Popular Science Monthly 



63 



The rows of trenches are not structures built by warring soldiers, but are the terraced 

 rice-fields of industrious Filipino farmers 



would have to be done, they would sim- 

 ply be laid on supports, and great sub- 

 sequent expense would be saved. 



As a result of this construction it 

 would not be much harder to get to 

 Brooklyn than to cross Broadway. In- 

 deed, New York and Brooklyn would be 

 as much one big city as are the East Side 

 and the West Side. New York would 

 expand logically. At present most of the 

 expansion is to the north of the city, and 

 forms its chief prol)lem. 



This practically completes my scheme. 

 I do not urge the simultaneous attack of 

 the entire project. It should be carried 

 through section by section, and this 

 would involve an annual expenditure of 

 from fifty to one hundred million dollars. 



When these facts are understood there 

 will be no difficulty in obtaining the nec- 

 essary authority to start work. Then, 

 after the section between the Battery 

 and Staten Island has been laid out on 

 ])a])er, enough land can be sold to start 

 the work, which would proceed just as 

 fast as the proceeds of the sale justified, 

 and a really great debt- free New York 

 would result. 



Farming on a Precipice 



ON mountain slopes so steep as to ap- 

 pear quite worthless for agricul- 

 ture, the rice growers of the Philippine 

 Islands are producing crops upon made- 

 to-order farms. These famous terraces 

 of the Mountain Province extend as far 

 as the eye can reach, a work of patience 

 rivalling the pyramids. Imagine a whole 

 mountain laid out in ledge above ledge, 

 the walls almost perpendicular, the strip 

 of field graded just enough to allow the 

 water to flow from one terrace to an- 

 other without violence, so that every 

 acre is irrigated but not washed out by 

 the current. 



As the photograph indicates, the work 

 appears too vast to be the work of hu- 

 man beings. In fact it might better rep- 

 resent some great upheaval of the earth's 

 crust. 



EXPERIMENTS are being carried 

 on in Cuba with the fiber of a plant 

 locally known as malva hlanca, which is 

 said to produce an ideal fabric for sugar 

 bags. 



The February Popular Science Monthly will be on sale Saturday, January 

 fifteenth (West of Denver on Thursday, January tw^entieth). 



