaps into which the cutters have dropped it, and swing it over to be tripped off into a wagon box. The wagons are provided with slings to unload the cane at the mill or at the field railway by the use of power hoists. Power machin- ery is much slower to in- vade the agri- cultural re- gions of the South than it But the waste

����Suitable hoists lift the fresh sugar cane from the small heaps suid swing it into the waiting wagor

��has been in the North.

and inefficiency of hand methods must give way before the present need for rapid harvests.

��If it weren't for these boards the horses would sink into the peat quagmires of southern California

Mount Horses on Boards. Then they Can't Sink Into the Mud

OUT in the fertile peat fields of south- ern California, the heavy draft-horse would be useless for plowing and culti- vating, but for a wooden shoe, which was invented by some ingenious rancher, and which can be quickly clamped on the horses' hoofs. With his wooden shoes, the horse can walk safely on a surface of

peat that quiv- ers like jelly with his weight. The shoes must be ad- justed to suit the habit of the horse. If he has a ten- dency to knock his feet to- gether, they must be trimmed off on the sides, although it is obviously best to have them as wdde as possible. They are clamped on by means of small iron rods, curved to fit the hoof.

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