Part 15

After being floated in from the sheds the beets are elevated from the flume to a washer, where they are given an additional washing before being sliced. From the washer they are elevated and dropped into an automatic scale of a capacity of 700 to 1500 pounds. From the scale they pass to the slicers, where with triangular knives they are cut into long, slender slices, which look something like “shoestring” potatoes. These slices drop through the upright chute seen at the right side of the picture, and are packed tightly into cylindrical vessels holding from two to six tons each; the battery consisting of eight to twelve vessels arranged either in a straight line or in circular form. Warm water is run into these slices, and coaxes out the sugar as it passes from one vessel to the succeeding ones. After passing through the entire series of vessels the water has become rich in sugar, of which it contains from 12 to 15 per cent, depending upon the richness of the beets. It then is drawn off and is called diffusion juice or raw juice. This is carefully measured into tanks and recorded. As this juice is drawn off the vessel over which the water started is emptied of the slices from the bottom, the exhaust slices containing in the neighborhood of ¹⁄₄ to ¹⁄₃ per cent of sugar. These slices are carried out from the factory in the form of pulp and fed to stock, as explained later.]

Pictures herewith by courtesy of United States Beet Sugar Industry.

How Can We Smell Things?

You do not need to be told what organ of the body we use in exercising the sense of smell. You can prove that easily to yourself by getting the nose within range of a distasteful smell.

We do not use all of the nose to smell with, and the nose is useful to us in other ways besides this. We use the nose a great deal in the act of respiration or breathing, and it is also useful in helping us to make sounds, form words, and, though you may not have known it, helps our sense of taste.

We smell things by means of the olfactory nerves which are located within the nose. The entire interior surface of the nose is covered with a membrane. The ends of olfactory nerves, or the nerves which give us the sensation of smell, are in this membrane, and the air, which is filled with the odor of things we smell, passes over this membrane, and thus the ends of the nerves feel the odor and cause sensation of smell in the brain. The nerves of smell do not, however, go all through this membrane.

There are other nerves in the nose, however, besides those which give us the sensation of smell. These are also very sensitive and serve to make the nose exercise other functions when the inside of the nose is hurt or tickled. When a foreign substance, one of the many smaller particles which are constantly floating in the air, gets into the membrane in the nose, it irritates these nerves and often causes us to sneeze, which is only nature’s effort to drive out this foreign substance and clean out the nose. Smell is one of the lesser of the five senses which we possess. It is one of what has been called the chemical senses. The sense of smell does not act at any great distance. This sense could be made of more value to us if we developed it. Some people have a more highly developed sense of smell than others. The lower animals have a much keener sense of smell than people. A great many of them can follow a trail for miles merely by the smell of the foot-prints, and it is said that a deer will note the presence of man or any other animal that may subject him to danger even when miles away, the odor being carried to him through the air.

How Do We Taste Things?

The sense of taste is closely associated with the sense of smell. In fact we do a good deal of what we think is tasting by using our sense of smell. A cold in the nose will sometimes destroy almost altogether the taste of food, so that there is a very close connection between the sense of taste and the sense of smell.

The sense of taste comes to us through the tongue, which is the principal organ of taste. The remainder of our sense of taste lies in the surface of the palate and in the throat. As in the case of the other senses, the sensation of taste is given us through nerves, the ends of which are all through those parts of the tongue, the palate and the throat, which contribute to this sense. More nerves of taste are located in the back part of the tongue than on the front, and it is said that when you have to swallow a bad dose of medicine it won’t taste so much if you put it on the front part of your tongue and then swallow, because there are so few tasting nerves there. The extreme tip of the tongue, however, is very thickly covered with the ends of the taste nerves. In like manner one could have the front end of the tongue cut off and still retain most of the sense of taste.

Now, in order to produce the sensation of taste, the substance to be tasted must come in contact with something which mixes with it and causes the sensation of taste. This is what happens when we taste anything. The juices or liquids which are caused to flow when anything is put into the mouth act on the substances which enter and give the taste nerves a chance to taste them. Really the nerves of taste are so placed in the mouth as to be regular guards or inspectors of what shall go into the stomach. You can see how well they are arranged. In the tip of the tongue quite a few of them; in the back part of the tongue a great many nerves, for from there the food goes into the throat, which delivers it to the stomach; then those in the palate and in the throat. They are arranged so that the taste nerves have ample opportunity to test what comes in and to give warning to the brain of what is being sent to the stomach. Sometimes the things that come into the mouth are so distasteful to the nerves of taste that they refuse to hand it over to the stomach, but instead cause the distasteful substance to be thrown out again immediately.

