Newspaper Page Text
W. F, SfMITH, Publisher,
VOLUME VIII.
NEWB GLEANINGS.
In 1880 Houth Carolina raised 516,590
bales of cotton.
Last year South Carolina raised
62,948,537 pounds of rice.
Last year North Carolina made only
nineteen barrels of beer.
There are fifty-six cotton seed oi
mills in the United States. Georgia has
only one.
Another squad of Cherokee Indians
are soon to leave London, Tennessee, for
the Indian Nation.
M.-my now claim that iron can be
made cheaper at Birmingham, Alabama,
' !wn anywhere in the United States.
()f Florida towns the census of Lake
City is 1,379; Lavi 11a, 1,618; Jackson
vilie, 7,648; Pensacola, 5,845; Tallahas
nee, 2,494 ; Fernand in a, 2,562, and Pa.
latka, 1,616.
Nine incorporated companies ard j n „
dividuah are engaged in phosphate
aiming j n the navigable streams of South
Carolina.
Hie great temperance petition pre
sented to the Georgia Legislature the
other day was 600 feet long and con
tained 30,000 signatures. It was greet
ed with applause.
1 he Steamship Seminole, among other
In iiiht from Savannah to Boston, a few
‘liiys since, carried 30,000 watermelons.
One of the officers of the Southern
Express Company says that the pay roll
of the Company for Georgia alone is
SSO. 000 per month.
The Augusta Sewerage and Water
Supply party carried their ticket at the
recent election, and city bonds will be
issued to raise the money ami begin the
work.
Ihe Buckingham (Va.) gold mines
;,r<> panning out such marvelous
amounts of the auriferous metal, that
•iI the news gets abroad thev will have
ii rush of gold hunters hither equal to
Cmt of California in 1848.
A moccasin residing in Henry county,
Alabama, bit Mr. Roberts’ son on the
loot, in Holland’s mill-pond, six or
eight feet under water, recently. He
had no whisky or any other antidote,
an(l lie experienced but little injury
Iroiu the reptile’s fangs. Query : Is the
Hie of a snake under water poisonous
Further figures of the Alabama con
sus show that Eufaula lias 3,836 people:
Fnion Springs, 1,862; Greenville, 2,471;
Tallassee, 1,182; Opelika, 3,215; Auburn’
M6l; Giranl, 2,224; Mobile, 29,132;
Montgomery, 16,713, and Tuscaloosa!
2,017.
Mi. R. M. Sandys, a Louisiana sugar
maker, is putting up permanent works
•it Stei ling, 111., 13(1x40 feet ground di
mensions, walls twenty five feet high,
Imilt of stone, at a total estimated cost
of $40,000; capacity, 300 tons of cane
l n r da y- Mr. W. C. Clement is also
putting up a large mill at the same place.
Teeumseh Furnace, of Tecumseb, Ala
bama, entered on its seventh year of
blast on the 19th of June, on one hearth,
without blowing out. The furnace is
making twenty tons of iron per day on
>lO bushels of charceal. The furnace
is sixty by twelve, and usjesbrown hem
atite ore.
Senator Jones, of Florida, recently
Mot ived a letter informing him of the
death of Lis only sister, Mrs. Margaret
of Galveston, Texas. This is the
thir\ death tha; has occurred in theSen
vtor s family within a few months. He
lost his wife last fall, since then a grown
s>n his died in Washington, and now
be get- news of his sister’s death.
Luring a trial for assault in Arkansas,
a club, a rock, a rail, an an ax handle,
a knife and a shot-gun were exhibited
** l be instruments with which
the deed was done. It was
also shown that the assault
°d man defended himself with a re
volver, a scythe, a pitchfork, a chisel, a
band-saw, a Hail and a cross dog. Then
the jury decided that they’d have given
bve dollars apiece to have seen the fight.
A curious decision was recently made
?n a trial justice’s court in Abbeville. 8.
The cause under consideration was
T -lie right of a wife to enter into a con
tact to labor against the will of her
husband. The husband bad brought
for the setting aside of the contract,
' ut *he justice decided that the woman
had the right to make all the contracts
he chose, whether of a property or a
1* nature. The husband was then
* uteuced to pay a fine of $25 and costs
0r go to jii thirty days.
fitted t* lidwtriai lateral. Use Difftmoaei TriUi.the Establiskmt of Justice, and the PrfSfnati§a of a Peeple'i ttiTerameat.
