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THE VALDOSTA TIMES, VALDOSTA, THE WORD “SHIP”; From Digging, Out th« Trto Trunk For tho Primitive Boat. There i* no doubt of the evolu tion of our great modern Whips from a floating log on which' our earliest ancestors sat astride-and with hands and pole navigated the entail streams, and just as surely has- onr word “ship” come from the first improvement of that prim itive xraft. The etymology of the Jortird tells us of the evolution of the craft. .-When the superior mind of our Aryan ancestors conceived the idea of hollowing out the floating log and thus decreasing its weight, adding, to its buoyancy and better fitting it for their transportation, they 1 bad to find a word to express what they were doing, so they nat- ■uW used a root that im;y under stood, which was “sknp.” This root signified the,idea of digging, hol- Jowing out and scraping. That is what they did to make their boats, and the “skap” became a noun to designate the boat. That root “skap” has Bred and grown during the 10,000 years and more that have passed 6ince it was first used to give a boat its name, and after the breaking up and di vision of the Aryan race it followed all of its broadiy divided branches to their new homes to be used in all of their tongues. The Greeks have the root in their word “skufes,” meaning iiollow cup, and the Latins have it In “acabere," signifying to scrape. In those languages, as well as in Sanskrit, it ia in many words of a similar signification. It came to the English through the Teutonic type, “skepa,” meaning a ship, or vessel, or what was hollowed out. In the middle English it was “schip,” and Chaucer used the plural, “shippes.” In the Anglo- Saxon it was ‘-‘scip,” while the Ice lander made it “skip” and the Dane “bikib.” The old high German had “seif” and the German “sehiff.” So we see the change through the century of centuries has been •light, the same sound with the same signification having gone from father to son through all of the generations, giving us the same word when we speak of the Lusi tania as our Aryan ancestors used when they spoke of the floating log that they had " ging and ROCK SALT.’ A TIPSY DUKE’S PRANK. ence of a certain a popular li the people adventure of the time of in Paris, when issession of the Tuileries. The hero of the incident eogeiy acted upon tho theory that a poor excuso is better than none and sometimes better than a better one would be. He was an inquisitive person, end, regardless of the danger, he hastened to the Tuileries at mid night to see what was going on. At the gate he waa stopped by two revolutionists of ominous appear ance. “Why do yon not wear a cockade, citizen? Where is your cockade?” they asked. | A mob gathered about him and demanded fiercely, “Citizen, where is your cockade?” Dcsangiers took off his hat, turn ed it around end around, looked at It on all sides and then said in a tone of mild surprise: “Citizens, it is strange, very strange 1 I most have left it on my nightcap.” , Th. Balloon Flth. A Berlin journal, Prometheus, contains a letter from Africa, in which the writer describes a fish which is known to the native* as the fabaka. It makes its appear ance in the Kile at high water time. The creature might properly be named a balloon fish. Its whole body, with the exception of a part of the underside, is covered with a thick layer of a jellyKko substance. On the uncovered part there are many sharp prongs. When attack ed the fiSh rues to the surface, in hales air until its body assumes al most a globular form, then turns upon its back, leaving the protect ing prongs upward in the water. “Ksh and man alike know how sharp >hesc are and'what painful wounds‘they can inflict, and they give tho balloon fish a wide berth.” Sviwrt the Poet Woe Hoppy. Bjornson, the poet, was once asked on what occasion he got the greatest pleasure from his fame as a poet.' His answer was: “It was when a delegation from the Right came to my house in Christiania and smash- led all the windows, because when they had thus attacked me and were starting for home again they 'felt that they ought to ling some thing, and sb they began to sing •'Yes, wo love this land of ours? They conld do nothing else 1 They 'had to sing the song of the man whom they had attackedl”—Lon don Chronicle. It Reveals to Ue e Piece Where Ones a Bea Existed. Salt under ground! It seems a strange thing at first to find salt among the rocks deep down in the earth. What does rock salt tell us? It reveals to us a place .where once a sea existed. The water has since flowed away, leaving some salt be hind. We know that ordinary salt exposed to the air soon gets damp and then becomes quite fluid, but rock salt away from air and sun keeps firm for ages. Rock salt is found in various lay ers of the earth’s crust. Some of the spaces of underground water are called “seas,” but, in fact, large as they were, they often did not re semble tlid^seas” we have now, be cause they were much shallower. A few were fairly deep, however. Then, again, these ancient seas were sometimes so salty that no animal could live in them and only a few plants. Such sgns, in fact, were mostly “dead,” nnd this accounts for the masses of salt deposited along their bottoms. But we find also signs of rough water in the numerous pebbles of the layer where the salt is found uniong hard red gravel and brown quartz. Germany once had a tolerably deep sen, not very salt, and the bot tom surface of it shows coral reefs, There are signs in it of great fishes armed with strong teeth, enabling them to crush the shellfish upon whicli they fed. These swarmed below the 6ea in thousands. North England and the midlands have the Keuper beds, where the “seas” wore always shal low and where wo can trace the marks of raindrop filterings and sun cracks. The rock salt is often in a layer 100 feet thick. It is sup posed that one part of these seas was separated from another part by a bar of sand, over which the waves toppled only now and then. In the cutoff sea evaporation went on through the ages, and of course a deposit of salt was formed, while the occasional overflow from ontside replaced the water which had evaporated. But really this is not known for certain. It is only clear rock salt that contains the minerals we find in our present sea water—bromine, iodine and mag nesia. - Generally this salt is notjnixcd with fragments of a different sub stance, but is in columns of rough crystals. Now and then there is found a layer of rock salt, wijfi one of marl ana shellsunder it, succeed ed by rock salt again, showing that for a time a change had taken place. Upon the land near these shallow salt seas lived some singular ani mals, unlike thoso of our earth in tho lateT centuries of its history. There were remarkable reptiles be longing to the frog or batrschian family. One of tho species was the size of a small oz, with peculiar complicated teeth and feet which left prints on the earth so exactly liko the Impressions of the human hand that geologists gave it a Latin name, meaning “the beast with tho hand.” Another strange creature was a sort of lizard with a horny bill and feet resembling those of the duck. It had somewhat the appearance of a turtle, it is sup posed. Then there were somo warm blooded animals about the site of a rat, which had pouches in their cheeks and preyed upon «nall insects. — 8t. Louis i ' Democrat.- Globc- Mermalde and Mermen. The dugong, a species of whale found abundantly in the waters of both tho great oceans, but especial ly off the coast of Australia, in the Pacific, is believed to hsve furnish ed the slender basis upon which all mermaid and mermen stories have been founded. Its genersl length is from eight to twenty feet, ft has a head much resembling that of the human species and breathes by means of lungs. It feeds upon sub marine beds of seaweeds and when wounded makes a noiso like a mad bull. Long hair in the female spe cies and hair and beard in the male add to the human resemblance of the head and neck. The flesh of this species of whale is used for food and is said to have the flavor of bacon, mutton or beef, accord ing to the parts of the body from which the meat is taken. "Gon. to tho Oovil.” • “Gone to the devil” has nothing Satanic in its history. It has been, traced to n tavern in Fleet street, London, known by the sign of the “Devil and St. Dunstan.” As it supplied good food and drink, it had a large clientele and was called the “Devil” for short. "Gone to tho Devil,” read a notice at many an office when the occupants went to dinner. Unhappily some went there too often and stayed too long, until at last when their patrons left them “Gone to the devil” be came a synonym for the neglect or the loss of their business. Th. Story of How Mrs, Connolly Bi enne Lady Mlehaol. In former times there used to be a certain Duke of Richmond, then lord lieutenant of Ireland, who be longed to the hail fellow well met species. With bis boon- compan ions it was his almost daily habit to go to a certain fashionable inn at Bray, kept by one Michael Con nolly. There much wine was con sumed during his incumbency of the lord lieutenancy, and many, and wild were the nights that the little inn at Bray witnessed. Con nolly had a reputation as being the best cook in Ireland, and it was said his wine was the best to be found within the confined of the’ Emerald Isle. The Duke of Rich mond said so, and he ought to have known, as he had eaten tons of the s ono and imbibed tons of the other. Connolly’s cooking and Connol ly’s wine were popular themes of conversation with his lordship, and he was not niggardly with his praise of either. Wine is a great leveler of ranks, and so it fell out one night that the duke, carried