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FARMS OF INDIA The Hindoo Cattle are all of the Same Variety. No Fences to the Farms™ The Wheat-Growing Area. The people of East India are not stock farmers, says Frank Carpenter in the A merican Agriculturist. The Hindoo peasants will have nothing to do Avith pigs or fowls. The only ani¬ mals they keep arc horses and cows, and the cattle all over India are of the sacred cow variety. These are mag¬ nificent animals, of a dove or light yel¬ low color, possessing the aristocratic air of the Avell- bred Jersey and the b.g frame of the Holsteins and Shorthorns. They have great humps upon their shoulders, which rise fully six inches above the rest of the back, and which, strange to say, look by no means out of place. The Hindoos worship these cows, and I visited at Benares a noted temple in Avhich a hundred sacred bulls were prayed to every day. It was in the center of the city, and it looked more like a stable than a temple. Imagine a stone court about the siza of a barn-yard, with an immense low band-stand in the center. Around the court let their be a row of stalls in which a hundred of ’ these sacred bulls, with these big humps on their backs and with silky cars hanging doAfn like those of a rabbit, stand Avith their heads toward the court. About the court other bulls are moving, and the sloppy, dirty stone floor is filled with men and women having the dark, handsame features of the Hindoos. They hold up their hands before the bulls and pray. Pretty girls feed them garlands of bright flowers, and at the edge of the court an old priest sits and puts a red mirk on the forehead of each worshipper as he goes out. Now and then ithe 'bulls roar and stamp their feet, but ai a rule they are as gentle as pet rabfyts, and all of them are as fat as bunker. The Hindoos bring Avtfter from l ie Ganges and offer it to them, and t icy AA’ould much sooner eat tjicir grandfathers 2 than chew bcef- slxok. hoAvever, do not pre¬ vent these cattle as beasts of bom Singapore to Wat^’lSwin Boojpj'Kirty j n /w carts drawn by these Voider-humped animals, aajt, PWkes.der-buif , T ast in c tliem tho fieldl TJie 1 0u) saw 7 other men ' b® f Mfte sacred' an use iu India is the V L a° Sr is .which is as homely as r a tWi.jrn? t tr is beautiful. It seems t issue"' cu ‘i ° f Cr0SS between the a-s om rfi>ghf po potatous, and it has w flayer w So horns, a neck which co 3 sti; * vei 7 j-om the shoulders, and a bpdi bloated afl d ill-shapen. Itsfikivd*^ covered with thin straggling bribes bhWi haii; which looks more like the of ,a hog than the hair of a coav. Itfll ghts in wallowing in the dirt, and ft is the most plebeian species of tbtfgt'nfS* bos. The sacred cows are milkeij, clarified and the butter made from them is and used by the Hindoos for COok ijor. A Hindoo will never use lard tallow in any shape, and the Sepoy mutiny was caused by the story being circulated that the cartridges which the native soldiers had to bite were greased. Ooc of the curious sights of India is the farmer’s pleasure—buggy, It is a sulky-like affair, made of bamboo fish¬ ing-rods and is covered Avith red cloth. It is draAvn by one of those sacred hulls, some breeds of which are famous for their trotting qualities and ovhich can almost make as good timo as the average horse. The driver sits on the shafts in front, and there is just enough I00m Uil der the cover at the back for one or tno people to sit cross-legged. M hen a farmer wishes to travel from from one part of the country to another ne ge,s into one of these carts, and if be is a wealthy man, he will have a richly -colored blanket to put over his bullock. I took a ride upon one of ikem and found it as easy &3 any sulky I have ever tried in America. There are no fences about the farms Cl ^ nd * a - ooden fences would be an impossibility, even if they were needed- due white ants are the great pest of the country, and tlicsa will eat up any¬ thing wooden. India has a vast net- A'ork of telegraph lines covering the whole Peninsula, and the poles for these are mads of galvanizad iron. D-e ties of the railroads have to be ,na e iron, and such few fences as I saw along the railroali were made ot barbed wire fastened to sandstone post!. The great wheat-growing dis¬ trict! of India are iu the north, and in the northwest provinces about fifty- seven per cent, of the couatry is med for Avheat. The variety planted is not as good as that of Australia or Cali¬ fornia, but it is good enough to find a market in England, and the exports continue to increase from year to year. An Aerial Hunt. I was standing