Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1895 — Odds and Ends. [ARTICLE]

Odds and Ends.

Grand Haven, Mich., has a citizen, 94 years old, who served under the great Napoleon. England Imports $8,000,000 worth of potatoos overy year. There are ten newspaper editors in the iiritish House of Commons, six printers and three stationers. It is claimed that no treo has yet been measured which was taller than the great eucalyptus ip Gipsland, Australia, which proved to be four hundred and fifty feet high, In Mexico, and Spain as well, judge, jury and lawyers ail smoke in court, if they wish to, while a case is being heard. Even the prisoner is not deprived of his cigar or cigarette. King James I bought of a Mr. Markham the first Arabian horse ever owned in England. The price was £SOO. He was disgraced by being beaten by every horse that ran against him. A German has invented a chemical torch which ignites when wet. It is to be used on life buoys. When one is thrown to a man overboard at night he can thus see the light and find the buoy. An original kind of wedling took place in a little village in Surrey, England, the other day. Bicyles and tricycles took the place of carriages, the bride and bridegroom leading the way on a “bicycle built for two." Th 6 roots of ivy, dug by the mountaineers of North Carolina and Tennessee, are sold for $lO and sl2 per ton at the railroad stations, whence they are shipped North to be turned into door and bureau knobs. A concrete bridge having a clear span of 164 feet and 26 feet wide was recently constructed over the Danube at Munderkingen, in Austria. Stone is scarce and dear there, while good cement is produced in large quantities. When pins were first invented they were considered so great a luxury as not to bO fit for common use, and the maker was not allowed to sell them in an open shop except on two days of the year, at the beginning of January. When a person in the Soudan is bitten by a dog supposed to be suffering from the rabies, the animal is instantly caught, killed and cut open ; the liver is taken out and slightly browned by being held to the fire, after which the whole of the organ is eaten by the patient. The itchwood tree of the Fiji Islands and New Caledonia produces valuable timber for building purposes. It secretes al deadly milky sap, a single drop of which, should it happen to fall on the hands- or face, will produce a pain equal to that caused by contact with a red hot poker.