Depth of Soil for Fruit. Would four feet of good loose soil be enough for lemons? Four feet of good soil, providing the underlying strata are not charged with alkali, would give you a good growth of lemon trees if moisture was regularly present in about the right quantity, neither too much nor too little, and the temperature conditions were favorable to the success of this tree, which will not stand as much frost as the orange. Temperatures... more...

I COMMUNICATION AMONG THE ANCIENTS     Signaling the Fall of Troy—Marine Signaling among the    Argonauts—Couriers of the Greeks, Romans, and    Aztecs—Sound-signaling—Stentorophonic Tube—The Shouting    Sentinels—The Clepsydra—Signal Columns—Indian Fire and Smoke    Signals. It was very early in... more...

THEORIES OF TUITION Only eight years ago, in 1908, it was declared impossible for one man to teach another to fly. Those few men who had risen from the ground in aeroplanes, notably the Wright brothers, were held to be endowed by nature in some very peculiar way; to be men who possessed some remarkable and hitherto unexplained sense of equilibrium. That these men would be able to take other men—ordinary members of the human race—and... more...

In an inventive tour de force that seldom, if ever, has been equalled for its brilliance and far-reaching consequences, James Watt radically altered the steam engine not only by adding a separate condenser but by creating a whole new family of linkages. His approach was largely empirical, as we use the word today. This study suggests that, despite the glamor of today's sophisticated methods of calculation, a highly developed intuitive sense,... more...

CHAPTER I. EVOLUTION OF TWO-SURFACE FLYING MACHINE. By Octave Chanute. I am asked to set forth the development of the "two-surface" type of flying machine which is now used with modifications by Wright Brothers, Farman, Delagrange, Herring and others. This type originated with Mr. F. H. Wenham, who patented it in England in 1866 (No. 1571), taking out provisional papers only. In the abridgment of British patent Aeronautical Specifications... more...

FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SALMON. In the following observations I intend to offer some remarks on the various migratory fish of the genus Salmo; and then some facts and opinions which tend to show the importance of some change in the laws which are now in force regarding them. We have first the Salmon; which, in the Ribble, varies in weight from five to thirty pounds. We never see the fish here before May, and then very rarely; a few come... more...

FOREWORD Once in awhile, maybe, twenty-five or thirty years ago, they used to pack you off during the holidays for a visit on Somebody's Farm. Have you forgotten? You went with your little round head close clipped till all the scar places showed white and you came back with a mat of sunbleached hair, your face and hands and legs brown as a nut. Probably you treasure recollections of those boyhood days when a raw field turnip, peeled with a... more...

DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF PLANTS. 1. Abelmoschus moschatus.—This plant is a native of Bengal. Its seeds were formerly mixed with hair powder, and are still used to perfume pomatum. The Arabs mix them with their coffee berries. In the West Indies the bruised seeds, steeped in rum, are used, both externally and internally, as a cure for snake bites. 2. Abrus precatorius.—Wild liquorice. This twining, leguminous plant is a native of... more...

INTRODUCTION Since the earliest communities of human beings first struggled for supremacy and protection, the principles of warfare have remained unchanged. New methods have been evolved and adopted with the progress of science, but no discovery, save perhaps that of gunpowder, has done so much in so short a time to revolutionize the conduct of war as aviation, the youngest, yet destined perhaps to be the most effective fighting-arm. Yet to-day... more...

INTRODUCTORY It was at Mons in the third week of the Great War. The grey-green German hordes had overwhelmed the greater part of Belgium and were sweeping down into France whose people and military establishment were all unprepared for attack from that quarter. For days the little British army of perhaps 100,000 men, that forlorn hope which the Germans scornfully called "contemptible," but which man for man probably numbered more veteran... more...