Popular Science Monthly 



507 



Midget Crane Has Giant Ability 



A TINY crane, so apparently helpless 

 that it is difficult to imagine its 

 doing actual work about a large factory, 

 is in use on the assembling floor of a 

 tractor plant in Cleveland. The crane, 

 despite its appearance, has tremendous 

 capacity. It can seize and lift a weighty 

 automobile or tractor engine from the 

 floor, swing it up into the air and into 

 the chassis without so much as a grunt 

 or a groan of protest. 



make a hen lay an egg which should be 

 self-preserving. He succeeded very well. 



By his method the hen was fed uro- 

 tropin, administered in capsules at the 

 rate of less than a gram a day. Uro- 

 tropin is deposited in the egg, where it 

 changes into formalin, a well-known 

 preservative. 



Eggs laid within twenty-four hours 

 after the first dosing, as well as those 

 laid five days after, were sufficiently 

 affected to be preserved. Dr. Riddle 



The midget crane runs around the factory under its own power, on a body which looks like 

 an electric baggage truck. It can lift weights apparently far out of proportion to its size, 



and it is controlled by one man 



The crane with its operating mechan- 

 ism is mounted on a rigid, four-wheeled 

 truck. It travels about and performs 

 its required lifting all under the guidance 

 of one man. 



Making a Hen Lay Self-Preserving Eggs 



THK Popular Science Monthly for 

 January gives an account of a 

 Chinese method of preserving eggs by 

 coating them in hard clay. It is an in- 

 teresting process, but more or less labori- 

 ous. 



Four years ago. Dr. Osrar Riddle, now 

 of the Carnegie Institution, undertook 

 in a leisure moment to see if he could not 



tested the keeping power of the eggs in 

 comparison with those from untreated 

 hens under particularly severe circum- 

 stances. Kggs of both \aricties laid in 

 the month of July were allowed to stand 

 in a temperature varying from seventy- 

 eight degrees al)0\-e zero to twenty-five 

 below. By the middle of September the 

 difference between the two kinds of eggs 

 could be easily detected; by the middle 

 of November all the eggs from undosed 

 hens were spoilt while those from uro- 

 tropin-fed hens were still edible, although 

 thc>' had lost some of their bulk of water. 

 The drug does not injure the hens, 

 and is obtainable at small cost. 



