THE NEW EARTH 



pressed into its present shape by means of a 

 powerful lever. It was a condensed squash, so 

 to call it, for this was the vegetable he was 

 testing. He had under the powerful apparatus 

 compressed quite a portion of the squash into 

 this little pellet. Down in the center of the 

 bomb, as the steel receptacle was called, was 

 suspended a tiny, black, thread-like wire of 

 pure iron. The cap of the bomb was screwed 

 on, and the bomb was placed in a pail of 

 water in which stood a thermometer so deli- 

 cately graduated that it would measure to the 

 one-thousandth of a degree. Then the current 

 of electricity Avas turned on, the iron wire caught 

 fire, burned down to the pellet and set it 

 ablaze, the pellet was consumed, and the heat 

 made in the burning passed out through the 

 walls of steel, warmed the water and was meas- 

 ured upon the thermometer. It was not much 

 heat, to be sure, but it was all recorded as 

 accurately as though it had been a thousand 

 degrees. 



The object of this test was to prove just 

 how much fuel, so to speak, there was in the 

 squash, in order to show clearly just how val- 

 uable it would be as a food; for precisely the 



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