A. LIXTLM CMWTOM.
A widow—she had only ana,
A pony and decrepit son;
Bat day and night,
Though fretful oft, and weak and
A loving child, he waa her *ll—
widow’a mite.
The widow’* mite—ay, so sustained
She bet tied onward, nor oomplained,
Though friends were fewer;
And, while she toiled for dally fare,
A little crutch upon the stair
Was musio to her.
I saw her then—and now I see
That, though resigned and cheerful, she
Has sorrowed much.
She has— He gave it tenderly
Much faith; and carefully laid by
A little crutch.
A NOVEL DEFENSE.
Wecarln* Hl* Safely l*jr llearly Laughter.
[Good Woods. ]
On the fifth day of our march from
lentywe, I was, as usual, considerably in
iront of my men, who, with their loads,
were not able to walk as fast as myself.
The sky threatened a storm, which made
me hasten to reach Ptimlio. On ap
proaching the village nobody was to be
seen, the natives being either out in the
fields, or in their houses ottt of the rain.
The s took ado presented a rather unin
viting appearance, being ornamented
with a lew hundred human skulls in all
directions, from the freshly stuck-up
head to the bleached cranium, and nil
apparently snapping their jaws at the
thought of a now companion as the wind
wheeled them backward and forward.
However, the rain was falling fast, and
there was no use of being squeamish. So
into the village I marched unnoticed,
and finding out a hut with a broad,
overhanging cave, I took refuge out of
sight, waiting till my men came forward,
m order that I might appear with appro
priate pomp. I bad been thus ensconced
nearly ten minutes, when suddenly the
stillness of the village was broken by a
loud, peculiar shout. This was almost
Immediately taken up from every quar
ter of the village, until every stone
seemed to yell out the strange cry.
Drums added to the uproar, while wo
men screamed, and the men wero seen to
hurry toward the gates, shouting and
brandishing their spears. I was very
much astonished at this; but, supposing
it was simply the fashionable mode of
receiving a caravan, I remained still, ex
pecting my men every minute. How
ever, the uproar continued without
abatement, nnd my men did not appear.
Thinking there must bo something
wrong, I emerged from my cover.
To my surprise I found the gates
closed, and the stockades and crows’
nests maimed by an excited multitude
brandishing their spears at some ap
parent enemy outside. It instantly
flashed upon me that I was a prisoner
and cut oil from my men. My presence
m the village w r as evidently unknown.
For, on my appearance among them,
every voice was silent, and the once ex
cited multitude seemed paralyzed with
fear. I was supposed to be a ghost.
Seeing this, I recovered my presence of
mind, and striking an attitude like Ham
let’s ghost, I moved forward with slow,
deliberate steps, and severe expression
of face. At eaoh step the warriors re
coiled. Struck with awe, they looked
at me with staring eyes and open
mouths, in breathless silence. This was
too rnuoh for mo, and unable to keep up
the character, I burst out with an irre
pressible roar of laughter. The effeot
of that laugh was tremendous. The
amazed savages recoiled still further,
leaving the gate free. With a bound I
reached it, and before they could reoover
their senses it was open, and I was out
side, to the unbounded joy of my men,
who were trembling for my safety.
How Voltaire L'nreu the Decay of His
Stomach.
In the “Memoirs of Count Segur”
there is the following anecdote: “My
mother, the Countess de Segur, being
asked by Voltaire respecting her health,
told him that the most painful feeling
she had arose from the decay in her
stomach and the difficulty of finding any
kind of aliment that it could bear. Vol
taire, by way of consolation, assured her
that he was once for nearly a year in
the same state, and believed to be in
curable, but that nevertheless a very
simple remedy had restored him. It
consisted in taking no other nourishment
than yolks of eggs beated up with the
flour of potatoes and water. ” Though
this circumstance concerned so extraor
dinary a person as Voltaire, it is aston
ishing how little it is known and how
rarely the remedy has been practiced. Its
efficacy, however, in cases of debility,
can not be questioned, aud the follow
ing is the mode of preparing this valu
able article of food as recommended by
Sir John Sinclair: Beat up an egg in a
bowl and then mid six tablespoonfuls of
cold water, mixing the whole well to
gether; then add two tablespoonfuls of
farina of potatoes; let it be mixed thor
oughly with the liquid in the bowl.
