264 



Washing the gold-containing gravel through 

 a sifter which serves at other times as a hat 



Panning for Gold in Central and 

 South America 



THE "battel" used by the prospector for 

 gold in Central and South America 

 in tropical placer mining is a better gold- 

 saver than the Alaskan gold pan. Shaped 

 like a platter, with a 

 depressed center 

 coming to a point 

 in the middle, the 

 gold collects in the 

 point of this broad 

 shallow cylinder. 

 The pan is filled 

 from a pool with 

 gold-containing 

 quartz gravel and is 

 rocked in the ortho- 

 dox manner. As the 

 pan rests on the bot- 

 tom the contents are 

 tipped and swirled 

 about until the dirt 

 loosens and only the 

 pure gravel and hard 

 substances remain. 

 Of these, only that 

 which is bright yel- 

 low is valuable. 



When the miner 

 is not sifting gold 

 with it he uses his 

 battel as a hat. — 

 Grace S. Mathews. 



Popular Science Monthly 



Everybody Is Acquainted with 

 the Squash Bug 



SOME of us know all the bad things 

 about the squash bug — that it is 

 proverbially ill-favored and ill-smelling 

 and an enemy to the squash vines. We 

 have heard the entomologist speak about 

 Anasa tristis with elaborate description of 

 the bug that hibernates in the adult stage, 

 wakes up in the early spring and lays its 

 eggs on the young leaves of the squash 

 and the pumpkin. We think of it as we 

 think of a pest. From the human point of 

 view it is a pest, but it improves on ac- 

 quaintance. It is true to its family char- 

 acteristics; it is really a bug; it is a member 

 of the family Heteroptera, and is somewhat 

 of a beauty (we mean the "lady-bug"). 



In the accompanying photograph the 

 protruding part of the sheath is the tongue 

 or sucking beak. The squash bug's eyes 

 are large and beautiful, and really wonder- 

 ful when seen under a microscope. The 

 antennae or feelers, the two branched 

 prongs between the eyes and the tongue, are 

 marvelous organisms of sense. It would be 

 difficult to enumerate all their duties, not 

 because the list is long, but because we do 

 not wholly know what those duties are. 

 They surely enable the bug to recognize its 



surroundings; what 



else they do is be- 

 yond our under- 

 standing. 



But the most 

 beautiful of all its 

 anatomy is the curi- 

 ously mottled sheath 

 that covers the head 

 and the thorax. 

 These dots bear a 

 high magnification, 

 and the better one 

 knows them the 

 more does he admire 

 them. It is indeed 

 a marvelous object. 

 It is astonishing that 

 there should be so 

 much beauty, so 

 much elaborate 

 structure where 

 they seem misplaced 

 so far as general 

 human apprecia- 

 tion is concerned. 

 — E d w A R d F. 



BlGELOW. 



Portrait of a squash lady-bug. The protuber- 

 ances at the side of the body are the eyes 



