Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/752

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��Popular Science Monthly

��Put the Tree iii the Barn, Put the Cat Out, and Go to Bed

THERE'S no accounting for taste. Here is an instance where sooner than cut down a fine old tree a new barn was built around it, the trunk passing through the roof. Whether this is due to conservation or to sentiment we are not aware. It undoubt- edly is a pity to cut down beautiful old trees, but just the same one would imagine that a tree in the barn would be, to say the least of it, inconA'enient. Whether it is profaned inside the barn with nails and hooks and harness, who shall say? Whatever the reason, there it is, and it at least has the merit of being exceedingly pic- turesque in appearance

and probably is unique.

They built the tree to avoid

���Ef Ye Cain't Shoot the Critters, Dynamite 'Em

AVERY simple and cheap method of destroying wood-chuck burrows has been discovered by a farmer He takes a stick about three- quarters of an inch thick and about ten feet long, and ties a stick of dynamite to the end, ready capped and with two feet of fuse. He lights the fuse and pushes the charge into the hole. As the fuse takes about a minute to burn down, he has plenty of time to tamp the earth around it and get out of the way.

The explosion of the dynamite de- stroys the den and, the fumes being very poisonous, any animals which may escape the explosion are asphyxiated.

This is a far simpler and quicker method than digging them out, and the explosion fills up the burrow too.

��The Battle of the Bath-Tub Fought with Toy Submarines

A TOY submarine that really runs under water has been recently put on the market. It is fifteen inches long and is constructed of wood and metal. As equip- ment it carries steering and diving planes, a deck gun, and a torpedo. The motive power is de- rived from elastic bands, and the boat will travel from twenty to forty feet under water, at any desired depth, either straight ahead or in a circle.

The torpedo is fired from the deck gun, and is controlled automatic- ally so that it is dis- charged to a distance of four or five feet as the boat rises to the sur- face.

Two boys, with two or three of these realis- tic toys and the neces- sary facilities for sailing them, can stage all kinds of sham battles and naval ma- neuvers. Blockades can be carried out and paper boats sunk in the most relent- less manner, while, with the help of a few tin soldiers and "land bat- teries" enemy cities can be readily reduced to ruins and the garrisons routed.

��barn around this cuttine it down

���The toy submarine which dives and circles. Note the heavy artillery it carries

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