GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 15 



GREAT SPEED RECORDS. 



On roads, on rails of steel and iron, in the water and 

 in the air, man has strained body and mind to attain the 

 highest possible rate of motion. He has used his mas- 

 tery of nature's forces to transport himself from place 

 to place in the shortest possible time. He has made 

 engines driven by steam, by exploding gas, and by com- 

 pressed air. He has harnessed the winds and chained 

 the mysterious electric energy of the earth. He has 

 mn the gamut from small to great in the devices he has 

 constructed to help him move faster than he can on his 

 own unaided legs. 



What has he accomplished? Up to date what are the 

 limits of speed reached on land, in water, through the 

 air? How much has he gained over the animals ? Bees, 

 marked with paint, have been released exactly a mile 

 from their hives, and reached home in 58 or 59 seconds. 

 Lake gulls have been timed accurately by dropping 

 bread over the rail of a steamer and taking the exact 

 second when they rise to catch up with the vessel as the 

 start of their flight. They do a mile a minute easily. 

 Frigate birds fly for hours faster than any gull. Some 

 naturalists believe they can cross the Atlantic, from 

 Brazil to Senegal, where the ocean is 1200 miles wide, in 

 a single night. Many homing-pigeon records surpass a 

 mile a minute, for distances ranging up to 300 miles and 

 more. For 100 miles the rate of 88 miles an hour has 

 been proved. 



Water creatures are much slower; but dolphins and 

 sharks keep up with ordinary ocean steamers easily, 

 making side excursions about the vessels much as lively 

 dogs do when out for a country stroll with a man. It is 

 believed that salmon make spurts at the rate of 25 to 30 

 miles an hour in ascending rivers. In water, as on land, 

 man was hopelessly behind many other creatures until 

 he called wind, steam, gas, electricity, and endless in- 

 genious mechanism to his aid. Now he is faster than 

 any other animal on land and in the water, but the birds 

 still beat him easily in their own element. 



I have for many years known that bees 

 can make a mile a minute; and in the exper- 

 iment given I think they did this with a load 

 one way, and without a load I think they fly 

 considerably faster. The fact the carrier 

 pigeons cover a distance as great as 300 

 miles, at a mile a minute, suggests what 

 men will do when they get to navigating the 

 air. The closing sentence of the above ex- 

 tract intimates that the birds still beat us in 

 their own element; but I want to tell you 

 that the bees and the birds both will have to 

 be up and dusting if they keep out of our 

 way. 



Consider for a moment the great saving 

 of stone roads, railway tracks, and grading, 

 to say nothing of the enormous expense of 

 bridges.'^ The cost of bridges alone in and 

 near some of our great cities goes way up 

 into the millions. When we fly through the 

 air, muddy roads cut no figure, and the price 

 of rubber can go down again, for rubber tires 

 (puncture-proof, etc.) are not "in it." Our 

 machines for carrying passengers can be fin- 

 ished up in the highest style of art, and 

 they can be kept clean because they will 

 never touch mud nor any thing muddy; and 



*And, again, as an illustration of what good roads 

 cost, or, rather what bad roads cost compared with not 

 needing any roads at all, I snbmit the following, clipped 

 from the Louisville Courier-Journal: 



WHT FARMERS SHOt)LD ADVOCATE GOOD ROADS. 



It is estimated that it costs the farmers $950,000,000 a year 

 to move their products to the railway stations. The dis- 

 tances to be traversed vary greatly in different sections. 

 The minimum average is four miles, in New Jersey. In 

 Arizona the average is 60 miles, in Utah 38 miles, and in 

 W.vomini^ 40 miles. In the Southern States the general av- 

 erage is about 10 miles. It is supposed to cost about 25 cents 

 per ton to transport farm products a mile, and it is estimat- 

 ed that two-thirds of the present cost might be saved if good 

 roads were universal. That means an annual saving of over 

 t;600,000,000 a year. Besides, the Agricultural Department 

 estimates that the value of the farms would be increased to 

 the extent of $5,000,000,000. 



there will be no dust to speak of— that is, if 

 we can induce the railways, automobiles, 

 and hoi'sedrawn vehicles to let up a little in 

 "kicking up such clouds of dust" continu- 

 ally. We can go anywhere and everywhere 

 whether they have a railroad or a macadam 

 highway or not. 



Fourteen years ago a friend showed me a 

 periodical devoted to automobiles. I do not 

 know that the name had been coined then. 

 This periodical was termed The Horseless 

 Age. At the time, it really seemed to me 

 that a magazine like that, even though pub- 

 lished monthly, would hardly be supported. 

 It is now a weekly, and there are toward a 

 dozen periodicals on this same subject, most 

 of them weeklies. I am sorry to know, 

 however, that the greater part of them are 

 mostly devoted to the sporting and racing 

 feature. I wonder if I am the first one in 

 the world to suggest that we now need a 

 periodical devoted to the navigation of the 

 air. The Horseless Age was started before 

 any thing had been done worth mentioning; 

 and it greatly aided progress by posting peo- 

 ple up and comparing notes. Let me tell 

 you ivhy it is needed. An inventor whom I 

 have visited (he will not permit me to give 

 his name here) is spending thousands of 

 dollars in making an air-ship, and years of 

 time, sometimes working day and night; and 

 this inventor would stop wasting money if 

 he knew what was going on in some other 

 parts of the world. The papers tell us there 

 are still other inventors, but they prefer to 

 keep their plans secret because each man will 

 have it that lie is right and all the rest are 

 wrong. If these men could have a conven- 

 tion, and would trust each other, not only 

 would time and money be saved, and proba- 

 bly also precious lives, but the new develop- 

 ment would make a great stride. Please, 

 dear friends, do not imagine that I am talk- 

 ing about air-ships held aloft by great bulky 

 unwieldy balloons. I hope the progressive 

 world has got past that idea. Santos Du- 

 mont may astonish us with what he has 

 done with a dirigible balloon; but this is not 

 what we need at all. We want a machine 

 that will float as easily and safely as the 

 bees, the butterflies, and the carrier pigeons 

 do; and, may the Lord be praised, it is al- 

 ready in sight. 



TEACHING A GRADED SPAN OF HORSES IN ONE 



LESSON OF ONLY THREE HOURS SO 



THEY WILL NEVERMORE BE 



AFRAID OF AUTOS. 



Dear Sir:— I want to add my testimony to the ease 

 with which almost any horse can be accustomed to auto- 

 mobiles. While 1 do not at present own one myself. I 

 have ridden and driven a good many belonging to friends. 

 I have a very spirited pair of driving horses, and they 

 were both veiy much afraid of automobiles, whether 

 the same were running or standing still. I got a friend 

 of mine to bring his automobile out to my house, and it 

 took me just three hours to teach them that there is no- 

 thing to fear, and they have never forgotten their les- 

 sons, and pay no more attention to automobiles they 

 may meet on the road, or that may pass them on the 

 road, which is a severer test. All they do now is to^ 

 prick up their ears and watch them closely. I think I 

 could now teach any horse to pay no attention to them 

 in less than three hours. 



