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MONTANA EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 294 



lu 193-1 a ]ie\v de\c]opinent took place. The transmission of old 

 cars, especially those of Model-T Fords, became very much in demand. 

 By properly cutting off the drive shaft and drive shaft housing, the 

 essential beveled-gear device is obtained. A disk fitted with four 

 stationary blades is mounted fast to the shaft which operates in a 

 vertical rather than its accustomed horizontal position. The end of 

 the shaft extends upward into the hopper used for holding the supply 

 of bait and there, with the proper fitting, acts as an agitator to keep 



Figure 5. — A battery of grasshopper-bait spreaders constructed from the 

 transmissions of Model-T Fords. 



a stead}" flow of bait falling on the revolving plate below. A battery 

 of such spreaders is shown in figure 5. 



Whereas a man spreading bait by hand can cover but five or six 

 acres an hour, most of the mechanical spreaders will cover from forty 

 to sixty acres pei' hour and do a very much better job. The bait is 

 spread so well and so evenly that it is difficult to find. But the 

 grasshoppers find it and seem to prefer the fine individual flakes of 

 poisoned bait for extraordinary kills were obtained by as little as 

 six to eight pounds of the wet bait per acre. 



The third column of table 3 shows that 2,665 such spreaders were 

 in use during 1931. Data are lacking from some counties where we 

 know large numbers of spreaders were employed so that the total 

 number in use was close to 3,000. 