on the bank of a stream on the pampas, says the author of “Argentine Ornithology,” watching a great concourse of birds of several kinds on the opposite shore, where the carcass of a horse, from which the hide had been stripped, lay at the elgc of the water. One or two hundred hooded gulls and about a dozen chimangos were gathered about the carcass, and close to them a very large flock of glossy ibises were wading about in the water, while among these, standing motionless in the water, was one soli¬ tary Avhite egret. Presently four cavanchos appeared, two adults and two youDg birds in brown plumage, and alighted on the ground near the carcass. The young birds advanced at once and began tear¬ ing at the flesh, while the two old birds stayed where they had alighted, as if disinclined to feed on half putrid meat. Presently one of them sprang into the air and made a dash at the birds in the water, and instantly all the birds in the place rose into the air screaming loudly, the two young brown ca\ r anchos only remaining on the ground. For a few moments I Avas in ignorance of the meaning of all this turmoil, when suddenly, out of the confused black and white cloud of birds the egret appeared, mounting'Vertically upward with vigor¬ ous, measured strokes. A moment later first one and then the other ca- vancho also emerged from the cloud, evidently pursuing the egret, and only then the two brown birds sprang into the air and joined in the chase. For some minutes I watched the four birds toiling upward with a wild zigzag flight, while the egret, still rising verti¬ cally, seemed to leave them hopelessly behind. But before long they reached and passed it, and each bird as he did so would turn and rush downward, striking at the egret with its claws, and while one descended the others were rising, bird folloAving bird with the greatest regularity. In this way they continued toiling upward until the egret appeared a mere white speck in the sky, about which four hateful black spots were still revolving. I had svatched them from the with the greatest excitement, and now began to fear that they would pass from sight and leave me in ignorance of the result; but at length they began to descend, and then it looked as if the egret had lost all hope, for it was dropping very rapidly, while the four ravenous birds were all close to it. striking at it ctuor* three or four seconds. The descent for last half of the ( distance wa3 exceedingly rapid, and the birds would have come down almost at the very spot they started from, which was about 40 yards from where I stood, but the egret was driven aside, and sloping rapidly down struck the earth at a distcuce of 250 yards from the starting point. Scarcely had it touched the ground before the hungry quartet were tearing it with their beaks. Hypnotism in Surgery. Dr. Rankin, at Muncy, uses hypnot¬ ism in his professional work. It, is a good substitute for chloroform or ether in performing surgical operations, and j) r> Rankin resorts to his power of hypnotism quite frequently. To put a subject under his control is but the work of a minute, and even less in some cases> H e lays his hand upon the temporal veins of the subject, speaks a f cw word! to get the patient’s mind running in the same channel as his own, and m a remarkably short time the pa ticnt is in a state similar to that pro- duced by chloroform, except, when hypnotized, the subject can understand the words of the physician, and will answer him if a question is put. Cat's Eyes for Clocks. At 12 o’clock, noon, the pupil of a cat’s eye is nothing but a thin, hair-like line; after that time it dilates, so that by noticing the size and shape of the pupil one can be independent in a meas- ure of clocks and watches. — Puiladtl- ph d mner .es n SCIENTIFIC SCRAPS. A great geological map of Franco, commenced in 1852. has just been com¬ pleted. making 4$ sheets. A method of expanding hoops and wheel tires by heating them with the electric current has been devised. An analytical balance of variable sensitiveness—alapting it to ordinary weighings or delicatte determinations— has boea brought out in Germany. Since 18SU encouraging progress has has been made, under an efficient su¬ perintendent, toward restoring the for¬ ests of Cape Colony, South Africa. A new meteorological and volcanic observatory is to be opened in Pompeii, when there will be a congress of scien¬ tific men to celebrate the occasion. Silence for ten days, speaking only in whispers for ten days more, then gradual return to the ordinary voice, is a recommendation for stammerers. Wisdom teeth, the mist variable