Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1881 — FACTS FOR THE CURIOUS. [ARTICLE]

FACTS FOR THE CURIOUS.

A blind boy at Montreal has built a miniature house inside an ordinary four-ounce bottle, out of forty pieces of j wood neatly glued together. It would : puzzle a person with good eyesight to ' get the parts into the bottle, to say [ nothing of putting them together. Serpents are said to obey the voice lof their masters. The trumpet-bird of ■ America follows its owner like a spaniel, ■ and the jacana acts as a guard to poulj try, protecting them in the field all day I from birds of prey, and escorting them home at night. tn the Shetland isles there is a gull which defends the flock from eagles ; it is therefore regarded as the privileged bird. The cause of earthquakes is to be found in the molten condition of the interior of the earth. This high degree of heat causes the generation of immense volumes of elastic gases, which, sooner or later, explode and shake the earth’s crust. Mr. Rogers’ theory is that the quaking is produced by the actual pulsation of the liquid mass at the earth’s center. The pulsation is carried by great waves, caused by the tension of elastic matter which forms the earth’s crust. One of the advantages pertaining to the new method of engraving by electricity—an electric spark pen having been invented for the purpose in Paris—is that the artist does all parts of his work, and with no more trouble than with working with an ordinary pencil, and can even operate in a dark room, without any other light than the glare from the induction spark. If a sheet of thin paper be attached to a plate of copper or zinc, it is said that an engraving may be made with extraordinary facility by this device. Byron wrote VThe Corsair” in ten days, at the rate of two hundred lines a day ; Lope de Vega wrote three hundred dramas in one hundred days; Voltaire composed “Zaire” in three weeks and “Olympic” in six days; Dryden wrote his ‘ ‘ Ode to St. Cecelia ” at one sitting, and Mrs. Browning’s “The Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” was the work of twelve hours. Shakspeare, Dickens, Wordsworth and More, on the other hand, were slow workers. Hepworth Dixon rewrote his “Two Queens” eight times, and Kinglake’s “Eothen” was rewritten five or six times. A scientific newspaper gives some illustrations of depraved tastes in animals. An instance occurred in a sheep on a Briti jh mail and passenger steamer, which, while fattening for the table, developed a marvelous taste for which it ate greedily. This habit waslk most conservative measure, since they cook was afraid to kill the animal lest ' the mutton might be flavored with to- : bacco. Another case mentioned was ■ that of a kitten, five months old, which i had a liking for salads. Cucumbers i dressed’ with vinegar were consumed with avidity, even though hot with Cayenne pepper. It has eaten boiled beef with mustard, and its mother was once seen to eat a slice of cucumber which had upon it salt, pepper and vinegar. It is still a prevalent belief in certain places of England, that the bride, in removing her bridal robe and chaplet at the completion of the marriage ceremonies, must take special care to throw away every pin worn on this eventful day. Evil fortune, it is affirmed, will sooner or later inevitably overtake the bride who keeps even one pin used in the marriage toilette. Woe also to the bridesmaids if they retain any of them, as their chances of marriage will thereby be materially lessened, and anyhow they must give up all hope of being w’edded before the following Whitsuntide. On the other hand, in Sussex a bride on her return home from church is often at once robbed of all the pins about her dress by her single friends present, from the belief that whoever possesses one of them will be married in the course of a year. Much excitement and amusement are occasionally caused by the youthful competitors for this supposed charm; and the bride herself is not infrequently the victim of rather rough treatment.