Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/886

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��Popular Science Monthly

���An Alibi for the Bee in the Orchard

THAT bees injure fruit is a common belief in some quarters, but investigations re- cently carried out in Italy prove it to be without foundation. Bees cannot perforate the skin of fruit, and the damage attrib- buted to them is really due to birds, wind, ?iail, hornets, wasps, and certain other insects. Bees are, in fact, of much benefit to the orchardist, because they effect the cross-pollination of fruit trees.

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��Chinese women cleaning the cab windows of a Southern Pacific Raihoad locomotive in Oakland, California

��Chinese Women Working on Rail- roads in California

IT is well known throughout the country that the people of the Pacific coast states take anj^thing but kindly to Orien- tal labor. But at the present time there is such a serious shortage of white labor throughout the United States that even regular door, our Western brethren have had to down their preju- dices and accept the inevi- table. The Chinese coolie has long been a factor in the labor market of the West, but as a rule his consort has held aloof from manual labor. Now, how- ever, a change has been wrought.

Nothing could better in- dicate how serious is the shortage of white labor in that part of the country than the fact that Chinese women are now employed by some of the railroads on the western coast.

��Mexican Corn Bins Look Like Old-Fashioned Sugar Loaves

T first sight the objects that form the subject of our illustration look as though they were the twin spires of a sunken church. As a matter of fact they are corn bins on the Hacienda St. George, in Coahui- la, Mexico. They are construct- ed of adobe or sun-dried bricks, and are plastered on the outside. On the plaster landscapes are painted in bright colors. One of the bins, it will be noted, is sur- mounted by a cross.

The corn is introduced through the little doors in the apex of the cones, and is taken out as required through the

���Corn bins on a Mexican hacienda, shaped like sugar loaves, but made of adobe or brick, and brightly decorated

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