Then porn- in as much boiling water as
will convert the whole into a jelly, and
mix it well. It may be taken alone or
with the addition of a little milk in case
of stomachic debility or consumptive
disorders. The dish is light and easily
digested, extremely wholesome and
nourishing. Bread or biscuit may be
taken with it as the stomach gets
stronger.
Snuff takers very seldom have head
colds, because the membranes become
thiokened.
Widows over 50 cannot marry again
in Portugal, In this country widows
never get over 50,
INDIAN SPRINGS, GEORGIA.
The Girl Opposite.
The editor of the Philadelphia Times
has been flirting with “the girl opposite”
and gives his readers the benefit of his
experience in a lengthy article:
“It is a wise and merciful dispensation
of nature that there nearly always is a
girl opposite. Possibly a dweller in the
proverbial vast wilderness might hit
upon an exception to this far-reaching
rule; but the chances are just as he was
thinking how dismal it was that he had
come at last to a region where no girl
opposite was to be found he would see
the ‘savage woman’ out of Locksley Hall
peGping at him from among the bushes
on the other side of the stream—and
then the usual flirtation with the look
ing-glass would begin. . For the flirta
tion always does begin with a looking
£lass, and so, after all, the self-alleged
inventor of heliograpliy is only a base
copyist. Millions is but a thin shallow
sort of a word to express the number of
men who have at one time or another in
thehr livos been subject to the will of the
girl opposite, and who have regulated
their personal affairs—their comings and
goings—not by the requirements of their
professions, but by the eccentric stand
ard of her disappearance and visibility.
Why, did governments impose upon men
one-tenths part of the burdens and in
conveniences which they willingly beur
for the girl opposite, the world would bo
more or less swimming in the sea of rev
olutionary blood pretty much all the
time! These assertions are not made
rashly nor carelessly. Have you ever
stopped to calculate how much time you
have fooled away in making love to the
girl opposite; that is to say, to all the
girls opposite to whom you have made
love in your life long ? And have you
over stopped to think how few things
there are in this world that you would
sacrifice so much time to for so small a
result? We say “fooling” away time
advisedly, If flirting with the girl op
posite ever led to the inevitable marry
ing that in the long run every fellow
must attend to, then it would be a reas
onable thing to do. But it never does,
never. You marry some other girl, and
he girl marries some other fellow, and
the whole performance is just a sheer
waste of time. And yet, after all, worse
ways than this is have been invented.
Even if you do marry and go to live in
Dau, and the girl marries and goes to
live in Beersheba and you never lay eyes
on each other again or hear a word about
each other to the very end of your sev
eral days, yet, somehow, you have al
ways a little soft spot in your heart as
you remember her standing there framed
in the window, like the pretty picture
that she was—‘reproof on her lips, but a
smile in her eye,’ and simply irresistible,
and you cannot help believing that down
Beersheba-way there is somebody who
leinembers all about it, and feels a good
deal the same way you do. Truly, the
girl opposite is a good deal of bother;
but the time for legislating her out of
office has not yet come. No indeed. ”
A Strange Story.
It iB easy to attribute illusions and so
called ‘•spiritual visions” to walking
dreams and double consciousness when
confined to a single individual, but how
will you explain them when two persons,
hundreds of miles apart, are conscious
of each other’s presence? My mother,
an unimaginative woman, who had never
discovered her nerves, when in her eigh
tieth year was prostrated with an alarm
ing attack of pneumonia. On Sunday
morning she was unconscious of her sur
roundings, and apparently very near
death, and a telegram to that effect was
sent without her knowledge to her son,
who was living in Western New York—
her home being in Massachusetts. This
son had been ill but was convalescing, and
when the dispatch reached him he was
on the piazza taking a sun-bath, clad in
his bed room ulster of a peculiar make
and close-fitting skull cap of seal-skin.
