KNOXVILLE JOURNAL.
KNOXVILLE, GEORGIA.
Emperor William has suppressed the
se of French words on the bill of fare
at his state dinners.
Cassell s Magazine of Art makes the
unexpected statement that “A largo
volume might he Sited with an account
of the inheritol art treasures of the
south, and especially the family por¬
traits, many of which are the work of
famous masters. ”
The county courthouse at Pittsburg,
Penn., cost nearly §3,000.000. The
tower rises to a heichth of 420 feet. It
has a bridge over w iich the prisoners
pass between the courtrooms and the
jail, . which , . , is . modeled , . , after .. the .. tamous .
“Bri-lgo of Siqhs” in Venice.
Earthquakes in Mexico and Chinn,
floods and tornadoes in America and Eu
•ope, nud yellow fever marching on—
nil this is sad enough, philosophizes the
Atlanta Constitution, but this is a bio
.«! 1. mu.t „„„
storm as well as its share of sunshine.
It is proposed to hold a world’s Sun¬
day school convention in London next
June. If this convention is hsld it will
be made up of delegates from all parts
of the world, and a ship will be char¬
tered which will take three hundred
delegates to London from this country
alone.
The French infantiy appears to have
a fellow-feeling for strikers. At Lim¬
oges the soldiers were told to fix bay¬
onets and to repel the advances of six
hundred strikers, but an advance guard
of women proved too much for them.
Perhaps, observes the San Francisco
Chronicle, it was the innate gallantry
of the Gaul that made him weaken
when brought face to face with the
gentler sex.
The New York Times says: “On the
Continent everywhere is subordinated
to the immense military manoeuvres.
Practically half the Princes of Europe
are playing at mimic warfare. Those
wh j have no armies of their own are
visiting the camp3 of those who have.
Never before has such a colossal mass¬
ing of troops occurred ia time of peace.
There are rumors that the French cav¬
alry is not so good as had been hoped.
Some riders fell off their horses in front
of the President’s stand yesterday.
A complete census of the manu¬
facturers of New Orleans has been com¬
piled by the Times-Democrat, and the
reports show how greatly that city has
advanced. In 1880 New Orleans had
915 manufacturing establishments with
a capital of $8,565,303, employing
8404 hands and turning out $18,808,909
of products, while at the present time
there are 2185 factories having a capital
of $21,667,670. The number of hands
has increased to 23.805 and the value of
the products to $41,508,546.
Aftor most careful investigation and
experiment, the English experts have
concluded that tobacco cannot be grown
in their countly. An English colony,
however, Borneo, is raising some excel¬
lent tobacco, with great promise of in¬
creased production. Most all of this
is sent to Amsterdam, which is now
probably the principal tobacco market
of the world. Almost the ontiro East
Indian crop goes there, the principal
portion of it coming from Sumatra.
This amounts in value to over $12,500,
000, and about half ia us«d by the
(Cigarmakert of America, "
RATS AND MICE.
CURIOUS FACTS CONCERNING
THESE RODENTS.
Habits of the Mouse—Its Dove for
Music — The Black and the
Brown Rats—How to Get
Rid of Rats.
Bats and mice derive their name “ro¬
dent” from the peculiar structure of
their teeth, which are especially fitted
for gnawing. Their jaws are heavily
made and very large in proportion to
the head, this size being needful for the
support of their gnawing teeth and their
continual development. Their chisel¬
like front teeth pass deeply into the jaw¬
bone and they are continually nourished
by a kind of pulpy substance from which
the tooth is foimed and which adds
fresh material in proportion to the daily
waste. The covering enamel of the front
f? ce the incisor teeth is much harder
than that which is laid upon the back
part of the teeth . As t he enamel and
dentine of the softer part wears away
much faster than the harder front sur¬
face, the peculiar chisel-edge structure is
these continually preserved. When one of
teeth is broken, or the animal is so
confined as to be prevented from using
his sharp-edged tools, the sufferer dies, as
tlle growth ° f the teeth is continual, and
This malformation is tolerably frequent.
The family “Murida 1 ,” to which the
mice and rats belong, has thirty-seven
ganera, found in with 330 of species. the They'are all
parts Old World, but are
not natives of America. There is a small
animal, resembling a mouse, which is
exclusively American. This family has
eighty or more species. The little meadow
mouse is an example. The only rodent
common to both , urope and America is
the braver, which is not regarded as the
same in both countries; and the squir¬
rels are considered the highest form of
the gnawing animals. Our domestic
mic 1 are foreigners, introduced by our
forefathers. Of the genus “Mus” or
mouse, there are 100 species, all natives
of the Old World.. They have three
simple feet have molar teeth in each jaw, their fore
four toes and a rudimentary
thumb; the hind feet have five tees; tne
feet can be turned outward and the claws
hitched upon any convenient projection
when descending a wall. The common
mouse readily colonizes every region,
arctic, temperate or tropical.
