Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 42, Number 233, 11 August 1917 — Page 5

THE JUNIOR PALLADIUM WEEKLY SECTION . OF TWO RICHMOND PALLADIUM

Take the Jun. ior with you on your Vacation. Take the Jun. ior with you on your Vacation. RICHMOND, 1ND., SATURDAY, AUG 11, 1917

WAR HORSES KNOW BUGLE CALL 1 have boon a lifelong lover of ihe horse, and have ridden since 1 was 8 years old. My first ride was taken at the age of 5. I rode around the block alone on a oneeyed horse which was used by my father to turn a small mill in his grain elevator. When 1 returned to my starting place I informed the spectators that there had been a runaway. There had been a runaway so far as I was concerned. I had no control over my bony mount from the moment he started until he had circled the block. I spent all my time "pulling leather" with both hands about the saddle horn, and bad no opportunity to grasp the reins. And the horse, accustomed to going in circles, had turned to the right at every corner to get back to the starting point as soon as possible, and to facilitate matters he had broken into a trot not quite. At 8 years of age I rode over the plains of Western Kansas on a little black cow borse from the Kitchen Ranch, called Nigger. My next mount was named Bill. He was a little bay bronco, spavined and ringboned, but, oh, the unquenchable spirit of him! I made a trick hone of Bill, and when I finally enlisted in the light artillery I surprised my officers by being able to do many of the "monkey drill stunts" of seasoned mounted soldiers. The horses of my battery wore a fine lot. Every horse in the corral was of the same color a dark brown. All were geldings. Their weights varied from about 1,250 pound.'3 to 1,500. The lightest animals comprised' the lend teams of both caissons and pieces. The medium weights were swing teams. The heavy old lumberers were the wheelers. It is surprising how active these big horses can become when trained under the saddle from colthood. The army wants unbroken colts so that they may be trained to military service from the start. Our horses knew nothing but soldiering. They paid no more attention to the rattle of the guns than do brewery horses to the rattle of a street car. These horses learn the bugle calls. They will obey the bugle commands at drill with the slightest pressure on the reins, even when in the excitement of a breakneck charge. And how they love to drill! No cow pony could get more enjoyment out of chasing a breachy steer than do military horses from their everyday tasks. Our stock was kept in the pinkj of condition. They were fed twice

MISSOURI GETS ITS 'HOPPERS FROM THE EAST

Massachusetts fishworms and Florida grasshoppers are doing their "bit" for the cause of higher education .in Missouri. Each year the University of Missouri imports about 1,500 each of the fishworms and grasshoppers for use in the zoology laboratories. An additional supply is ordered for distribution to the high schools of the state. Student collectors, working for the biological laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., catch these earthworms by the thousands at night after the spring rains. A good collector will take 1,400 or 1,500 or more in a single night They are then preserved in alcohol and are ready for shipment to school and laboratories over the country. There are fishworms a-plenty and to spare in Missouri, and at times grasshoppers are so numerous as to be a menace to crops. It Is desirable, however, for the caue of science to go to markets outside the state for more. Massachusetts fishworms are four or five timea as large as the Missouri variety and, therefore, are much better specimens for the zoological laboratory table. It la because of a like difference in size between the Florida grasshopper and hia Missouri relative that the university lays itself open to the charge of nonsupport of home insect industries. Measured by Missouri standards, Florida grasshoppers resemble birds in about the same proportion that

a day at 4 in the morning andl late in the afternoon. Twice a day they were groomed for 45 minutes ; an hour and a half in all. Theirnmil.iiln 1 n.riMl i.iAKn inn l. hil

