Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1892 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The Belgians don’t fight, but they fur. nish a largo amount of fighting material, os last year they exported no less than 15,400,000 worth of firearms. There are hundreds of Mexicans in the Bio Grande counties, says the Pecos Valley (Tex.) News, who are voters, yet have no knowledge of English. They cannot read nor write even their own language and never will know how to speak English or to write it, and yet their votes must be counted along with that of the most intelligent American. Henry T. Oxnard of Nebraska, who represents four out qf the six beet sugar factories in the United States and inaugurated the beet sugar industry in this country, says: “Inside of ten years the factories of this country will be producing from boets all the sugar used for home comsuinption. It is no longer a matter of experiment, but business. There are four factories in the West, two in Nebraska, o*e in Utah, and another in California vhich are producing beet sugar. Each o these factories cost about $50#,000 to 1 liid. A largo proportion of tho States can profitably grow the beets.” The people of T mpkins county, N. Y., arc jubilant over henew salt industry located near Ludloi ville. A few years since a scientific sirvoy disclosed the fact that a layer o salt was imbedded along the eastern sh re of Cayuga Lake, and that it approach d the surface nearer ut Myer’s Point thin any other place. A syndicate has recently erected a plant there that is now inactive operation, and turns out some 7C) barrels daily. A farmer near there p irchased the first ton of salt for $3 per to i. It is a very nice, clean-looking salt, I it they are putting in improved machin ry, and intend making a superior quality. This industry will' add greatly to thi praffic of the Lake Shore Railroad.

“The arguineits against the cruel practice of dockinj horses’ tails,” says a correspondent, “night meet with more consideration in tlis Christian land if the gentle dames who countenance tho practice were instruettd-as to the origin of the custom. During the time Warren Hustings wa3 Governor of India, over a century ago, the English wqro first shocked by encountering this cruel fashion, originated by the savage Tartars in tho I'hibetiun mountains. So repulsive did it seem to our good Anglo-Saxons that they not only refused to buy horses thus deformed, but actually paid the mountainers a bounty to induce them to forego the practice. And now, 0 world of inconsistency, it is England which has persuaded the gentle American to take up, as tho height of fashion, this rude and burbarous mode, long since discarded by tboso mountain savages. Shall we be obliged to import a missionary from the savages to bay us iff?” Professor Muybrigde, of the University of Pennsylvania, is strongly of the opinion that uien will somo day learn to fiv. “Edison has told me,” he says, "that ho firmly believes a porfect fiyiugmuehine some day will be invented, and that lie also bolieves the wing of a tty is tho model upon which that machine will be constructed. Lubbock, and Helmholtz, and Langley, of Johns Hopkins University; Ray Lankester and Sir Willium Thompson—a group of names that are probably tho most renowned in the scientific circles of to-day—share Mr. Edison's opinion, and unite with him in urging me to tnako a study of the locomotion of insects upon tho same system 1 adopted so successfully in my ‘Auimul Locomotion.’ 1 havo already elucidated to the world the bird’s flight, and shown how complicated a matter it is. Now an insect, it is well known, can fly faster than a bird, although the manner of its flight is not known, but merely guessed at.”

Residents of northeastern Washingtoil are circulating a petition praying Congress that the fine forest and mountain country in the neighborhood of Lake Chelan be set apart by United States for the purposes of a national park. The petitioners say: “We are wholly influenced in this request by a desire to perpetuato the groat beauties of the region referred to, which presents scenery of a more varied, beautiful, and artistic nature than is to bo found anywhere olse in the picturesquo Northwest; and to preserve the deer, tho elk, and tho mountain goats found therein that are fast disappearing from American mountains.” The land described is mostly mountainous, many of tho peaks rising to a height of 7,000 feet from tho water’s edge. Chelan Lake is a narrow body of clear water averaging two miles in width und extending from a point near tho Columbia River in a northwestorly direction sixty-eight miles towards the slope of tho Cascade Mountains. Tho land within the proposed park is for the most part unfit for cultivation, but the mountains abound in wild game of all kinds, while tho lake and the streams emptying into it swarm with fish. There are also in tho region sought to be set aside as a national park (which is described by metes and bounds in the petition) many small lakes, the feeding places of wild ducks and geese.