In his agitation over the distressing news
he walked to the front gate, and leaning
upon it for support, suddenly and dis
tinctly beheld the figure of his mother
standing before him. impressed
by the occurrence, he determined to vis
it her bedside, hastily made prepara
tions for the journey, and by traveling
express all the way reached her house
on Monday afternoon, when he told the
story of the apparition.
Meanwhile my mother had rallied
somewhat and her mind was clear most
of the time, but it was thought best not
to apprise her of my brother’s arrival.
After a time, when she was thought to
be sleeping, he stepped to her door to
look at her. She immediately spoke to
him in her ordinary manner, without be
traying the least surprise at his being
there, and said: “Well, John, you look
better in that coat. I never saw such a
strange suit as that you had on when
you were leaning over the gate on Sun
day morning. ” My poor brother, a man
nearly sixty years of age, and not in the
least superstitious, was yet so overcome
by this double mystery that he nearly
fainted. In this case no collusion was
possible. My mother had never visited
the city where my brother lived and had
never seen the suit of clothes mentioned.
She oould not have overheard his voice
in the house, as her hearing was im
paired. Can the event be explained on
scientific ground.-—JV K Tribune.
“Ah, drab,” sighed Miss Fifczroy, a*,
she yawned wearily, “there isn't any
thing to occupy one’s mind ncm. Fve j
made toilet cushions and tidies, a*nd em
broidered slippers and painted majolica
jars until I’m weary of life. I believe
I’ll go down into the kitchen and w\ atch
Jane make bread. I suppose I ough, tto
know how many pints of yeast it tak es
to a loaf.” And she penetrated the
iness part of the house, only to find ouO
that bread was “raised’’ from the baker’s
cart, —Hew Haven Megieter, )
Too Near and Too Homely.
The New York Times has a pleasant
satire about the life of street car drivers
who work seventeen hours a day and
then complain that they have only seven
left iu which to eat, sleep and play with
their babies. The trouble with the
street car driver is, it says, that he does
not live in a distant State and is not
picturesque and romantic like a sailor.
If he were, ho would get sympathy
enough. They ought to be driving cars
in South Carolina. Continues the
Times:
“We could then disclaim eloquently
concerning the separation of families
caused by the hellish system which for
bids the father to see his children except
when fchey are asleep. We could de
nounce the barbarism whiclf’ compels
men to work for seventeen hours daily,
exposed to rain and snow, and frozen by
the bitter cold of mid-winter nights. We
should find it easy to induce religious
bodies to pass resolutions condemning
the wickedness of the Charleston car
companies, which forbid their slaves to
attend any religious services on Sun
day or any other day. It would bo in
vain for the Charlestonians to reply that
their car drivers are not slaves, and that
they are free to leave the service of the
companies and starve to death at any
moment. We should reply that such
was the freedom of choice given to the
slaves of Virginia, who could at any time
run away and hide themselves in the
Dismal Swamp, where they could either
starve or permit themselves to be shot
by slave-hunters. No shallow sophistries
as to the right of car companies to buy
labor at the lowest market rates could
impose upon us. We would form our
“Anti-car Company” societies, and
eloquent professional orators would go
about the country stirring up the people
to a proper state of indignation against
the oppressors of the Charleston car
drivers. But how can we feel any indig
nation concerning the treatment of a
class of men who live among us and
suffer under our very eyes? Clearly the
thing is impossible, and the sooner our
car drivers recognize their great mistake
in not being South Carolinians or Louis
ianians the better. ”
There is lots of philosophy as well as
wit in this view which the Times takes
of the situation. Men are prone to look
at the evils which are at a distance
through a telescope. But when they
inspect those under their feet they turn
the instrument the other end to, making
the objects near them appear small and
Insignificant indeed.
Providing for Daughters.
