Popular Science Monthly 



731 



Sharing Your Flowers with 

 Distant Friends 



SINCE the parcel post system has been 

 instituted it has become possible for 

 suburbanites and dwellers in rural localities 

 to share a number of their good things with 

 their city friends or others at a distance. 

 Even flowers ma\- be sent as far as the fourth 

 zone without parting with their fragrance 

 or freshness on the journey, provided they 

 are correctly packed. But not all flowers 

 are good travelers. There is little use in 

 tn,ing to share the beauty of a 

 bed of poppies, cannas, moon- 

 flowers or others of like texture, 

 with distant friends. Roses, too, 

 are rather delicate to send on 

 long trips. But if they are 

 picked when only partially 

 blown and are kept in cool 

 water until the petals and 

 stems are full, they will not 

 wilt badly and will revive 

 readilv at the end of the 



journey. 



Flowers intended for send- 

 ing away should be cut early 

 in the morning while still wet 

 with dew and allowed to 

 stand in cool water for the re- 

 mainder of the day so that they 

 will absorb plenty of moisture. 

 Choose a corrugated box, if pos- 

 sible. The long, slender variety of 

 pasteboard box in which flowers are 

 usually sent from the florists will not do 

 for long trips by parcel post. They are 

 liable to bend in the middle or to be crushed. 

 Line the bo.x first with ordinary paper and 

 then with wax paper. If you wish to finish 

 it off very nicely, a layer or tvso of white 

 tissue paper may come next. Lay the 

 flowers carefully in the box, long stemmed 

 ones first, and fold the coverings in neatly. 



The explosion of sticks of 

 dynamite blasts the hole clean 

 in a fraction of a second 



The djaiamite sticks are tied 

 to a pole and are fired off 

 when buried in the ground 



Blasting Holes with Dynamite — It's 

 Cheaper and Quicker than Digging 



DIGGING pole holes with dynamite is a 

 comparatively new practice, which is 

 fast supplanting the slow and costly hand 

 method. It has two main advantages as 

 compared with hand digging, in that it re- 

 quires the services of fewer men for any 

 given number of holes and leaves the holes 

 clean. 



Instead of long-handled shovels a long 

 punch bar and a sledge or a soil auger are 

 used. After the position of the hole has 



been determined, a hol- 

 low from six to ten inches 

 deep is dug with an ordi- 

 nary-shovel. This hollow 

 has the same diameter as 

 the hole required, and its 

 sides are trimmed straight and 

 clean to relieve the pressure of 

 the explosion and prevent shatter- 

 ing of the surface soil. This forms a kind 

 of crater around a smaller hole. 



The next operation is to bore a small hole 

 in the center of the hollow by means of the 

 auger. Then several pieces of stick dyna- 

 mite are tied to a small lath at inter\'als 

 var\ing from six to twenty-four inches, as 

 shown in the oval above, and the lath is 

 inserted in the hole. 



A blasting cap is attached to the topmost 

 piece of dynamite and the whole charge 

 fired from a short distance awa\' by means 

 of the usual detonator. 



The shock caused by the explosion of the 

 top section of dynamite sets off the other 

 pieces, the force of the explosion throwing 

 out much dirt and loosening the remainder 

 so that it may be easily cleaned out with a 

 shovel in two or three minutes. The amount 

 of dynamite necessary for each hole depends 

 upon the depth of the hole and the character 

 of the soil in which it is to be made. Rocky 

 soil requires more, of course, than plain earth. 



