Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1894 — Bits of Things. [ARTICLE]

Bits of Things.

It is estimated that 13,009,000 human beings have perished as a result of earthquakes since the year 1606 B. C. The sect of Jains, in India, are the champion long-distance fastens. Fasts of from thirty to forty days are very common, and once a year they abstain from food for seventy-five days. Aluminum is now to be used for engraving in place of stone or steel. It isclaimed that.besides the advantage of lightness, an aluminum plate will furnish 8,000 impressions, against 80 to 100 from a steel one. In water in which decaying vegetables have been infused the microscope discovers things so minute that 10.0J0 of them would net exceed in bulk a grain of mustard, though they are supplied with organs as complicated as those of a whale. Leaves of the Talipot palm in Ceylon sometimes attain the length of twenty feet, with a width of eighteen feet. They are used by the natives in making tents. The leaves of the double cocoanut palm’ are often thirty feet long, while those of the Inaj’a palm on the banks of the rivers of Brazil are sometimes fifty feet long and ten to twelve feet wide.