Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1892 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The work of incendiaries in the United States which insurance men believe causes great loss every year, has led fire underwriters to attempt to secure the enactment of laws providing for the adequate investigation of the causes of all fires and the prosecution of all persons believed to lie incendiaries. The National Board of Fire Underwriters hassent to the Governors of different States a communication calling attention to the need of legislation on this subject, and has also issued a pamphlet containing the recommendations of insurance commissioners that laws be enacted requiring investigation of all fires. It shows that the fire waste has increased from $84,000.000 in 1882 to $143,000,000 in 1891. The Insurance Commissioner of Colorado, in his report for 1892, says that fully 35 per cent of the fires there are of incendiary origin. The Connecticut Commissioner says (hat the risk should be divided between the companies and the insured, to induce greater care against, fires. Copies of Massachusetts and NexvHampshire statutes ou the subject, and of bills introduced at the last sessions of the New-York and New-Jersey legislatures, are included in the pamphlet.

One of the curious experiences of some of the recent Greenland travelers was to learn after their return that an odd waltz, performed by the South Greenland Eskimos was in reality a European dance all the rage last winter in Paris, thence transplanted to Copenhagen, and, by easy transition in a Danish steamer and in the person of a Danish official or perhaps oftieialers, taken to the fjord cut and glacier browed west coast of Greenland. It is the old, old story of going away from home to hear news or learn something of that that we should have known lrom the very association with it; but the incident after all suggests what a compressed little globe this is after all. Paris and Upernivik, Haramerfest and Melbourne, Cape Barreu and Gape Town are so near each other that one can almost touch them; while experience proves that to go to any out of the way place aud not find something in common with the locality, its people or its visitor is so rare as to almost be an impossibility. Every traveler, even the most casual, is impressed with this; and as for the globe trotters the world to them is but a little back yard geographical patch, in which kingdoms and empires take the place of the long rows of cabbages and turnips.

Not even Heaven itself Is sacred to the advertiser, and the Milky Way is about to become a valuable advertising medium. The other night at Ealing, a town half way between London and Windsor, an enterprising genius, rejoicing in the name of Sidney Hodges, succeeded in projecting a large and highly luminousletter on the sky by some means of his own invention, and demonstrated to an interested party of spectators that with the electric light there would be no difficulty on a favorable night in displaying, not only letters, but words and signals in. the same fashion.' The heavens will soon he telling, besides their own story, one of certain people’s soap, or liver pills, or porous plasters. To what extent this new branch of advertising enterprise will interfere with the science of astronomy can only be left to the imagination.

Captain C. W. Adams, of West Addison, Vt., has raised quite a large portion of the timbers of the flagship Congress, of General Benedict Arnold’s fieet, which was sunk in Lake Champlain, in October, 1776. The timbers, of which there are about thirty feet of the after part of the keel and keelson, with a number of the ribs attached, are of oak, and perfectly sound. The wood, when polished, is very dark and takes a beautiful finish. It will be either worked into canes and other articles, as relics, or kept intact for the World’s Fair. Mr. Adams has also several shells and solid shot, grape and musket balls, which he has found near the wreck.

A number of German dentists havej been heavily fined by justices in Prussia' and Saxony for advertising themselves as doctors of dentistry on the strength of diplomas received from American colleges. The German laws recognize only four classes of doctors— those of law', theology, philosophy and medicine. Speaking of dentists, it is worth noting that the three dentists of Berlin, Dresden and Leipsic who have the largest and most remunerative practice are respectively Messrs. Sylvester, Jenkins and Young, all natives of Maine. The two last mentioned were formerly residents of Bangor. Sylvester and Jenkins are courtdentists.

Professor L. F. Blake, of the University of Kansas, in an article on “Safety from Electricity,” in the Electrical World says: “For buildings in cities, except churches and other high structures, rods, I think, are unnecessary. Lightning strikes seldom in the citiescompared with the country, one reason being that the many electric wiles—telephone and telegraph and electric light—are really safeguards. A building is safer with such wires over it than without. In the country, however, buildings may need protection. Four years ago, it is said, General Harrison vent to bed on the night of election before he knew the result. The wife of general Hancock declared that the latter -went to bed at 7 o’clock in the evening on election day, 1880, being too tired to await news. Next morning he awoke at dawn and asked if there were any definite tidings. Upon her reply: “Yes, you are beaten,” he turned over aud went to sleep again. A San Francisco firm is about to attempt the revival of whaling in the Antarctic Ocean, which has not been cai ried on for as many as twenty-five years. A quarter of a' century ago the catches of sperm and right whales used to be excellent there, aud many of the whalers are now of the opinion that the Southern seas will again afford a profitable field for operations. The red glow of the planet Mars has. puzzled everybody but a French astronomer, who gives it as his opinion that the vegetation of that far away world is erim son instead of green. He also says that he hasn't the least doubt but that there are single flowers on the war god’s surf a e which are as large as the incorporated limits of Paris.