The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-07-13
o make them yield more and better

to make them yield more and better
crops.
All over the country are other men
out every day with butterfly nets to
catch butterflies and grasshoppers and
countless. other insects. Some go out
a. night with lanterns and honey pots
and sit down in the shelter of shrub
beds, waiting till the great laundering
night moths shall be attracted by the
/ keen scent of the honey which they
| love. Often the moths drink honey I'M
til they are actually drunk, when they
can be picked up by the bare hand
without even needing a net.
That is not bad play either. Yet that
kind of playing has saved the people OF
the United States millions of dollars.
! for the insect hunters find out so much
about the insects that destroy vegeta-
| bles and fruit and shade trees that
we know now just when to look out
for their arrival and just how to de-
stroy them before they become big
enough to eat our growing things.
Last year men in the agricultural de-
partment in Washington played at a
most absorbing game that surely would
have pleased every boy and girl in the
land. They planted seeds of many
kinds in tink pots. one seed in each pot.
and then day after day they photo
I graphed the pots. Thus they made
many hundreds of pictures that, when
they were all put together, showed just
how the plants grew. And these pic
lures were put into one of those great
kinetoscope machines that throw large
moving pictures on screens, so now
everybody can see a plant grow from a
seed to a mighty shrub. Only, instead
of having to watch it for months and
years. we can all see 1t within a few
minutes for the machine throws the
pictures on the screen just as fast as
one may wish.
This already has taught farmers and
florists many wonderful things about
plants that never had been suspected
| before. although so many hundreds of
| thousands of sharp-eyed persons have
watched plants grow for so many CEN
! turtles.
| A few years ago the United States
governement imported the beautiful
| and valuable date palm, hoping to
make it grow in the sandy and dry
parts of Arizona and New Mexico and
| other spots of the United States where
| other domastic plants do not thrive.
! The date palms did fairly well, but not
| we'll enough to please the department
| of agriculture so IL sent one of its
men away out to Africa and across the
! trackless desert Of Sahara to find
the GASES and see how palms grow
! there.
He discovered many curious things.
/ Among other facts that he found was
I that the Sahara really is not a sandy
| desert at all. 1t is a desert. sire
! enough, but only because 1t has no
| water. It's soil. instead of being sand.
| Is actually the finest kind of loan,
and he says that by lying idle as it
has done for so many thousands of
years ii has grown very rich indeed.
| And If ever the French or the English
I carry out the old plan Of leading wa
| ter into 1t, the great desert of Sahara
will become one of the worlds most
| fertile places.
He also found a gorgeous evergreen
\ morning glory twining all over the
] houses of the Arabs. And then he found
the beautiful oasis. and when he re-
turned II was with many camels. all
laden with fine date palms. And these