j their feet cleaned. " Toward the i close of "stables" the officer of the I day passed his white glove over i the coat of a horse here and there. I If the glove came away soiled, the I man grooming that particular horse I would not have finished when "re- ! call" blew. In summer we herded them. There were many acres of fine pasture land in the reservation, and a herd guard was sent out with the entire bunch. Often they would stampede, and then the guard would be dging "Western stuff" until they were in hand again. We were allowed mounted passes in summer every Saturday and Sunday. The regulations were that no man could tie his horse while on pass. When a man returned from mounted pass the Stable Sergeant examined his horse. If he showed signs of hard riding that man would not get another mounted pass for many weeks. "Yet at drill the same horse would be ridden until he was white with foam. Many are the times my friends and I have unsaddled and washed the caked foam from our horses in the river, then allowed the horses to dry in the sun before riding into the post. For rivalry is bound to exist between men in regard to their horses, and everybody loves a race. J. Rutherford Price, at one time Captain of my battery, was a tall, straight, gloomy man of CO, with close-cropped snow-white hair. Price was given to periods of absent-mindedness.'. He was a studious man, and once wrapped in a problem he was likely to lose track of time, his surroundings, and the i main business of the moment. It is my opinion -that he should have been retired for senility long before I came into the battery, for such a man might prove harmful if he were to lose track of the present while attending to the grim business of war. Price rode a big, fine, leggy chestnut gelding, one of the neatest built army saddlers I have ever soon. lie was quick and. swift, and delighted in a reckless run. But he was headstrong, and, in a way, was as peculiar as Captain Price. In the morning the battery would over a quarter of a mile from the gunsheds. The teams would he hitched on, and cannoneers and drivers waiting at ease for the coming of the Captain. In the meantime the bugler would have ridden to the old man's house, leading the chestnut. The house was over a quarter of a mile from the gunsheds. We would see Massachusetts fishworms look like snakes. But Florida and Massachusetts do not have a monopoly on this strange Missouri trade. Indiana and Ohio supply the state university with about 2,000 frogs and tadpoles each year. To the layman it probably seems even more absurd that these creatures should be shipped in than that it should be necessary to go across several states to get worms and "hoppers." The very idea of shipping tadpoles and frogs all the way from Indiana and Ohio when every Missouri mudpuddle is alive with them, he think3. Right there he's wrong. Improbable as it may seem, there are parts of Missouri which do not furnish their full quota in the spring time choir. The region around Columbia, where the state university is located, is such a place. Bull frogs seem to have become wise to the fact that education la now for them, that the farther they stay from universities and colleges, especially those that have zoology depart menta, the better off they are. In the good old bullfrog days in Missouri, when only a dozen or so students took zollogy, there -were frogs of all kinds and to spare around Columbia. But times do change even for frogs, and the biological sciences have so developed and the number of students so increased that a Columbia frog is lucky if it becomes a tadpole, not to mention a full-grown, 2-year-old bullfrog.

"WHO'S NEXT TO AID RED CROSS ?" - Here's little Generose Walsh, as Columbia, and the lemonade pitcher that earned $13.10 for the Red Cross. Generose, seven other girls and two boys in costume sold 262 lemonades yesterday from a booth in front of the Walsh residence at 916 Garfield boulevard. They call themselves the Generose Circle. Photo by International Film Service.

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the Captain come out, take the reins from the bugler, and mount. The bugler would fall in rear, and the old Captain would start at a gallop for the battery. When he was perhaps 25 yards from us the First Sergeant would give the command: "Ca nnoneers and drivers, mount!" The battery would spring to its seats, dress and sit at stiff attention while the Captain approached. But about every third morning the old ma,n would be in one of his fits of abstraction. The chestnut would bear him along at a gallop, straining always to break into a run. The First Sergeant and the chiefs of sections would present sabers at the critical moment, but the horse would carry Price completely past, the battery and dash for the stables. "Rest!" the top would command, and his lips twitched with amusement At the stable door the Stable Sergeant would stand in readiness. The horse would bolt through the door, the patient bugler following. In the stable the Sergeant and the old man would, between them, get the chestnut turned about and headed once more for the 6table door. Price would set his teeth and wield the spurs, and out they would dash. be "ut of his dope" sufficiently to "Attention!" Once more the battery would make ready to receive its Captain. But the horse would carry the old man completely past again and race across the parade ground to the very door of his house, the dutiful bugler always at his heels. , By this time the Captain would realize the ridiculous figure he was cutting. And when the horse once more tried to race past the outfit Price, with might and main, would manage to saw him to a dancing

halt before his men. Then the chestnut would invariably face the battery, stamp one foot, and- give a trumpet-like snort of defiance. But that would be all of it. At drill his conduct would be commendable.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT OUR NAVY THAT EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW

A fourteen inch gun is built up from eight or ten hoop3 or steel tubes. Each is turned to an exact fit less several thousands of an inch, then heated red until expansion permits it to be drawn on. It cools and adds strength not only by its thickness, but by the grip of its shrinking, writes Lieutenant Fitzhugh Green, of the United States battleship Texas for the Vigilantes. The first or inner tube has helical grooves to give rotation to the shell just as any sporting rifle. Tremendous firing pressures between fifteen and twenty tons per square inch, combined with acid gases and other products of explosion, cause erosion or wearing away and pitting of the grooves. Inner tubes must be renewed periodically. The life of the gun, so called, is about 150 shots. Since frequent target practices are held few years elapse before guns must be taken ashore and retubed. The total cost of retubing a fourteen inch gun is in the neighborhood of $25,000. Besides the inner erosion, cons-1 stantshocks of explosion crystallize the whole steel structure. Crystalli zation of metal may be likened to the drying of cheese. At first the mass is relatively tough and elastic. After the heavy punishment of protracted firing, gun tubes weaken and become brittle. Microscopic examination reveals contraction and disintregation of metal partities, just as cracks and crumbly

CAT AS SNIFFER HELPS THE SOLDIERS Eliot Norton of New York city has received a letter from an American volunteer in France, Norman Le, eighteen years old, son of a newspaper man, who has been driving an American Red Cross ambulance for the last nine mouths, and who has received the Croix de Guerre. The letter follows: "It's 2 a. m. I have just returned from a trip and it's a good time to write. While I attempt this two men are busily engaged in piling up trench torpedoes just outside of the 'dugout. I call it a dugout in reality it's only a cellar but it serves its purpose keeps the 'eclats' from hitting you of course, a direct hit would be a different thing. The Boches dropped a few gas shells over about midnight. Have you ever heard a rattlesnake? Well, a gas shell has the same effect. No one has ot tell you what it is, you know. It just goes 'put' and lets out a greenish vapor. That's enough down in the dugout put on your masks and wait until the Boches are finished. But it's a ghastly scene, one candle burning, and every one sitting around with masks on the cat hugs the fire while James, the medicine dog, has his mask on, too it's a special one and he knows enough not to paw it off. He's a real war dog. "During these sessions there is always an official 'sniffer appointed, who has to take off his mask, every once in a while, go to the door and see if the stuff is still around. The other day we, were in doubt so we threw the cat out. She came back so quickly that no one had any doubt that it still was there. Oh! It bothers me, the gas more than the shells. It's a pretty rotten way to make war. v

HUGE BEAR OUTSPEEDS FLYING EXPRESS TRAIN Chasing a big black bear ahead of their engine for one-eighth of a mile was the exciting experience of a crew of the Tionesta Valley Railroad in Pennsylvania. The bear evidently did not see or hear the approach of the train when coming up the track, but as soon as he spied the train coming a merry chase started. Bruin had the belter of the contest, as he kept about twenty feet ahead of the locomotive for fully one-eighth of a mile, when he made a big jump off of the right of way and disappeared into the forests. .:' Around ttie next curve in the road a lumberjack eat on a log waiting for the train, and one's scope of imagination can be expaded by the thought that should the bear have seen fit to go on a little farther. sections occur in a cheese. Furth er use of the gun is dangerous. Sometimes the crystallized state is reached sooner than was expected. The guns crack or burst. On the Michigan fifteen feet of a twelve inch gun broke off and fell on the deck. On the next load the gun captain, having opened the breech to report "bore clear," shouted, "There ain't no bore." The charge of a fourteen inch gun is 385 pounds of smokeless powder put up in four silk linen, bags. The back end of each bag is painted red and contains about four ounces of black powder called the ignition charge. A brass primer similar to a rifle cartridge except it has no bullet ignites the black powder, which in turn sets fire to the smokeless powder. Contrary to popular belief, there is no real explosion, but a progressive burning of enormous rapidity. Vast volumes of gas at high temperature and pressure are produced, forcing the projectile out. A fourteen inch shell weighs 1,400 pounds, is five feet long and contains a bursting charge. Twelva strong men lift one with difficulty. Yet from the gun it can sink a battleship twelve miles away. It travels at the rate of 2,600 feet a second, or a mile ever two seconds. On striking it expends an energy of 65,687 foot tons, or enough to transport a load of two tons to twive the height of Mount Everest

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