Storing and Transferring Wheat.
In this city are stored vast quantities of wheat. This wheat has to be kept somewhere between crops, so to speak. Formerly it was stored in great wooden structures called elevators. You have seen such buildings, of course. But there were two serious objections to wooden buildings for keeping grain. One was that rats, weevils, and worms easily got through the wood. The other was the danger from fire, and the consequently increased cost of insurance.
In Toledo the experiment was first tried of erecting immense steel tanks for storing grain. These tanks would not burn, and rats could not dig through them. Furthermore, they can be made air-tight, and hence they preserve the grain.
A short distance from here, on the line of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, a new method has just been tried for putting wheat into and getting it out of these tanks. The grain is transferred by a system of tubes, through which are strong air-currents, and the wheat is carried by the air just as a chip is carried along by a stream of water. These air-tight tanks make the flour you eat better than formerly, and the tubes for transferring the wheat lessen its cost.
Frank F. Clark.
Toledo, O.
Answers to Kinks.
No. 14.—Pope Gregory IX. Found by using capitals.
No. 15.—Spear, pear, ear, ar.