of all in sizj, shape, and general charac¬ ter, are said to show hereditary char¬ acteristics more strongly than any of the other teeth. A new industry has been started in Sweden in the manufacture of paper from moss. Paper and pasteboard of different thicknesses up to nearly an inch have already been made of it. Claims are laid to the disco\ r ery of the method of raising sugar cane from seed instead of from cuttings. The seeds were discovered by means of a microscope, in the flower head of the cane. The appliance of hydraulic power to the manufacture of steel seamless boats is one of the latest things in England. These boats are thought to be in every particular superior to those made of wood, and can be made at about the same cost. A further step toward the artificial production of the diamond has been made by passing an electric current through carbon electrodes in a cell con¬ taining a fine whit3 sand and elec¬ trodes, the whole being under consid¬ erable pressure. The depth of a sea about six miles deep is reduced by 620 feet by com- P"*' If the ocean were iuom- pressiblc the level of the suriace woutil be 161 feet higher than it is at pres- ent, and about two million square miles of land would be submerged. A prisoner in Bohemia recently con¬ structed a watch eight centimetres (3J- inches) in diameter, with no tools or materials except two needles, a spool of thread, a newspaper and some rye straw. The wheels, posts and cogs are of rye straw; the watch runs six hours without winding and keeps good time. Recent in vent ions with illuminating reflectors have made it possible to make the Suez Canal almost as light as day. By means of the Mangin projector and the strongest electric light, the danger of a night passage has been reduced to a minimum. The night traffic on the canal is in consequence rapidly increas¬ ing. An alchemist when experimenting in earths for the making of crucibles found that he had invented porcelain; and a watchmaker’s apprentice Avh.le holding a spectacle glass between his thumb and forefinger noticed through it that the neighboring buildings ap¬ peared larger, and thus discovered the adaptability of the lens to the telescope. Flowers and the Children. There are but few children who are not attracted by the beauty and ssveet- ness of flowers. We have often watch¬ ed with great interest the seemingly ntural tendency of young children to admire flowers. Frequently we have seen them gazing with rapture upon the picture of a flower, and smelling it with apparent disappointment that it yielded no perfume. The child appears to instinctively knOAV that a floAver is delicate, innocent and pretty; and it may be laid down as a general rule that a boy that is brought up among flowers will develop into a better man than one who is a stranger to flowers. If we could have our way, we would adorn with flowers the homes from which come our criminal classes. They would not banish crime from the com¬ munity, but they would greatly lessen it. Flowers make peop’e gentler, softer and better, and the father and mother who do not neglect to provide this holy influence for their children are doing them a service that perhaps the eterni¬ ties alone will tell the value of.— EXTINCT MARINE MONSTERS TEE PREHISTORIC KINC-S OP THE OCEAN WORLD. Gigantic Man-Eating Sharks Over lot) Feet Long Which Prowled About the Tertiary Seas. If we may judge prehistoric man by his modern representatives we may Francisco assume, Nvrites C. F. Holder in the San Chronicle, that shark fishing Avas carried on at a very early day; so very early, in fact, that not the slightest proof remains, or even a remnant of the early Walton. In geological maps of America, during what is known as the tertiary age, Ave find it occupying a much more restricted area than at present. The Southern States Avere largely under water, and Florida was but ashoal beneath the waves. Where the Atlantic then tossed and was carried this way and that by currents, now is found dry laud, covered Avith fer¬ tile fields and supporting a large and vigorous human population; but that it was once the bottom of the tertiary sea Ave have abundant testimony. That man existed at this time there is little doubt, though satisfactory evidence iu the shape of remains is extremely rare, and we eau but refer to the fauna and flora of the period to show that the assumption is at least tenable. Man undoubtedly appeared upon the globe Avhen it Avas ready for his occupation, or rather when the conditions Avere all favorable for his support. The world in the tertiary time looked very much as it does at present, comparatively