Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1885 — CURIOUS FACTS. [ARTICLE]

CURIOUS FACTS.

A squirrel can run down a tree head first. The cat and the bear must get down tail first (if left to themselves). The standing armies of Europe aggregate 3,501,971 able-bodied men. The taxes for their support aggregate $495,615,603. While boring an artesian well on the Rosecrans tract, near Los Angeles, the workmen discovered a deposit of conch shells at a depth of 160 feet. A new motor, driven by the explosion of small cartridges of guncotton, has been produced in England, and is said to be applicable wherever small powers are required. A Philadelphian went to a physician with what he feared was a hopeless case of heart disease, but was relieved on finding out that the creaking sound which he had heard at every deep breath was caused by a little pulley on his patent suspenders. Of 4,692,348 persons returned by the census of Germany in 1882 as engaged in agricultural work, 1,230,080, or nearly a million and a quarter, were females. The land of Bismarck still adheres to the old fashion of harnessing women to the cart and the plow. In 1820 two hills of an area of sbout 800 acres, of almost no agricultural value, on the property of Lord Cawdor, in Scotland, were planted with fir and other trees, and after successive thinnings,’the sale of which realized large sums, the remainder of the wood was sold off for £16,000. The sum realized for the wood on this waste land during the fifty years is stated to be equal per acre to the return from the best arable land in the country. It is not a pleasant fact to know, but yet it is a fact, according to Prof. R. A. Proctor, that this earth is to-day as likely to quake and overthrow cities and towns as it has been at any time since man existed. The conditions within the globe which cause the disturbances are changing, but so slowly that there is practically no difference ( between what they were thousands of years ago and what they will be thousands of years hence. Nobody would have cause of surprise, therefore, if the earthquake of Lisbon, in 1755, should presently be repeated. Indeed, it seems possible that great disturbances have recently taken place, not on dry land, but on land that is under the ocean, and that the big wave at New Haven and the shocks in Spain indicate the limits of their extent.