Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1893 — NOTES AND COMMENTS [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS

Nicaragua, which Is attracting so much attention just now, has a population of about 300,000 and is one of the richest countries in the world in natural resources. Besides valuable mines of gold, silver, copper and quicksilver, it produces all kinds of tropical fruits, as well as cedar, indigo, coffee and sugar. Its sugar cane grows to enormous proportions and ofteu attains such size that the plantations resemble groves of trees. The Buffalo Courier says: “The florist who makes and pugilists and sun-dials out o. flowers does not cause any indifferent person to admire their beauty; rather he distracts attention from their delicacy of form and color to the effect of the mass. Flowers and foliage were never intended to be made into sun-dials and globes. Hundreds of other materials lend themselves more readily to such a purpose, while their position in the economy of nature is far different.” It is the testimony of those who have seen the great trees of California that much of the effect of astonishment is lost because the visitor approaches the trees through a forest of giants that gradually increase in size. Many pines ten feet in diameter are passed on the journey, and in this way the visitor slowly works up to trees that measure above thirty feet in diameter. If a horse be placed in front of a tree, with his side toward the approaching traveller, some notion of the euormous size of the giant is obtained.

Justice Blatchfoud was one of the few men who ever sat upon the Supreme Court bench who possessed great wealth, and be was not only tbe richest man who over sat upon an American bench, but was probably the richest who ever held appointive office in America. He might have spent the last twenty years of his life in delightful ease, but he used to declare to his friends who pleaded with him to retire that he was happier when at work, and that no recreation which he could command would begin to give him the pleasure which his duty as Justice afforded him. He inherited a fortune, and by private practice and real estate investment he became worth probably as much as $3,000,000. General Lew Wallace says that the Turkish cavalry is admitted to be the finest in all Europe. The soldiere of the Sultan’s Circassian body-guard, whom Bull Run Russell called “the most picturesque scoundrels in the world,” are, General Wallace says, “blood-thirsty and treacherous, recklessly brave and exceedingly beautiful. Even among the meanest of them you see noble, well-set heads of finest mould.” The Sultan himself is a man of kingly bearing, but with a thin face and colorless eyes, keen as a falcon’s. When he appears in publio on ceremonious occasions he rides a milk-white Arabian horse, whioh he manages very skilfully, and his manner is most gracious as he bows right and left to the people. This Commander of the Faithful, according to popular Turkish belief, has never signed a death warrant, and doubtless the reputation is deserved, for such matters may easily be attended to vicariously. General R. G. Dyuenforth, who is known as the “rainmaker,” from his experiments in producing rain by artificial methods, is an enthusiast on the subject of rainmaking. He believes that it is possible by the aid of scienoe to make rain even in the Desert of Sahara. “I do not know,” he said to a New York Press reporter, “whether the Secretary of Agriculture will continue the rainmaking experiments which were commenced under the last Administration. I am not interested a cent personally in the question, but as a matter of cold fact, based on my experiments, I believe that rain can be produced at will. The region in Texas where we conducted our experiments was a most arid one. The earth was parched and not a tree was in sight. We produced the first 'grass’ rain in eighteen months. I have no doubt that rainmaking will be carried on in portions of the country as a practical thing. It will be cheaper than building dams for irrigating purposes.”

A decidedly new departure in postage stamps has just been made by Belgium. This novelty is a Sunday or non-Sunday stamp, with, a tag separated from the main part of the stamp by the usual perforations and announcing in two languages, French and Dutch, the fact that the letter bearing it is not to be delivered on Sunday. If the persons using these stamps have no religious scruples against their letters being delivered on Sunday all they have to do is to tenr off the tag containing the order and place the upper portion of the sta i p upon the envelope. It is the intention of the Belgian government to get out a full series of these Sunday stamps. There are nine varieties, of these values: —One, two, five, ten, twenty, twentyfive and fifty centimes, and one and two francs. The same design appears on all, but the colors are different. The profile on the stamp is that of King Leopold 11. The Sunday stamp idea, it is said, originated with T. Vandenpeeveboon, Minister of Railways, Telegraph, and Posts of Belgium. He is an extremely religious man, and while he cannot stop the collection and delivery of mails on Sunday he has adopted this postage stamp scheme hoping to educate the people up to his own ideas.

TnE work of keeping the channel of the Missouri for 1,649 miles above Sioux City, la., clear for navigation, is no light undertaking. Two Government snag boats, the steamer Gen. McPherson and the steel scow Mandan, are engaged all through the opeu season in pulling snags out of the river bed and clearing away the driftwood. The steamer is a curiosity In her way,being a stern wheeler equipped with compound engines placed on each side of the boat, like ordinary highpressure steamboat cylinders, and having a Scotch marine boiler, air pumps, and a full condensing apparatus. The exhaust from five auxiliary engines and even the waste of the capstan cylinder cocks are condensed and re-fed to the boiler. She has a complete “snagging outfit,” including a pressure pump for washing earth from the roots of snags and stumps. The steel scow is fitted with steel sheers, steam capstans, steam saw, and other implements for raising snags. Last season these boats removed 851 snags, including rocks, projecting trees, stumps, and channel boulders. Two wrecked steamers were also taken out of the channel. A great deai of miscellaneous work was also done, such as rescuing stock at high water, trimming trees on the banks, and sluioing out mouths of streams. As to the need of this work, it is diminishing fast, for it is said that during the past ten years the river traffic, owing to the building of railroads, has steadily decreased, until it is now almost entirely wiped out. Writrrs in the law periodicals are advocating all sorts of strange dootrines at present. One correspondent thinks that circumstantial evidence should have scarcely any weight. His argument is

that when direct.evidence Is given then is only the perjuryof the witness to be guarded against, while in circumstantial evidence there are both the possibility of perjury and the liability to a wrong inference from the circumstances. The strength of circumstantial evidence, according to most writers, however, is that there is little probability of perjury, as the circumstanoes frequently are alight in themselves and not likely to be distorted by the witnesses who do not know of their full effect. The New York Tribune regards it as probable that many more unjust convictions have taken place from perjured direct evidence than from mistaken inferences from circumstances. Ardemus Stewart, in the American Law Register, belittles the value -of expert evidence to an even greater extent than most previous writers. English lawyers, writing to the London papers, have advocated to some extent a strange plan for doing away with all oaths in legal proceedings, on the ground that perjury is so oommon that simple declarations to which the same penalties for incorrect statements might attach, would be just as valuable as testimony given under the present form. Another new theory which has found its advocate is that in criminal trials, except lor treason, the defense, as well as the prosecution, shall be conducted by public officials. This suggestion is rather more startling than any of the others, and is even more unlikely than they of adoption. It may be that in the* superabundance of law periodicals, writers find it easier to invent a theory than to make some valuable con* tributions to legal literature.