speaking. Trees, fiowers and animals much like those of to-day flourished, and Avith them undoubtedly were found hu¬ man beings. Having assumed this, and knowing the animals which were then living, Ave may easily understand some¬ thing of the habits of our aucient ances¬ tors. Large svhales and fishes of all kinds are ahvays of great value to rude tribes. Their appliances arc few and simple, and a large animal not only provides them with food, but with clothing, sveapons and numerous articles of domestic use. So we may assume that tertiary men were fishermen and endeavored to cap¬ ture game, large and small. In the immediate vicinity of Charles¬ ton, S. C., from the bottom of the river bed have been taken the remains of some sharks so suggestive of gigantic size that the modern man eater is dwarfed in com¬ parison. The remains consist of teeth, huge deviated specimens, in some in¬ stances almost as large as a woman’s hand, many times larger than those found in large sharks of to-day. The writer once had the teeth curiosity after to the arrange model a num- of ber of these a modern shark, and the result gave a fish feetT^ been the dimensions of those monsters. If a shark fourteen feet long is suf- ficient at the present day to terrify any 0Qe the > wbat must bave of this b ® eu tertiary giant? °f appearance it required deep Like the great whales, water to float it, and accident doubtless Avas only attacked when by it became stranded on the shoals. At such a time' the fishermen may have put off in their rude crafts and aided in its capture, per¬ haps fastening it with cables and driving logs of Avood into its vulnerable parts. To capture such monsters by any other means must have been impossible. The largest boats would hardly have withstood the struggles that must have ensued after au attempt at capture by spear or har¬ poon, assuming even that such weapons Avere known. Once entrapped in shallow water we can imagine that the sight must have been a striking one; the enormous fish, far more active in this condition than a whale, beating the water with blows of its powerful tail, making lrantic and mighty rushes this way and that, •uapping the great cables like threads, capsizing the rude boats and spread¬ ing terror and destruction everywhere. ' Such efforts at escape naturally would exhaust the strength of so powerful an animal, and force it farther in shore, and ultimately destroy it. Then conies the cutting up process. Then news of the capture was carried inland and hundreds of natives came down to the shore to secure their share. From caves, brush houses and the rudest re¬ treats they swarmed, armed with rude implements of various kinds clubs of wood and stone and daggers of flint, and other hard substances. Clothed in skins, or perhaps not clothed at all, this rude people must have presented a strange ap- pearauce. We hear of our modern sav- • ages wallowing in the blood of whales which they have captured and delignting in the butchery, and undoubtedly these early men were no exceptions and the scene of the capture was a literal slaughter. A man to one of these mighty sharks would be almost unnoticeable, and avc* can imagine that such a huge creature must have been upon a continual forage to appease its appetite. A moderate¬ sized whale would have been legitimate prey, as our ordinary man-eaters of to¬ day have been kuown to swallow nearly an entire horse. At this time many strange creatures thronged the ocean, and doubtless animal life Avas made muVi more profuse than at preaeot. Anv one who has seen a shark of large size moving along beneath the surface ■ can realize the terror they produce iQ •ill observer*! The writer once hooked a shark about fourteen feet in length. The brute was towing the heavy boat at steamboat speed through the water, my man crouching in the stern, which was hi-h in air, while I was engaged at the bow. in keeping the line in the notch, a slip from which would have tipped us over. We had rushed up the channel for about half a mile at this pace, when I chanced to glance overboard, and there, about two feet from the surface were half a dozen man-eaters of the largest size swimming along, keeping up with us, apparently determined to see what became of their friend. The appearance of these huge fishes moving along so swiftly and with such little exertion had an extremely dis¬ agreeable impression upfln me—one that I never fully recovered from, as I have never enjoyed sea bathing since, even in northern waters. The attendant sharks I judged were from ten to thirteen feet in length, and the exact size of the monster