872 



Popular Science Monthly 



Worse Than the Shinplasters 

 of Civil War Fame 



A 



CURIOUS condition of affairs with 

 respect to money prevails in the 

 department of Narino, the southernmost 

 department of Colombia, This region 

 is isolated by poor 

 means of communi- 

 cation from the cen- 

 tral government 

 and has regulated 

 its own affairs to a 

 great extent. When 

 the rest of the 

 country adopted a 

 gold standard 

 Narino refused to 

 conform and en- 

 forced a local silver 

 standard. As it 

 accepts at silver 

 value coins of all 

 nations and dates 

 it has become a 

 dumping - ground, 

 for coins no longer 

 current elsewhere. 

 It is said that 

 the most abundant 

 eight-real pieces of 

 independence 



how much farther it will shoot north than 

 south, and to what extent the moon will de- 

 flect the shot. As a result, what is described 

 as the ultimate error of the cannon shot is 

 being rapidly overcome. Moreover, if a 

 commander is unable to point a cannon with- 

 in ten feet of the target, he is not re- 

 garded as a success. 



He is not a millionaire's son. All this 

 Colombian paper money is worth just one 

 dollar. A paper peso is worth one cent 



coins are the old 

 the early years of 

 A few years ago, we may 

 add, the whole of Colombia was swamped 

 with paper currency enormously de- 

 preciated. At one time it took 22,500 

 pesos of this paper to buy a United 

 States gold dollar. The government has 

 now issued a decree recalling the national 

 silver coined before 1911 and all foreign 

 money now in circulation. 



This Is a Farm 

 Gate, No Doubt 



PERHAPS it 

 was his pas- 

 sionate love for 

 farming, perhaps 

 a dawning sense of 

 art, or pride in the 

 paternal acres 

 which had come 

 down to him 

 through many gen- 

 erations of tillers 

 of the soil, that in- 

 duced the owner of 

 a farm in Moulton, 

 N ort hampton, 

 England, to put 

 the quaint gate 

 accompanying picture at 

 to the driveway leading 

 Anyone who passes 



shown in the 

 the entrance 

 to his farmhouse, 

 that gate will know that the owner of the 

 estate is a farmer and so proud of it that 

 he wants everybody to know it. The orna- 

 mentation is, to express it mildly, original 

 in design and of striking appearance, but 

 does not betray a high degree of artistic 

 taste. However, it is symbolic of the 

 farmer's calling, and who shall criticize? 



Moon and Earth Help 

 French to Aim Cannon 



THE French engineers 

 in the European war 

 have reached a high degree 

 of perfection in mathemat- 

 ics, according to Major- 

 General Charles M. Clem- 

 ent, U. S. A., who made an 

 exhaustive study of con- 

 ditions on the firing line. 

 These sappers of the P'rench 

 army have figured out the in- 

 fluence of the earth on a shell 

 traveling out of a cannon, 



An English farmer has decorated his gate with tlie various 

 implements of Lis calling. If not artistic it is surely symbolic 



