Popular Science Monthly 



909 



An Improvised Tree Sprayer and 

 Fire Engine Combined 



AT World's End Farm, owned by Mrs. 

 l\, W. W. Blackmar, and situated at 

 Hingham, Massachusetts, are many inter- 

 esting contrivances. Among them is a 

 tank on wheels, used as a fire engine and 

 sprayer combined. 



An old twenty-five horsepower automo- 

 bile engine is mounted on a wagon-truck 

 together with a pump and a four hundred 

 and sixty gallon tank. The entire weight 

 is nine thousand, five hundred pounds. 



The contrivance was improvised by Mr. 

 C. R. Goodhue, the superintendent of the 

 grounds. It is used for spraying trees, and, 

 in cases of emergency, to put out fires. It 

 throws a spray eighty feet in the air with 

 sufficient force to completely clean the trees 

 of insects and their eggs, leaving germicide 

 solution on the leaves of even the topmost 

 branches. Since this method of spraying 

 the trees has been in use, the production of 

 fruit has considerably increased. During 

 the past year thirty-five thousand gallons of 

 sprayer were used. Disastrous fires have 

 also been eliminated; for with the fire 

 engine right on the premises, a fire is 

 stopped at the very start. 



Grasshoppers Which Fly a Thousand 

 Miles Out at Sea 



THE grasshopper would seem to have 

 nothing in common with the seagull, 

 >et grasshoppers have been picked up in 

 swarms at sea, 1,200 miles from the nearest 

 land. 



The African grasshopper has been known 

 to cross the Red and Mediterranean seas 

 in destructive numbers and even to fly 

 to the Canary Islands. For the most part 

 these grasshoppers are of a migratory 

 species (Schistocera tartaricd) noted for its 

 great flights. The bodies are about four 

 inches long and are equipped with large air 

 sacs in addition to the usual breathing 

 tubes. These sacs buoy up the insect so 

 that it is able to stay in the air for days at a 

 time, exerting practically no efi'ort at all. 

 During flight its speed varies from three 

 to twenty ^ miles an hour. When 

 it is tired m it rests on the water 

 and is borne fl along on the waves. 



The tree-sprayer fire engine throws a stream eighty feet into the air. For the more strenuous 

 fire-engine duties large open nozzles are used instead of the ordinary spraying nozzles 