that towed us we never determined, as he finally escaped by breaking the rope. If these modern man-eaters are so formidable, what must have been the scene presented when a dozen or more of these ancient giants were swimming about, dashing here and there in search of prey, turning upon their backs, ex¬ posing a mouth cavernous iu its immens¬ ity and armed ivith row after row of the enormous teeth which we have as lega¬ cies of their greatness? Like many of the great animals of /the time, these sharks must have entirely passed away, being represented by similar but smaller forms. That they existed in immense numbers and were the kings and mau- rauders of the ocean world we have abundant evidence. The various expedi¬ tions sent out by England, Prance and Italy have dredged their huge teeth from the deep waters of the Atlantic and Pacific, which retained their lustre as perfect as if they had been taken from a shark of to-day. At South Carolina, at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, thousands of these teeth have been dredged in deepening the river, not of one species alone, but of many, show¬ ing that there must have been a common feeding ground for schools of these giants, that perhaps engaged in Avarfare among themselves, and so formed this strange graveyard of teeth that thousands of years later became through a rising of the coast dry land. Of the man-eaters of to-day the car- charodon is the largest, a specimen hav¬ ing been captured in Australian waters thirty-six feet in length; the jaw of this monster is now iu the British Museum. The largest shark, hoAvever, is the phin- oden, which has a Avide geographical range and attains a length of from fifty to seventy feet, approximating that of the great whales; but this huge creature is not a menace to the other dwolers of the sea, having small, harmless teeth, and preying upon small pelagic or float¬ ing animals. Another shark called the “bone shark,” is occasionally found oil our eastern coast, ranging from twenty to fifty feet. A reliable fisherman in¬ formed me that his father captured one off the southern coast of Massachusetts which Avas longer than this. The schooner was sixty tons burden, and when the fish Avas brought alongside, and lashed, it was longer than the ves¬ sel, or between sixty and seventy feet. The shark is also a defenseless creature, relying upon small animals for food. One hundred years ago a well-conducted fishery for them was carried on on the New Englad coast—the oil being ex¬ tremely valuable, while the other parts were utilized in various ways. It is sup¬ posed that so many Avere kiiled at this time that they have been nearly exter- ininaied,and,doubtless,are fast meeting the fate of the giaut sharks of the ter¬ tiary time. Ah Ex-Reporter's Millions. Rockefeller was once a newspaper re¬ porter, and less than two decades ago was a business man of only moderate means in Cleveland, Ohio. His attention Avas attracted to the opportunities for making money in the handling and re¬ fining of the product of the Pennsylvania oil fields. He started a comparatively small refinery, and from that grew the most powerful monopoly on earth—the Standard Oil Trust. How rapidly the Standard has grown is shown by the fact that in 1880 its capital was only $3,000,- 000, whereas it is now S90,000,000. .The par value of the stock is $100 per share, but it is quoted at $170. It pays dividends amounting to 10 per cent, per annum. Rockefeller owns more than a majority stock, so thac something like $100,000,000 of his fortune is represented - a tbe q' rus t. He also has extensive na tural gas interests in Ohio, and iu ad- d j{j on j s a large owner of Government bonds and th(J securities of railroais and other corporatl0 ns. One of the Best Shots on Record. A shot worth mention is this: A brigand entered a man’s sleeping room in Mexico, stood at the foot of his bed, co\ered him with a pistol, and then spoke to him to wake him. The prime motive of the visit avhs revenge, though plunder would have followed. “Man,” said the victim, “don't kill me in bed! Let me offer a prayer!” Curious folks, these Mexicans. Tiie brigand had the nerve for killing forty men, but he hadn’t the nerve to refuse a man a prayer, The victim slid from his bed, drawing from h ‘-' d111 h ' s l >“ d f Ti”' d i >“ if*. d 5l “ l “ * - single act The bullet . passed through the nrigaud , heart. Thrs. rn view of .11 tJe circumstances, was an undeniably meritorious shot .-New York Sun. The universal language, Volapuk. is uoav eleven years old. and ... it is asserted that 5,000,000 persons are able to use it.