The way of happiness and comfort for
single middle-aged women would be
much easier if a different method was
pursued by parents toward their daugh
ters while they are still young. Noth
ing, of course, can recompense a woman
for the loss in her life of the love of hus
band and children, but there is no rea
son why, added to this bitterness, she
should always have the humiliation of
dependence. Half the terrors ot a sin
gle life of a woman lie in the fact that
she will never have a home of her own,
but must remain a dependent on father
and brothers ; the one too many m the
household ; the beneficiary on sufferance
in the family, though she work twice as
much as the aotual members. A father
naturally sets his boy on his own feet at
coming of age, but as naturally keeps
his daughter dependent on himself. It
is a pleasure, perhaps, to him to give
her gowns and pin money at 30 as when
she was 3. He does not reflect that she
has the longing, equally natural to
every man and woman, to take her own
place in the world, to be a rooted plant,
not a parasite. The difficulty is easily
solved. If the father is wealthy, let him
settle absolutely upon his daughter,
when she is of marrying age, the amount
he would have given her as a dower, in
stead of doling out the interest as con
stant- gifts ; if he is a poor man, let him
give her some trade or occupation by
which she can earn her own money.
This course would obviate the mercena
ry necessity of marriage which rises
night and day before the penniless, de
pendent woman. —The Housekeeper,
Origin of the Word Roorback.
Nathan Guilford, once a well-known
citizen of Cincinnati, was an active Whig
politician, and editor of an energetic
Whig paper. On April 1, of a certain
year, he published a circumstantial ac
count of experiments by a German
chemist named Roorback. Roorback
had been examining the chemical con
stituents of eggs of different birds, sup
posing it might be possible at last to
compound a hatchable egg. According
to the story, after putting many of his
manufactured eggs to the animal heat of
different patient mothers, he at last
happily succeeded in hatching one egg
! ana produced a living bird. The story
then goes on to describe very minutely
the strange creature, anatomically,
physiologically and every other way,
imitating the scientific style used in
similar cases. The story read very well,
and was copied into many other papers,
and, after going the rounds of the press
in ail parts of the United States, it was
at last (after three or four months) dis
covered to have been first published on
the Ist of April.
The Cincinnati Enquirer (Democrat
ic) immediately fixed upon Mi. Guilford
the name of Roorback, which was there
after held to mean a political liar,
although the story had nothing to do
with politics. Being well stuck to, the
name at last became pretty well fixed,
and Mr. G. was for many years well
known in the political field as Old
Roorback.
Dropped hairpins bring more women
to their knees than all the sermons in
i the worjd.
Expensive Drugs.
There are two mad men in Milwaukee.
One is a bald-headad man and the other
is a druggist. The bald man told a doc
tor that his hair was falling out, and
asked him if he didn’t know of some
thing that would stop it. The doctor
said he would fix him, so he wrote a pre
scription, which was as follows:
Chloride of sodium - - 1 07-
Aqua pura - - - - - 8 oz.
Shake well and rub on the scalp every morn
ing.
The bald man went to a druggist and
had the prescription put up, paying a
dollar and seventeen cents for it. He
asked the druggist if it wasn’t a little
high, but felt ashamed when the drug
gist asked him if he knew how much
aqua pura cost a gallon. Ho said ho
didn’t, but supposed it come high. The
druggist told him aqua pura was one of
the most penetrating drugs in the store,
and as for chloride of sodium, there was
nothing like it, and the war in Peru had
sent it up kiting. Ho said if the trouble
in Chili kept on there was no knowing
how high it would be. The bald man
used the medicine, and felt as though it
was doing him good. His wife noticed
little new hairs coming out, and lie felt
good, so when the stuff was gone he
took the bottle to the store and had it
filled again. The chap who filled it thi3
time was another chap, and when the
bald-headed man threw down a dollar
the drugger said, “O, never mind. We
won’t charge you anything for that.”
The bald man asked how that was, when
the drugger said, “Why, it is only salt
and water anyway. The salt is only two
cents a pound, and the water is pretty
cheap this year. ” The bald man gave
one gasp, and said, “Well, by the great
bald-headed Elijah, I paid a dollar for
filling that bottle before, and I w r ant my
money back. It is a bald-headed swin
dle. 1 thought that Peruvian story
didn’t look plausible.” The druggist
gave the man a box of cigars to keep
still about it, but he w’on’t speak to the
other drugger who charged him a dollar.
— Peck's Sun.
A Peculiar Affliction.
