Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1879 — ITEMS OF INTERESTS. [ARTICLE]

ITEMS OF INTERESTS.

A writer in the London Times estimates the expenses of the Zulu war at near $2,500,000 a week 1 It will probably surprise most people to learn that a temperature of 100 degrees has no official record in New Orleans, and that year in and year out 94 may be considered the maximum. The word coolie is not of Chinese origin. It is the name of a hill tribe in India,, whose able-bodied men were accustomed to descend into the plains for harvest work, and these were the men, who, after the negro emancipation in 1834, and the demand for laborers in the West Indies and the Mauritius, went thither as such under British protection.

Db. Keyser, in a paper read before the Pennsylvania Medical Society, said he had ascertained that per cent, of the train hands on three of the railroads in that State were color blind, being unable to distinguish the colors of the various signals, and fully 80 per cent, had eyesight more or less defective in that respect. The examinations were made with colored glass, by daylight and gaslight. The sleep of winter and that of night are different in those animals which are torpid for months. The bat, the hedgehog, the tawrie, the marmot, the hamster, tortoise, the toad, snakes, mollusca, spiders, bees, flies, bears, badgers, etc., retire to their closed holes, and in various degrees undergo a temporary death of four, five, six and even seven months of the year. They usually roll themselves up, but bats suspend themselves in caves. Those who Jay Up provisions use then! before they become torpid, and on reviving before they venture abroad. Their temperature lowers; their respiration is less frequent, and at times their circulation is reduced; they lose their feeling; the digestive organs are inactive and they suffer loss of weight. The confined air in which they shut themselves, added to the cold, is one cause of their torpidity. Facts lead to the belief that some birds hibernate.

Allen’s barn was burned at Sonora, Ohio, and it was believed that Minnich and Willis kindled the fire. Allen and some of his friends dug a grave, carried the suspected men to it, made them kneel at the side of the hole, held guns to their heads, and commanded them to confess. However, this treatment did not extort a confession, and Allen was subsequently fined SIOO for outrage. A few Dayton boys, having heard of the Sonora affair, took even more ernei measures to make a playfellow confess some trifling offense. They held his bare feet close to a flame until the soles were badly burned. The Land Office in Washington is kept busy night and day with the increasing demand for public lands. In the four months ending with April as much land was taken up as during any yeii? heretofore,