124 
*the RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 25, 1919 
What’s Behind 
Your Fertili 
Any of the followino prac¬ 
tical crop books will be 
mailed upon request— 
"Corn, the Foundation of 
Profitable Farmino.” 
"Potatoes, a Money Crop.” 
"The Neqlected Hay Crop." 
"BetterVeoetableGrowino.” 
The analysis on the bag does not tell the whole story. 
Experience is the best guide in any line of work. 
You know how far the average “book farmer” gets unless he coni' 
bines his scientific knowledge with practical experience. 
Over Sixty Years 
of real farm and fertilizer experience is combined with the latest scientific 
knowledge in every bag of E. Frank Coe’s Fertilizers. The results obtained 
by thousands of successful farmers from Maine to Florida have been com¬ 
pared, studied and condensed into a series of formulas to meet the 
different soil and crop conditions. 
If you will tell us the kind of soil on which your farm is located, the crops you intend to 
plant in 1919, and what fertilizer you applied last year, we wilLrecommend the brand 
which in our opinion will cive you the greatest profit. 
Write today for our latest crop books and ask for the name of our nearest agent. 
We want a representative in every town. 
Address Crop Book Department 
THE COE-MOITTIMER. COMPANY 
Subsidiary of the American Agricultural Chemical Co. 
SI Chambers Street, New York City 
After 
the War, 
What? 
Europe is hungry. How 
hungry,well-fed Americans 
can scarcely realize. Your oppor¬ 
tunity is at hand. The foreign demand for j 7 our crops will 
be great for years to come. But you men on the farms of 
America can grow enough food for export only by taking 
extra care with your seed beds. 
“Acme” Pulverizing Harrows 
Make Perfect Seed Beds 
They cleave the soil easily, turning, pulverizing and leveling it. 
“The Coulters Do the Work.” They cut up sod and trash, and 
compact the lower soil, yet leave a protective mulch on top. Every 
“Acme” has a comfortable seat—no more weary plodding over 
soft ground. And there’s a size to suit your farm, big or little. 
Our largest size hitched to a tractor does the best job of fitting 
you’ve ever seen. 
See the “Acme” line at your dealer’s. 
He should have a stock on hand. But 
you need our latest catalog, which 
tells how to make perfect seed beds. 
Send for it today; also ask for special 
circular on the “Acme” Disc Harrow. 
Duane H. Nash Inc. 
141 Elm Street 
Millington, N. J. 
FARMERS 
HANDY 
WAGON 
Low pteel wheels, wide tires, make 
loading and handling easier. We fur¬ 
nish Steel Wheel*.t. lit any axle, to 
carry any load. Plain or grooved tire. 
Catalogue sent free. 
EMPIRE MFG.CO., Box 396, Quincy, lilt 
Binder Twine 
Get our low 1919 prices. Farm- 
eragents wanted. Sample free. 
THEO. BURT & SONS. Melrose. Ohio 
Genuine Grimm is most 
profitable because of its 
hardiness, large yields 
and high feeding value. 
Less seed required to 
get a stand. Booklet, 
testimonials and seed 
sample free. 
A. B. LYMAN, 
Grimm Al/alja Introducer 
. Alfalfadalc r , . 
L Farm, Excelsior, Minn. 
It's on in a second • 
All Slidewell Collars are made 
with the Tie-protecting Shield 
and Graduated Tie-space. 
ASK YOUR OWN DEALER 
Hall, Hartwell & Co., Makers, Troy,N. Y. 
Questions About Lubricating Oils 
(Continued from page 120) 
spun and woven, and oleic acid is used 
as a lubricant. 
Breaking the free acid from the gly¬ 
cerine is known as saponification, since 
soap is made in this way, but if this 
action occurs too easily, you may pro¬ 
duce a free acid in a lubricant while you 
use it, so that this is also to be con¬ 
sidered. Then too the point at which a 
lubricant begins to solidify may have a 
great effect on its use; it must not get 
too thick, nor must it thin up in heat 
so that it runs from between the bear¬ 
ings, hence the solidifying point and the 
melting point (m.p.) must be considered, 
especially as they are not always the 
same point; some oils, once melted, will 
stay fluid quite a bit below the point to 
which they stay solid if once well cooled. 
Furthermore, some vegetable and ani¬ 
mal oils will give off vapor when heated, 
and some will change under heat, so that 
flash and burning points should he con¬ 
sidered, although not nearly as often as 
with mineral oils. 