It is said that a good rule to follow in eating would be to swallow only such things as are pleasing to the sense of taste. On this principle many children would decide to eat nothing but candy, but do you know, if you tried that, the continuous tasting of sweets by our sense of taste nerves would cause them to repel further insertion of candy after a while. You know that too much of a good thing is bad for you, and that is what makes you feel badly when you have eaten too much of one thing.

What Happens When We See?

~HOW WE SEE THINGS~

Of course, it is the eyes with which we see things. When we think of the things with which we see, we think only of eyes, which give us our sense of vision, but there are certain forms of animal life which have no eyes but which have what are called eye spots or eye points, which are sensitive to light and which are merely spots. These eye spots may be located in any part of the body, and are often found in great numbers on the same body. These rude eyes are, however, not real eyes. They are, as has already been said, sensitive to light, but are found only in some of the very low forms of animal life which live in the water. A real eye is an organ in which the parts are so arranged that optical images may be formed.

As animal life becomes developed to a higher scale, the parts which contain the making of real eyes become more distinct although, of course, the eyes themselves are not so highly developed as in man. One of the first kinds of life which has eyes with a definite structural character are the worms, snails, etc., though their sense of vision is more or less dim.

When we come to the family of mollusks, however, low down in the scale of life though they are, we find them to possess eyes which enable them to see almost as well as animals which have a backbone, although this kind of eyes is constructed in a very different manner than the eyes of vertebrate animals referred to. As we ascend the scale of animal life in the study of eyes, we come next to the crustaceous, which is an important division of animal life that embraces the crabs and lobsters, shrimps, crawfish, and insects such as sand-hoppers, beach-fleas, wood-lice, fish-lice, barnacles. The eyes of such animals are quite developed, but the number that each will have varies. Some have only a single eye and others two, four, six or eight, but only certain kinds of this class of life have more than two eyes. The spiders generally have the most.

In vertebrates, which is the class of animal life to which we belong, the number of eyes is almost always two and no more. The eyes are formed in special sockets in the skull, which are called eye sockets or orbits. This arrangement of placing them in a socket is of great advantage because the eye is thus protected from chance of injury except from one direction--the front. These animals have also eyelids, eyebrows and eyelashes, which serve as a further protection to the eyes.

The principal parts of the eye are arranged in a globe-like ball called the eyeball. This eyeball is movable in the socket under control of various muscles. The eyeball is almost surrounded by a membrane which is opaque in most parts, but very transparent at the front. This transparent portion of the surrounding membrane is called the cornea, and is quite hard. This is the outside coat of the eye. The second coat of membrane consists of parts of various names and contains the iris. The third coat is the retina, which is the end of the optic nerve entering the eye full from behind and expanded into a membrane which spreads out over the second coat.

The retina or optic nerve receives optical impressions focused upon it by the crystalline lens. These impressions are carried along the optic nerve to the brain, and the brain then receives the sensation of seeing the image. The eyeball is hollow, and its three surrounding coats form what is practically the same as the interior of a camera. The crystalline lens of the eye acts the same as the lens in the camera. This crystalline lens is suspended within the eyeball right in front of the transparent opening in the front of the eyeball, and when the rays of light strike this lens it focuses them on the retina, which is the same as the film in your camera.

Why Can We Hear?

We can hear because nature has provided us with a very wonderful organ called the ear and which catches the sound waves that come through the air into the ear and make a part of the ear vibrate.

In man and mammals the ear is generally found on the outside of the body, but the principal part of the ear is located within the skull. What we call ears are only the funnel-shaped extensions on the outside of the head which are not so very important so far as hearing is concerned, because they only help the real ear to hear more easily. The outside of the ear gathers in the sound waves and, because it is much larger than the little hole which takes the sounds in to the real ear, we can detect more sounds by having this funnel-shaped arrangement on the outside.