Mr. Edwin Cowles, the editor of the
Cleveland Leader, has a peculiar afflic
tion. From boyhood he has been
troubled with deafness somewhat of the
nature of color blindness. He has never
heard the sound of the birds, and until he
grew to manhood he had always thought
the music of birds was a poetic fiction.
“You may fill the room with canary
birds,” says Mr. Cowles, “and they may
all sing at once and I never would hear
a note, but I would hear the fluttcrings
of their wings. I never heard the hiss
ing sound of the human voice, conse
quently, not knowing the existence of
that sound, I grew up to manhood with
out ever making it in speech. A por
tion of the consonants I never hear, yet I
can hear all the vowels. About a quar
ter of the sounds in the human voice I
never hear, and I have to watch the
motion of the lips and be governed by
the sense of the remarks in order to un
derstand what is said to me. 1 have
walked by the side of a policeman going
home at night, and seen him blow bis
whistle, and I never would bear it, al
though it could be heard by others half
a mile away. I never heard the upper
notes of a piano, violin, or other musical
instrument, although I would hear all
the lower notes.” Mr. Cowles has con
sulted some of the most eminent sur
geons, physicians, and aurists in the coun
try, and they are unanimous in declaring
his peculiar affliction to be without a
precedent.
Why He Changed His Hind.
The following is an actual occurrence:
A “broth of a boy” died on the Hill,
and Mr. Moriarty dressed himself in his
best and went to view the “corroupse.”
He had anew shiny black beaver hat last
St. Patriok’s Day. Entering the abode
of sorrow, he held the glossy tile care
fully before him, crossed the floor and
deposited it with great care upon a chair
at the head of the coffin. Then wring
ing bio bands wwwnfwlly, bo turned tv
the weeping mother saying:
“Shure, Mrs. Malony, ids a great loss
ye hev been tiL I’m full of dhe sorrow
fur yez, but dhe Lord’s will be dune.”
Then turning to the corpse, Mr. Mori
arty delivered himself thus: “Ooh, purty
bjpe. Tommy. Why did yez die. And
amt he purty in his new shirrt ond shute
ov clothes. An’ won’t we miss him fronj
dhe corner fwhere he used to shtand
waitin’ fur dhe giiruls. Luke at him,
layin’ there so swate, purty. Shure, oie
niver saw a purtier corrupse. But the
Lord’s will he dune an’ I must go.”
Turning away he found that a huge
woman was sitting rooking and weeping
in the chair where he had deposited his
{jrecious ping hat. Speaking in a sweet,
ow voice, he inquired:
“ Have yez seen me hat?” No one re
plied. A little louder, “Have any iv
yez seen me new hat ?” No reply. With
still greater voioe: “Fhere is me new
high hat?” The big woman reaohed
around under her ana pulled out a con
certina-looking concern made of black
beaver, and tearfully remarked: “Is
dhis yer hat, Mr. Moriarty?” He reared
himself up. He jammed his fist into the
wrecked beaver in a vain attempt to
straighten it out; he gazed upon the
corpse and shouted: “Yis, dhat’s me
hat, and d—d be dhe day I iver kem in
till see sich an ugly corrupse as this wan.
It's dhe uggliest iver I saw, an’ a good
riddance.” Then he walked out.—-Jer
sey City Journal.
When a boy walks with a girl as
though he were afraid someone would
see him, the girl is his sister. If he
! walks so oloee to her as to nearly crowd
: her against the fence, she is the sister of
* someone else,
SUBSCRIPTION-ll.il.
NUMBER 50.
SCRAPS OF SCIENCE.
Herr Tbomholt thinks ho can trace
connection between the frequency* of
displays of aurora and the phases of the*
moon.
Dr. Ricoux maintains that while
Spaniards, Italians and French can be
acclimatized in Algeria, people from the
North of Europe cannot. This result, if
well established, may have a very im
portant bearing upon the colonization of
Africa in the near future.
Mb. Wigner, in the Analyst states
that American corned-beef is twice as
valuable, as an article of diet, ns fresh
boneless beef, and that the cooked ox
tongues contain less salt and more nutri
tive matter than the dried tongues usual
ly sold in European markets.
