Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/850

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��Popular Science Monthly

���The combination croquet-pool game. Except for the pockets on the corners and sides no special apparatus is used when the game is played outdoors. For indoor play lighter balls are desirable

��Combining Two Favorite Sports — Croquet and Pool

CROQUET enthusiasts and devotees of the pool table may enjoy the new game, shown in the accompanying illus- tration. It may be played either out- doors or indoors.

Pockets are fastened in place on the ground exactly as on a pool table, one at each corner and on each of the longer sides. By numbering the balls combina- tions such as lend fascination and excite- ment to pool may be obtained. Except for the pockets no special apparatus is necessary. The regulation croquet balls and mallets answer the purpose; but for indoor use lighter balls may be found more desirable and less noisy.

��Water-filled Roller Combines Scraper and Handle -Lock

A MANUFACTURER of Berea,'Ohio, has recently placed on the market a com- bination handle-lock and rol- ler-scraper for use with lawn rollers weighted with water. This device holds the handle upright when it is not used, thus making it unnecessary to counterweight the handle. The scraper may be lowered for cleaning the roller surface. The weight may be regulated by the volume of water.

���Wlicn roller is not in use the lock holds up handle

��Over Fifty Different Woods Are Sold as Mahogany

THE name "mahogany" is applied commercially to more than fifty dif- ferent woods. Perhaps half the lumber now sold under that name is not true mahogany, for the demand greatly ex- ceeds the supply.

The tree is only native to the limited area between southern Florida and north- ern South America. Nowhere else does it really flourish. But the public will have mahogany. Women want it for furniture, business men prefer it for office fixtures, and teak and mahogany are rivals in the affections of ship-builders. Therefore substitutes flourish.

It is not surprising that the real wood is so expensive when it is learned that it takes from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years for a mahogany tree to reach merchantable size.

Most of the substitutes bear little more than a general resemblance to the genuine wood, but skillful finishing makes them very much alike. Experts can usually distin- guish between them by the aid of an ordinary pocket lens. The efforts of the super- ficial, however, to judge the wood by its appearance, weight, grain, and color often lead them astray.

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