664 



A Boy Pathfinder Discovers a Bicycle 

 Short Cut in an Irrigation Ditch 



SCHOOLBOYS who live near El Mo- 

 lino, California, and attend school 

 at San Marino, travel back and forth on 

 bicycles through a half-mile of concrete- 

 lined irrigation ditch. The ditch "high- 

 way" cuts off about a mile of their dis- 

 tance to and from school and enables them 



to avoid several 



mean hills over /"^ 

 which no cyclists 

 can pedal. 



Robert Hutch- 

 inson, a lad of about 

 thirteen years of 

 age, is credited with 

 having discovered 

 the path. His boy- 

 ish spirit of explora- 

 tion led him to take 

 his bicycle in at 

 the upper end, and 

 ride through the 

 ditch. When he 

 found that the other 

 end emerged at the 

 San Marino Road 

 he realized he had 



made a lucky discovery. He told his 

 schoolmates about it and since the ditch 

 is dry about nine months out of the year, 

 it has proved a great convenience to the 

 pupils of the school at San Marino. This 

 same spirit of discovery has made the 

 world what it is to-day. 



Popular Science Monthly 



tered between Maine and Texas, the 

 Pacific coast of the United States, which 

 has a length of about 1,100 nautical 

 miles, has only a few' harbors which are 

 available as a refuge for ships in stormy 

 weather. There are no real harbors 

 between Los Angeles and San Francisco, 

 a distance of 367 miles and only five bar 

 harbors, safe in bad weather, between San 

 Francisco and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 



TOU 

 V i 



This dry ditch forms a short cut for the 

 schoolboys of El Molino and avoids hills too 



Trees Stunted by 

 the Wind 



UR IS TS 

 siting 

 the Rocky Moun- 

 tain National Park 

 and not afraid of 

 strenuous exercise 

 in mountaineering, 

 often have the op- 

 portunity of seeing 

 tree forms like that 

 shown in the ac- 

 companying pic- 

 ture. The trees 

 near the timber line 

 seldom grow up 

 straight. They 

 crawl along the ground, seeking the 

 shelter and protection of the rocks 

 against the violent North winds. The 

 tree in the picture found shelter behind 

 a big rock and grew strong and com- 

 paratively big, but the height of the rock 

 limited the height of the tree, for it could 

 not withstand the powerful north winds. 



Lack of Safe Harbors on 

 Our Pacific Coast 



IN a recent publication on 

 "The Neglected Waters of 

 the Pacific Coast," issued by 

 the Department of Commerce 

 of the United States Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey, the 

 Superintendent, E. Lester 

 •Jones, culls public attention 

 to the radical differences be- 

 tween the conditions and char- 

 acter of the shore line of the 

 Atlantic and those of the 

 Pacific coast of the United 

 States. While the Atlantic 

 coast and the Gulf coast have 

 many excellent harbors scat- 



Only in the shelter of the big rock could the tree 

 grow in the face of strong winds above the timber line 