The jumping mice, or jerboas, are na¬
tives of the Mediterranean region. Their
usual jump is ten or twelve feet. They
think nothing of jumping the width of
a do good sized room at one spring. They
not always leap about. When they
are not startled or in a hurry they run on
all four feet, and when they make their
winter homes fai down in the warm
earth they dig a long passage till safe
from the hard fiosts that freeze the
ground, able, and there they make a comfort¬
warm, snug nest, roll themselves
into balls, wrap their long tails around
them, and go to sleep for the winter. It
is specially interesting to know that
when a mother mouse is frightened and
wants to hide with her children, she
takes great leaps, with her babies hang¬
ing long fast to her sides. No matter how
her jumps, or how far she goes,
every little mouse holds on like “grim
death” till a safe hiding place is found
and she can rest.
Perhaps the most ability amusing power the
mouse has is his to sing. They
show a strong love for music, and a
power of imitating the ,, song of „ a , bird. ,
There lias been a great deal written on
their singing powers, and it is discussed
whether they really do possess this fac
ulty, or whether it is merely the eonse
mouse quenees sings of throat like the disease. cricket The I read field of
a saucy little mouse who built his home
under a setting hen s nest, and nibbled
the feathers off the tail of the patient old
hen to make feather beds tor her chil
Ihe field mouse is said .. to . , have a great ,
antipathy to either the cat or brown rat,
and will leave a house whenever they
appear. Ihe and brown
black rat are particu
larly deserving of notice, and are the
most widely distributed over the world.
They both appear Asia. to be natives of the
central part of The brown rat
found its eighteenth way to Europe in the beginning
of the century, and reached
Britain and the western countries of
Europe about the middle of that epoch.
They are sometimes erroneously called
the Norway rat.
The brown rat is larger and more
powerful than the black rat, and they are
deadly foes. The brown rat has suc¬
ceeded in causing an almost total disap¬
pearance of the blaek rat in places where
it was liodewell’s very numerous. According to
Mr. theory the manner in
which the brown rat has supplanted its
black foe is by love instead of war. The
browns, being the stronger, carry off the
females of the blacks by force, and thus
he accounts for the curious kind of
particolored offspring These which infest may b«
found in France. rats ships,
and so are carried to the mest distant
parts of the world, some of them getting
ashore at every port and establishing
new colonies. The black rat is nearly
seven inches long and the brown grows
to be ten inches, with a tail eight inches
long. Both species are extremely prolific,
producing When they from ten to fourteen hunger at a birth. they
are pressed devour by
do not hesitate to the weaker of
their kind.
especially The rat’s never-failing in devouring appetite animal is
useful
and vegetable substances the putrefac¬
tion of which would otherwise be pro¬
ductive of pestilence. It is said that the
visits of the plague to Western Europe
and Britain have ceased from the time
when rats became plentiful. Wood gives
us the suggestion for stopping up their
tunnels, when they are making them¬
selves a nuisance, as follows: “Fill the
rate hole with mortar or cement, well
studded with pieces of broken glass.”
And he advises to place “a few table¬
spoonfuls stopped of quicklime in the hole before their
it is up,” as lime burns
feet.
Their sense of smell is very acute, so
much so that ratcatchers are careful to
glove their hands when setting their
traps. The professional ratcatcher in
England wears his a brass image of ways-and a rat as
a sign of business. The
means of catching them are a professional and
secret. They procure them alive sell
them to rat-pit. keepers. These pit keep
ers have a sort of hole where they let the
rats loose and dogs are set on them,
Crowds of boys and men pay to see this
cruel sport. The skin of rats is made i
into gloves in Paris, and in Siberia there
is a field mouse that stores up such
quantities of dried roots and other of food that
to last through that half-starved the long winter people there
country
hunt their nests and carry off most of
the food for their own use .—San Fran¬
cisco Chronicle.
The Embalmer’s Art.
“Embalming will soon take the place
of ice altogether in cities for preserving
bodies before burial,” buried said the millionaire under¬
taker who recently
Sands, to a New York Telegram reporter,
“in tenement houses, for instance, it is
more a work of labor than of love to
carry ice enough to the top story to keep
a body for a day or two.
“Embalming fluids composed of car¬
bolic acid and other antiseptics are more
effective, and besides that are good dis¬
infectants, cleanly to use, and the body
has a natural appearance. All the re¬
pulsive features of a funeral are thus
avoided.”
“How long could you preseive a body
by the modern embalming process?”
“For three months, or longer if neces¬
sary, by frequent injections of the em¬
balming “Egyptian fluid.” mummies have been
method pre¬
served for years. Is this a lost
art?”