When we consider these we find an 
altogether different structure. Instead of 
a salt of glycerine and acid (there are 
several hundred of these fatty acids, I 
merely mentioned the common ones), we 
find a large group which have just car¬ 
bon and hydrogen, and they run all the 
way from a gas (marsh gas) to ... hard 
paraffin. In nature the mineral oil may 
contain some of each, and often does, 
and the refiner boils them off, gets some 
gas, some “wild gas” or low boiling gaso¬ 
line, some gasoline, some kerosene, and 
then some “solvent naphtha.” Then he 
begins to get lubricants of various sorts, 
the lighter and thinner ones first, finally 
the paraffins, and then tars and still 
residues. Meanwhile these have been 
breaking down in the stills more or less 
to simple bodies. But if the refiner 
starts with an “asphalt base oil” he gets 
little or no gasoline directly, but a lot 
of lubrication oils which may bo 
“cracked” in some cases to lighter bodies 
and which do crack of themselves at 
times. Then too the coke makers are apt 
to have various tars which, if they can¬ 
not sell them for more money as some¬ 
thing else are apt to appear as lubri¬ 
cants, and they make very good ones for 
some things. 
Since there are frequent traces of the 
more volatile bodies in the refined min¬ 
eral lubricants, the flash test becomes 
quite important. It is the point at which 
the oil or grease begins to give off vapor 
rapidly enough to form an inflammable 
mixture with air. In order to get com¬ 
parable results the same machine must 
always be used, but they are simple, and 
are on the market at a reasonable price. 
The principle involved is the regular 
steady heating of the oil, and the appli¬ 
cation of a flame to the vapor a given 
distance above the oil surface. This is 
tried at constant intervals; finally there 
will be a little flash, and the temperature 
of the oil is then read from a thermom¬ 
eter. Just the same process is used for 
the “fire test,” which is better known as 
the burning test, except now the tem¬ 
perature is taken at which the surface 
of the oil itself catches fire, and this is 
usually well above the flash point. 
The one important thing left is the 
viscosity. We do not know what this 
really is, except that it is one side of 
the great and unsolved problem of “stick¬ 
iness,” which is so important and so 
little understood. It is the stickiness of 
the oil to itself, internally, and to the 
solid surfaces, as against a sliding mo¬ 
tion. But it is not a measure of the 
lubricating power unless you consider 
other circumstances also. There have 
been several devices made for measuring 
it, some of these have their place for 
definite questions, no one of them is 
universal, and it does not seem likely 
that there ever will be a universal vis¬ 
cosimeter, though some inventors have 
claimed it. Temperature is very impor¬ 
tant, so also is pressure, and when we 
have both of these high, the chemical 
composition of the oil is apt to begin to 
change. For instance, while a mixture 
has been made which is said to be as 
good or better, for a long time castor oil 
was the only good lubricant for airplane 
engines, because it was not too thick to 
feed in the cold and not too thin in the 
hot, and did not break down much or 
give carbon deposits at the temperatures 
and pressures of the cylinders. But it 
is not mere thickness that counts,, there 
must he a certain internal elasticity, so 
to speak, in the oil itself, so that it will 
not squeeze so thin, under weight or im¬ 
pact, that there is nothing between the 
bearing surfaces. In a way this resist¬ 
ance to mashing is a form of viscosity, 
but trial in service conditions seems the 
only way to measure it. It in important 
in heavy machinery, truck hearings and 
gear boxes, for in gears you have a mash¬ 
ing as well as a sliding contact. That 
is, in a plain bearing the oil has to 
squeeze the full length of the bearing if 
it is going to squeeze out, and it will 
lubricate on the way; in a gear it is 
easy to squeeze from between the teeth 
and leave them practically hare. That is 
one reason why mica and graphite are so 
often used in gear greases. The peculiar 
viscosity of the marine oils (whale, dol¬ 
phin, etc.), seems in some way related 
to their chemical structure, as they are 
not glycerides, hut salts of acids and 
alcohols peculiar to those creatures, and 
resemble the waxes made by bees and 
similar insects. But these oils are 
scarce and high, while the mineral oils 
are plenty and much less in price, so the 
latter are apt to be used everywhere 
they can be made to do the work. The 
preparation of the lubricants from the 
raw material involves such a large plant 
and so many processes that the business 
seems bound to drift into the hands of 
a few large concerns. For this reason 
alone it is well to allov.' the newcomer to 
prove the worth of his product on some 
one else. This looks like snuffing out 
the beginner, and in a way it. is, yet 
there seems no other course open for the 
buyer of lubricants in small quantity. 
The large buyers often have their own 
laboratories and can test, but where you 
must take the stuff on faith, the reputa¬ 
tion of the maker rather than the claims 
which may be made by an agent should 
guide the purchase. Things do not al¬ 
ways go right in the larger refineries, 
and when a slip occurs, the product is 
apt to be left on the world’s doorstep, 
so to speak. The individual buyer is 
only safe when getting a product under 
the maker’s name which is made for the 
use of certain machines or for certain 
definite processes. 
