Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1893 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Persia is about the only country where the telegraph is not yet at home. A Scotch scientist has compiled statistics to show that married men live muoh longer than bachelors. There is less difference between the ancient and tho modern Greek tongues than between Chaucer’s English and the English of to-day. A firm in Palestine is engaged in supplying water from the river Jordan to churches. It is put up in sealed bottles and sold by the case. • The only Greek insurance company in existenoe, the National, was organized a little more than a year ago, and in the first twelve months piled up $143,000 in profits. The universities and colleges of this country have $8,635,383 worth of scientific apparatus and appliances; their grounds and buildings are worth $64,250,344, and they have $74,070,415 in productive funds.

Think of 3,571 church members— Christian oonverts —in poor Egypt giving the sum of $8.35 for each member per year. This church, too, nearly doubles its membership every five years. Russian papers complain of the gradual diminution of the volume of water in the rivers of that country. In 1891 the losses (through necessary landtransportation) amounted to over a million rubles between Tobolsk and Tjumen alone. • * Vienna is second among European capitals for extent of ground covered. Professor Umlauft, in the Deutsche Rundschau, traces the city’s expansion from early times, when from the Celtic settlement of Findbon it became the Roman Vindobona. The difference between the atmosphere of the best ventilated houses and the outer air is illustrated by the conduct of cut flowers. Blossoms that retain their freshness but a day or two when standing ia water within doors will sometimes live twice as long when dropped in a shady place out of doors.

It is said there is room behind the Olympic range in western Washington for 8,000 homesteaders in addition to the 4,000 or 5,000 already settled there. As yet the country is cut off from the outside world, is sparsely settled, and is as much a wilderness as Kentucky was in the days of Daniel Boone. Chemnitz, in Germany, appears to be a very sensible place. The municipality there has established eating houses where food is furnished at a minimum cost, with a view to removing the shame that every one feels in accepting food as charity, and yet permitting needy people to obtain it at trifling prices. Joseph Chamberlain expresses his profound astonishment at the marvelous physical and mental vigor of Mr. Gladstone. He says the grand old man is vastly better now in both respects than he was in 1885, and he goes so far as to say that he wouldn't be surprised to see him Prime Minister at the age of one hundred.

According to the census figures, the silk manufacturing industry in this country has grown wonderfully in the past ten years. In 1890 goods to the valne of $69,000,000 were turned out, as against $34,500,000 in 1880. The number of hands employed here also increased from about 31,000 to 51,000, and the number of spindles have expanded from 508,137 to 1,254,793. The Emperor Duc-Tu, of Cochin China, protects his treasures by placing them in hallowed trunks of trees, whioh float about a huge tank situated in the center of the royal palace. There are twenty crocodiles in the tank as well. When he wishes to draw upon this bank all the reptiles are killed; but this cannot take place without the joint consent of the Emperor and his Minister of Finance.

4t is evidently a veteran sailor who makes the suggestion that, as a vessel goes ashore to leeward and the lifeline shot from the shore must therefore be fired against the wind, and with all the difficulties which this implies, every vessel should carry a supply of rockets, which, attached to deep-sea fog-line and signal-halyards, would conneot them much more speedily with the shore. It is a singular fact that Great Britain, invester and money-lender in every quarter of the globe, ha£ only about as much cash per capita as the United States. The amount of all kinds of money in Great Britain is equivalent $13.42 for every person; in the United States it is $24.34. The lowest amount of money per capita among the leading nations is found in Russia, $7.16, and the next in Germany, $12.12. The purse of France is the largest of all, $40.56 for each inhabitant. The extent to whioh British law is made for the rich instead of for the poor is shown by the statement of the Secretary of the Treasury in the House of Commons that imprisonment for debt remains in existence for debts under SIOO. The only way to stave off imprisonment, therefore, is to plunge deeper into debt, an anomalous system that weighs heavily on the poor, whose restricted circumstances do not enable them to get into debt more than a few dollars at a time. An almost startling application to ordinary coal oil of the principle by which gasoline is used in cooking may be seen occasionally where important public work is carried on at night and electric lights are not obtainable. From the tank containing the oil extends a slender pipe, with a turn, and below the turn a vent. By lighting the oil that drips from this vent part of the oil in the tube is volatized and driven out at the end of the tubes. As soon as the vapor of the oil begins to come out at the end of the tube the vapor is lighted, and from that time forth'the volatilization goes on so. long as the escaping vapor is permitted to burn. The light is an extremely brilliant one.