away by his admiration for Connolly^ talents in kitchen and taproom, committed an egregious, amusing- mistake. The night in question had been an even more than usual ly wet one at the inn at Bray, and the duke, the innkeeper himself and all of the duke’s companions were lost to all sense of either pro portion or the eternal fitness of things. Therefore no one thought it strange when the duke sent for mine ho6t and, after a speech of praise of his viands, the way in which they were prepared and es pecially of his wine cellar, hade him kneel. Then, striking him across the shoulders, he said, “Rise, Sir Michael Connolly!" And Sir Michael rose amid the rapturous applause of those present. It seemed quite the proper caper then, but the next morning, os it came back to still further jar the aching head of the duke, it boro a some what different aspect, and the prin cipal question that agitated tbo ducal mind was how he wss to get out of the scrape. Connolly was summoned and, in the faint hope that the ceremony had made no impression, asked if he remembered aught that happen ed the night previous. Sir Michael did and manifested a disquieting determination to bang on to his newly acquired title. But, as have lesser and greater men before and since, he fell a willing victim to bribenr and finally agreed not to press bis claim to knighthood. The price was heavy, but not too high to pay for the suppression of a tale that would make his grace of Richmond the laughingstock of London, and so the duke wai turn ing, satisfied with his morning’s work, when tho late Sir Michael dashed his self congratulations to the four winds. "Yis, your grace, I’ll keep quiet," he said as he jingled tho price of his title in his pocket, “but,” thoughtfully—“but it will tako more than the likes of me to keep my wife, Lady Michael Connolly, quiet about the matter.” And it aid. Michael was right. She was Lady Michael to her friends from that day on and always laid claim to tho title. The duke was the laughingstock of London, as he bad feared, but a reformed man as veil, for be dared take no further risks,—London Tatler. A Ono 8icf«d Chase. In an English paper appears the following amusing anecdote: Some servants were exercising three horses end some of the hounds from the Hunt kennels when an inmate of tho district asylum ap peared on tbo scene. “Eb, sic bonnio dogs,” exclaimed the man, who was supposed to be daft, “sic bonnie dogs. And what dei keep they for?” It was explained to him that they were kept for bunting the fox. “An’ sic bonnie horses. Are they for hunting the fox tae?” He was told that they were, whereupon he aaked the value of a horse and a dog, too, and, having been in formed, he next wanted to know the value of a fox when caught. - ■ “Oh, about tehpcnce,” was tha iply. "Mercy mei, tcnpcncel” said the dsftie. “Three hundred pounds chasing tenpcnce! Let's awa.” A Crack In ■ Pises ef Mstsl. A crack in a piece of metal is irevented from, extending farther •y the well known meant of drill ing a hole where the rent ends. But when the holo is not bored on just that spot tho crack is apt.to continue beyond the hole. A scien tific journal recommends moisten ing the cracked surface with "petro leum, then wiping it and then im mediately rubbing it with chalk. The oil that has penetrated into the crack exudes and thns indicates with precision where the crick j stops. Electric Bitters bh everything else Me. In nervous prostration and female weaknesses they are the supreme remedy, at thousand! have testlAed. FOR KIDNEYtLIVER AND STOMACH TROUBLE It it tho best medicine ever told over • druggist's counter. Irwi « fr. boiv v. in.wtU. u**» usf-*“ eowrrt. "AVIA, IN Ail COONTRlCt. * /»*•>«*« ’ i'*rrt •- \t i idlrt Jfca#, The Hot Season is On! The famous Georgia mosquito has also put in his appearance with a buzz and an occasion al sting. Are all your beds provided with nice, new mosquito canopies? We have them in stock of all kinds and sizes to fit baby beds, three-quarter beds and full size beds at Prices Ranging from $1.25 to $6.00 Each. Are your Summer porches fixed up? f Have you got them protected from the morning and afternoon sun? If you haven’t, we can fix it up with our 4 Famous Y udor Porch Shades, Hammocks, Swings and the Chain Million Swing. Our prices are 10 suit you; In fact our summer line of furn iture and house fittings waa never more complete. We invite you to look through our stock or ’phone or write and you will have prompt attention. ' ■■ Bit ■ J B-B ■ I ■ ■ ■ II1111 B-B ■ B-B B/B B l-l BI ■ B B ■■ 1111 Valdosta . r . > s •» <'T Marble We solicit your patronage, prom ising you first-class work at the lowest prices. An opportunity to demonstrate these facts is all ’ ' ' v/ ' T ' ><T i'.’i - * * we ask. Our increasing trade is the best evidence that we are i pleasing our customers Valdosta Marble Works, L H. WARLICK, Proprietor. ; i