Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/723

 Popular Science Monthly 707

Even Fruit Skins Are Utilized Now. Them There Pesky Tobacco-

Chewin' Bugs Ag'in

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���This Machine Does It

I apparatus which will dexterously peel everything from limes to large grapefruits (the first stage in the extrac- tion of useful oils from the peels) has been developed by the experts of the Depart- ment of Agriculture. With a battery of

these machines

placed in a fac- t o r y, many thousands of dollars worth of by-products can be utilized. Unlike other peeling ma- chines, the fruit does not have to be sorted to fit into the grat- ings. Fruit of all sizes and shapes tumbles down through an opening in the storage box on the top of the apparatus and falls in between the flights at the end of a long horizontal screw. This screw is revolved by a motor with the re- sult that the teeth, projecting from both sides of the

screw flights, take hold of the material and turn it around against a drum which is rotating in the opposite direction. . The drum is also provided with short teeth. The teeth of the screw and those of the drum, working in opposite directions on the fruit, grate the skins off. As the screw tends to turn the fruit around, it also pushes the fruit forward over the length of the drum. The peels are thus made to come off in spirals. The peel- ings fall into a trough at the bottom of the machine and the fruit pulps are dropped out on a chute at the side.

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��Fruit of all sizes and shapes tumbles down through an opening in contact with a motor-revolved screw

��Delivenj

���Peel receptacle

���Teeth on the revolving drum. The peelings come off in spirals

��tobacco is recognized as a uable insecticide which will, kill most insects, there is at least one that lives in it and on it and thrives exceed- ingly far too exceedingly, to be pleasant. This tobacco beetle, as he is called, is very epicurean in his tastes and prefers the bet- ter brands of tobacco. He is a native of Cuba and the Philip- pines, but has spread all over the world. He only lives in manufactured and stored to- bacco, never in the growing plant.

There are several other insects that prey on the to- bacco beetle, and his destructive lar- vae, but it is none the less necessary to control him by artificial means. Extremes of heat and cold will eradi- cate him, and fumi- gation with hydro- cyanic acid or carbon bisulphide is also very effective in compassing his destruction.

The process of manufacture usually does away with both beetles and eggs, so that if protective measures are adopted their ravages can be more or less obviated. The smoker, therefore, has no well grounded reason to feel concerned regarding the possibility of finding the beetle in his cigar or cigarette. And the fact that the insect prefers expensive tobacco to the poorer grades may prove consoling to hini who can afford only cheap "smokes."

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