Popular Science Monthly
���This ancient water wheel in Syria pumps the a wide territory is watered
Immense Water Wheels Which Lift Their Own Water.
HAAIA, in Northern Syria, referred to in the Old Testament as Hamath the Great, is justly famous for its huge ^vate^ wheels. The city lies some one hundred and ten miles north- east of Damascus on the River Oron- tes, and upon its banks are four huge water M'heels used for drawing water for irrigating purposes and also for supplying the town. The wheels are driven by the flow of the river on what is known as the undershot principle ; that is to say, the wheel is moved by water passing beneath it.
The largest, shown in the accom- ing photograph, has a diameter of seventy-five feet. Upon its outer rim is a series of buckets which raise the water and deposit it in the aqueduct at the top. Like its companions, the wheel is built of mahogany, with an axle of iron. The creaking of the wheels is in- cessant, day and night, year in and year out, for they never stop.
It is interesting to note that wheels built on this same principle are in actual use in this country, in one of the fertile vallevs of California, as de-
��river up into the aqueduct at its top. Thus by other aqueducts and canals
scribed in the December issue of the Popular Science AIoxtiily.
A Golf-Tee Fertilizer
AMONG the hundreds of patents is- sued every week occasionally one stands out above all others as being en- tertainingly original and ingenious. Such a patent is one issued recently for a golf tee. It is intended that the tee shall be shattered to tiny fragments when the l)all is struck, and to act as a fertiUzer after having been broken.
The tee is manufactured in a conical shape with a cupped top, into which the ball fits. It is made of green gel- atine, so that, contrary to the condi- tion which exists in the paper and rub- ber tees, the golfer can keep his eye on the ball without the usual distraction. AMien the club strikes the ball, the gela- tine tee is simultaneovisly struck and shattered to a veritable powder. These small green fragments scatter on the grass and are dissolved at the earliest rain.
As gelatine is an excellent fertilizer, the shattered tee serves a very useful secondary purpose.
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