The inside of the ear contains an eardrum or tympanum which is separated from the outside part of the ear by a membrane. Behind this eardrum is the real hearing part of the ear in a labyrinth containing the nerves of hearing.

Now, when a sound wave strikes the membrane which hangs over the opening before the eardrum, the membrane vibrates and transmits the sound wave through the eardrum into the inner ear which contains the ends of the nerves by which we hear. These nerves, on receiving the sensation, transmit it to the brain which thus records the impression of sounds.

As we descend the scale of animal life from the mammals downward, the ear becomes a more and more simple organ. In the vertebrates which are not mammals, there is no external ear at all, and we find great simplifications of the ear the lower down in the scale we go.

What Is a Totem Pole For?

Before people had individual names, the savage people who lived in clans or tribes referred to themselves in the name of some natural object, usually an animal which they assumed as the name or emblem of the clan or tribe. These names never applied to one individual more than another, but only to the clan or tribe, so that everyone in a tribe which had taken the “wolf” for its emblem was known as “Wolf.” Later on they began to distinguish individuals by giving them additional names characteristic of the individual, such as “Lonely Wolf,” “Growling Wolf,” or other names. The name of this animal was then the emblem of one tribe. They, therefore, placed this emblem upon their bodies, their clothes, utensils, etc. Through this, these emblems also became at times idols of worship and so they erected poles upon which their emblems were engraved. The word totem is a North American Indian word meaning “family token.” The tribes called themselves after animals from which they believed themselves descended.

Where Does a Flower Get Its Perfume?

The perfume or smell of the flower comes from within the plant itself. The perfume arises from an oil which the plant makes, and just as there are many kinds of flowers, so almost every flower has a different smell. Of course, flowers belonging to the same family or species are likely to develop different smells. The oils produced are what are known as the volatile oils, which means “flying oils,” because, if extracted from the flower and placed in a bottle and the cork left out, they will vanish into the air. Without this quality we could not, of course, smell them at all.

Why Do Flowers Have Perfumes?

Man uses these oils to provide himself with perfumes, but the plant or flower has another purpose than this. The perfume is not made for man’s use, but for the use of the plant itself. In the plant and flower world the smell of the plant which is in the flower is a part of the scheme whereby plants reproduce themselves.

Every plant in order to reproduce itself must produce a seed. The flowers are in most cases the advance agent of the coming seed. Each flower produces within itself a little powder called the pollen, but as plants are like people--also male and female--they are dependent upon each other for the production of a perfect seed. Some of the pollen from the male plant must be mixed with the pollen of the female plant before a perfect seed results.

How Do Flowers Produce Seeds?

Naturally, the nearest male plant to a female plant may be quite some distance off. How, then, is the pollen from the male plant to mix with the pollen of the female plant? In some cases it is the wind which blows the pollen powder from one to the other, and this thus leaves the development of a perfect seed from a perfect flower open to chance. In the case of perfumed flowers, however, which are mostly low-growing plants, the wind cannot be depended upon. So nature gives to such plants the power to make the perfumed oil and the busy bee does the rest. The perfume being a flying oil rises up into the air and attracts the bee. He is gathering honey and visits in turn all the flowers to which he is attracted. He lights on a male flower and gathers in his honey, and incidentally acquires on his legs, without intending to do so, some of the pollen of the male flower. Then he flies about to the next flower, and to others, and sooner or later he will come across a female flower of the same kind as that from which he secured the pollen on his legs. When he thus enters the female flower, the pollen on his legs mixes with the pollen of the same kind of the female flower, and quite unintentionally the bee helps thus to make the perfect seed. It is not a part of a bee’s business to do this carrying. It only happens that he does this in connection with his regular business of gathering honey. It is a wonderful thing which may be noted here that the pollen from a male of any flower will not mix with the pollen of the female of any other kind of flower, but that the same kinds only have attractions for each other. Flowers are given these attractive perfumes in order that they may attract the bees and other insects in this way. The plants or flowers which grow closest to the ground have generally the strongest and most far-reaching smells. This is so that they will not be overlooked.

Why Are Leaves Not All the Same Shape?