M. Grehaut proved in recent experi
ments that the quantity of carbonic acid
exhaled by any one individual of an
animal species varies but little. Irrita
tions and inflammations of the respiratory
mucous membrane decrease the exhala
tion of carbonic acid, which then tends
to accumulate in the blood.
Mr. W. H. Freece, the English elec
trician, has determined with much ac
curacy the area protected by a properly
adjusted lightning-rod. His conclusion
is that the protection extends to a conic
space whose height is the length of the
rod, the base being a circle having its.
radius equal to the height of the rod—•
an opinion which has been held by scien-j
title men for a long time.
Considerabue changes in the water
level of several lakes in California and
Oregon are reported. It is stated that
Goose Lake, thirty miles long, was
nearly dry in 1853 and 1854, but con
tained ten feet of water in 1870, and its
depth has since been increasing. Clear
Lake is also ten feet deeper than in 1854,
while Tulie Lake, in the same region, is
now ten or fifteen feet higher than then.
Though the invention of the barometer
is due to the mathematician Torricelli,
yet in England Sir Christopher Wren
was the first to suggest that the varying
weight of the atmosphere was the true
cause of the variation in the height of
the mercury. This was a theory op
posed to that of the disciples of Des
cartes, who ascribed the variation to the
inllnence of the moon. *
NearDy every year there falls in some
part of" the world a greater or leap
quantity of fine yellow powder, which'
fall is popularly believed to be a shower
of sulphur. Investigation, however,
shows the powder to be the fine pollen l
of a species of pine tree. The pollen
grains float easily in the air, and are
often carried by gales a thousand miles.
When they fall on snow the effect is
often startling.
For preserving tho natural colors of
dried flowers and plants, this process
has been recommended by German
scientists: Dissolve one part of salicylic
acid in 600 parts of alcohol, heat the
solution to boiling in a shallow dish, and
draw the plant through it slowly; shake
off any excess of liquid, dry between
blotting paper, and press in the usual
maimer. Natural colors are said to bo
thus preserved in greater perfection than
by other processes.
It is believed that porosity is a prop
erty of all bodies. An experiment per
formed some years ago, to ascertain
whether water could be compressed, re
sulted in proving that gold is porous—'
the water inclosed in a hollow sphere of
gold and forced by the violent pressure
applied passed through the sphere and ap
peared on the outside. The pores through
which the liquid was driven could not
have been more than the two-millionth
of an inch in diameter.
A certain Count Hugo von Engen
berg, of Fratzberg'iu the Tyrol, is making
use of microphones—sunk in the ground
on a declivity of a hill, and connected
separately with a single telephone and
small battery—to discover a source of
watar for his castle. He iutends to con
duct the experiment by night, when dis
turbing sounds aud vibrations of the
ground are less frequent than by day.
If a sfroam. of wot<> flow. .. .*1 utic ap
paratus it will pass the sound to the
telephone, and thus reveal the spring.
Perils of the Single Man.
The old-fashioned notion that men
look with a totally different eye on wo
man when they want a wife from what
they look on women generally can not
be sustained. Albeit there are men ever
in quest of a connubial partner without
searching for her. They are very apt to
be surprised into matrimony, or, at least,
into matrimonial intents—provided, how
ever, that the matter be not taken out of
their hands by the woman herself. No
man is so likely to become engaged as
he who is persuaded that he will never
be. He is so prepared on one side for
circumstances of a certain kind that he
is wholly nngarded on the other side for
circumstances of an opposite kind. At
the very moment that he is confident of
everlasting celibacy, that he is rejoicing
over his freedom, a sudden shift in the
sentimental environment, a word, a
tear, a caress, decides his doom.-— New
York Mail.
The obscure poison which produces
hydrophobia has been known to lie la
tent in the human system for years be
fore developing its fatal results. M.
Pasteur declares the supposition to be
well supported that the virus does de
velop in certain organs, and not, as in
other aimilar maladies, in the blood; and
that when—after a period variable ac
cording to circumstances —the organized
poison passes into the blood, severe
symptoms come on rapidly, and the vic
tim soon dies. An explanation substan
tially the same as this had long been
advanced as a mere theory, but now M.
Pasteur advances it as an ascertained
physiological fact.