“Well, it is and it isn’t. The process
of the ancient Egyptians would be re¬
pulsive to people of the present day.
Thev disemboweled the bodies, taking
away all the viscera and filling the body
with embalming stuffs. This would be
caded horrible mutilation in these days.
An Egyptian mummy is a caricature of
tbe human form—a dried up, desiccated
p iece of crumbling leather at best.”
“But could Egyptian embalming be
done w jth our present knowledge?”
,q so, if we used the same
means and had the same dry climate,
g ut w h 0 would care to have relatives or
f r j ends preserved be in that way 1 Another job,
tMng) would aa unpleasant
that no modern undertaker would care to
engage j n . The pickling process would
rob de ath and burial of all its sentiment,
and p rese nt generation bloodedness has hardly
arrived at that stage of cold
t [ see n0 reason for trying to imi
tflte *| 1C anc j en t Egyptians and turning
beloved ones illto raum mies. ’
It is announced that Mrs. Cleveland is
getting tired of answering notes from
people who name their babies after
her.
A party “hemmed in” by the Indians
is likely to be pasted.
THE PROUD LADY GONE.
Away from the noise and clatter
The din of the busy street,
Is a cabaret, shaded and silent,
Where at evening we often meet
Bhe is a proud, rich lady,
Beautiful, wealthy and grand,
And society’s legions marshal
At the wave of her jeweled hand.
Yet far from the glamor and glitter,
From revel and rout and ball,
Shei seeks her old companion.
When the evening shadows fait
Iread in her eyes of azure
A welcome tender and strong,
And her greeting to me is the music
Of a sweet, old fashioned song.
She sits where the fading sunshine
Falls on her pure, sweet face,
About her, draped and twining,
An aura of shimmering lace.
We chat over old excursions '
By woodland and stream and shore;
We clink our glasses, the wine flies;
“Come, waiter, and bring us more.”
I open my eyes, the waiter
Is before me, bottle in hand,
But alas! the rich, proud lady
Has gone to the shadowy land.
For although I weave about her
This web of an ancient time,
The lady long since has banished
Her minstrel and his rhyme.
—.San Francisco News.
PITH AND POINT.
Grammar students advance by declin
.
ln £
The first vacant lot has a “common”
* _ place appearance.
“Please, I want to buy a shilling
worth of hav.” “Js it for your father ?''*
“Oh no- it’s for the horse ”
The left bower The raim who isn>t
reco „ Dized by thu lad A t0 wilom ' he Ufts
hlS ,■ hat.-hurkngton-Free . Pm*,
‘There will be a domestic storm,” he
murmured, as he heard a crash in the
kitchen: “The glass is failing .”—Boston
When a man pays $5.00 for a little
piece of quinine, it is hard to convince
him that it is a drug in the market.— The
Idea.
tist,” Requested Saphirsaid: to define the word “den¬
“He is a man who
pulls out other people’s teeth to get
something for his own to bite.”
The hights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they while their companions slept
Were out among the boys all night.
—Merchant Traveler.
Mamie—“What are you writing, Min¬
nie: your will?” Minnie—“.\o, I’m
writing my and won’t. George proposed
last night I told him I’d answer to¬
day.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Mrs. Bascom at
the concert, as the singers came out again
in response to an encore. “Make ’em do
it over again until they get the thing
right. ”
Never use a crow-bar to get a railroad
cinder out of your eye. A lead pencil
sharpened "if to jab a fine hard point will work it'
out Free Press. you enough .—Detroit
There is a yell that scares them all.
The pagan and believer;
For hear it now in Florida,
It is the yell o’fever.
—Here York Mercury.
The distressing news comes from Eng¬
land that the Prince of Wales loses his
wind too quickly to make a good tennis
player. He the wouldn’t make a successful
member of United States Congress,
either .—Norristown Herald.
There were a lot of Italians sorting
over “Why a waste those heap on people lower Broadway.
are like women’s
dresses?” asked Plugly; and when his
friend couldn’t tell he said they were
gathered at the waist.— Siftings.
“Did you ever shoot a cross-bow?”
asked an enthusiastic archer of Miss
Ethalinda. “Ever shoot a cross-beau?"
she replied. “I should say I had.
George got so cross last night that I
fired him right out of the house. ”— Pitts¬
burg Chronicle.
She (flaring up)—“What do you mean
by kissing me, William Henry Smith?”
W. H. S. (humbly)—“I-I-I-meant no
disrespect, I I assure should you.” She (angrily)
—“Well, like to see you do
it again, that’s all.” W. H. S.—“Her#
goes, then.” S. (smoothing her ruflled
plumage)—“You’re Courier. just awful.”— Boston
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