A recent census of the blind of Europe shows that the people of Russia are more afflicted with blindness than any other race or nation on the globe, the proportion being twenty-one to every 10,000 of population. These statistics show that in European Russia, the Caucasus and Poland there was a total of 188,812 persons who were entirely blind. The whole of the remainder of Europe only has a blind population numbering 188,812. while the three Americas, North, Central and South, with their islands, have less than 23,000 persons who are totally bereft of sight. A recent report issued by the State Department in Washington gives a series of letters from American consuls abroad on the use of electricity as a power in the propulsion of farm machinery and implements. Almost every one of these states that the cheapness of labor is inch that most of the field work is done by hand, even when there is available machinery. Doubtless this is true

abroad, but in this country, where we hire enormous farms, covering thousands of acres, machinery propelled by eleotricity is almost emphatically a great advantage. What is wanted to make electricity serviceable to every one is an economical way of storing it; or, if you please, a method by which it can be bottled up, so that it will be ready for use when wanted. Mrs. Crawford has recently given the readers of Truth an interesting account of the little Vosges village of Saint Die, but curiously enough, says the London Sun, she omitted one faot in connection with the place which renders it of more than special note. It was in this quaint and out of-the-world corner of France that was published iu the year 1507 the jittle*geographical treatise, written by one Martin Waldseemuller, in which the name of “America” was first suggested for the new Continent, then recently discovered by Columbus. Curiously enough, it was not until 1837 that Alexander von Humboldt pointed out this curious fact, which at onoe exonerated Amerigo Vespucci from the accusation of having giveu his name to the New World discovered by his less fortunate compatriot.

In no other country of the world is the telephone in so general use as in Sweden, and in no other is the service so cheap and at the same time so perfect. It is under Government control, and the rates are fixed by the Government. A few weeks ago a new line was opened betweeen Stockholm and Christiania by King Oscar, who took occasion to express the hope in his first message to the Norwegians that the line would tend to draw tlieiwo countries into closer union and aid in overcoming the desire of the Norwegian Radicals to break up the existing relations. It is now proposed, by means of a submarine cable, to conneot the Norwegian and Swedish capitals with Copenhagen.

Some time ago General George Cullom bequeathed to the United States the sum of $250,000 for the purpose of erecting a memorial hall at West Point. He was a citizen of New York, and the bequest was to be expended in New York, and under the laws of that State all bequests ure liable for a tax. The question arising whether this bequest was taxable, the Surrogate has ruled that as the United States is not a charitable corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of New York, its property in that State as not exempt from taxation, and that this tax must be paid according to the law. The Court of Appeals will be asked to pass upon the correctness of his ruling. The Secretary of the Navy has made the discovery that under the rating established by law the United States Navy has only third-rate ships. The classification, whioh was made before the war, provides that only vessels which carry forty or more guns shall be considered as first-rate ships, those having between twenty and forty ranking os second class and all carrying less than twenty being considered third class. There is not a vessel in the navy to-day that carries as many as twenty guns, and the Secretary has asked Congress to establish a new rating for warships on the basis of their tonnage. A bill introduced in the Senate by Mr. McPherson provides that vessels of 5,000 tons and over shall rank as firstclass, between 3,000 and 5,000 second class, and under 3,000 tons third class. A system of moistening the air of a cotton factory—as is required in some departments of a mill, before blowing it into the rooms—has been the subject of much experiment. It has been found that, if a jet of steam or vapor ie discharged into the main duct, any degree of humidity desired can be obtained, but all the air is moistened alike, being distributed to the different rooms by the risers leading thereto; that, however, which is best adapted for one department in a cotton mill may not prove equally favorable for another. Then, too, the introduction of moisture at this point may work disastrously to the walla of the ducts and risers. It is now found that this objection may be overcome, at a small expense, by carying a steam pipe down through each room, and putting opposite each opening in the flue, through whioh the air enters the room, an outlet with valves for regulating the flow of the steam; in this way the exhaust steam from the engine which drives the blower flows iato the room, and, being caught up by the current of air passing from the flue, is thus distributed throughout the room. Experience with this plan through cold weather has proved its peculiar value. It seems that the cow is looming up as a serious factoi in East Indian politics, and even threatens to precipitate a bloody revolution. The Hindoos of India regard all life as sacred, and especially that of the cow, and think it a very grave crime to kill one. The Moslems do not share that feeling, and are very fond of beef. Hindoo religious zealots have recently been working up an agitation on the subject, and in inflammatory circulars have disclaimed against the wickedness of the Moslems killing and eating their sacred animal. There seems to be a regular society formed in India for the protection of cows, and .it has had a great influence over the ignorant classes of the Hindoos. A tremendous riot happened in Calcutta the other day, where some Hindoos attacked Mohammedan butchers, who were driving a cow to the slaughter-house. Government officials managed to quiet the trouble by persuading the Hindoos to buy the cow; but the feelingris said to be very strong all over India, and the authorities fear some sudden convulsion before which all previous uprisings in India will sink into insignificance.