After all. these agents only know what 
they are told to say by their head sales¬ 
man ; very few have had laboratory ex¬ 
perience, although some have had prac¬ 
tical experience. It is no easy task to 
test an oil in a good laboratory with all 
the devices at hand, and it is rare to 
have two runs of oil exactly alike. The 
1 rger makers test and then bring the 
product up to standard by adding what 
is lacking; they have the goods of all 
sorts, and so can put out a uniform 
product. 
Coming Farmers’ Meetings 
National Western Stock Show, Denver, 
Colo., .Tan. 17-26. 
Farmers’ Week, Hartford, Conn., Jan. 
20-24. 
Madison Square Garden, New York— 
Poultry Show, .Tan. 21-25. 
Connecticut Dairymen’s Association, 
Connecticut Sheep Breeders’ Association, 
Connecticut Poultrymens Association, 
Hartford, Conn., Jan. 21-22. 
New York State Breeders’ Association, 
Buffalo, N. Y., Jan. 20-31. H. B. Ilar- 
pending, president, Dundee, N. Y. 
Connecticut Bornological Society., Con¬ 
necticut Vegetable Growers’ Association, 
Hartford, Conn.,- .Tan. 23-24. 
Ohio State Corn and Grain Show, Co¬ 
lumbus, Jan. 27-31. 
Second Annual Ohio Farmers’ Tractor 
Demonstrations, Columbus, Jan. 27-31. 
Ohio Farm Bureau Association, Colum¬ 
bus, .Tan. 27-28. 
Ohio Sheep and Wool Growers’ Asso¬ 
ciation, Columbus, Jan. 27. 
Ohio State Horticultural Society, Co¬ 
lumbus, .Tan. 28-29. 
Ohio State Vegetable Growers’ Associa¬ 
tion, Columbus, .Tan. 28-30. 
State Farmers’ Institute, Columbus, 
Ohio, Jan. 28. 
Ohio Beekeepers’ Association, Colum¬ 
bus, Jan. 28-29. 
Ohio Bural Life Association, Colum¬ 
bus, Jan. 29-31. 
Reunion of Washington Corn Tourists, 
Columbus, Ohio, Jan. 29. 
Ohio Percheron Breeders’ Association, 
Columbus, Jan. 29. 
Conference of Boys’ and Girls’ Club 
Workers, Columbus, Ohio, Jan. 30-31. 
Ohio State Dairymen’s Association, Co¬ 
lumbus, Jan. 29-31. 
Ohio Jersey Cattle Club, Columbus, 
Jan. 29. 
Ohio Guernsey Breeders’ Association, 
Columbus, Jan. 30. 
Ohio Creamery Owners’ and Managers’ 
Association, Columbus, Jan, 30. 
Ohio Milk Distributors’ Association, 
Columbus, Jan. 30. 
Ohio Milk Producers’ Association, Co¬ 
lumbus, Jan. 30-31. 
Holstein-Friesian Breeders’ Associa¬ 
tion, Columbus, Ohio, Jan. 31. 
Ohio Swiss Cheese Association, Colum¬ 
bus, Jan. 31. 
American Carnation Society, Cleveland, 
Ohio, Jan. 29-30. 
Massachusetts Dairymen’s Association, 
annual meeting, Horticultural Hall, Bos¬ 
ton, week of Feb. 10. 
Massachusetts Fruit Growers’ Associa¬ 
tion, annual meeting, Horticultural Hall, 
Boston, Feb. 11-12. 
Union meeting, agricultural organiza¬ 
tions of Massachusetts, Horticultural 
Hall, Boston, Feb. 11-14. 
California International Live S_tock 
Show, San Francisco, Cal., Fob. 8-15. 
Omaha Inter-State Land Show, Muni¬ 
cipal Auditorium, Omaha, Neb., Feb. 
12 - 22 . 
Meeting of the Massachusetts State 
Vegetable Growers’ Association, to be 
held in Horticultural llall, Boston, Feb. 
12 . 
Farmer’s Week, New York Agricultural 
College, Ithaca, N. Y., Feb. 10-15. 
Hudson River meeting, New York 
State Horticultural Society, Poughkeep¬ 
sie, Feb. 19-21. 
“I SEE Henry Ford is going to start a 
newspaper.” “Does he know anything 
about running a newspaper?” “Must 
know a heap. I notice he waited until lie 
got $40,000,000 before arranging to run 
one.”—Louisville Courier-Journal. 
Lady : “Put the brakes on quickly, 
James.” Chauffeur (formerly tank 
driver) : “They’re jammed, me lady, hut 
don’t you worry. We shall go through 
that house at the bottom as clean as a 
whistle.”—The By-Stander. 
