Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1897 — Current Condensations. [ARTICLE]

Current Condensations.

Cucumbers were originally tropical vegetables. There are 180,000 suicides yearly, and increasing. Palm leaves on the Amazon grow thirty feet long. The giraffe has a tongue almost eighteen inches long. In 1891 the country produced 8,279,870 tons of pig iron. Thirty-two thousand varieties of goods are made from wool. Ninety-one per cent, of the farmers in Utah own their farms. The thread of a silkworm is one onethousandth of an inch in diameter. An entomologist estimates that there are 240,000 varieties of Insects in the world. There is said to be but one British home remaining where the old feudal custom is observed of guests and servants all dining together on Christmas night and the dance afterward being led by the hostess with the gamekeeper. Those who declare that the earth is gradually drying out and that within a few centuries every drop of water will have disappeared from our planet, will find consolation in the announcement that the water line has risen one foot all around the Gulf of Mexico since 1850. According to some recent statistics on the cost of living, an Englishman spends on an average ?48 a year for food, a Frenchman $47, a German $42, a Spaniard $33, an Italian $24 and a Russian $23. Of meat the Englishman eats 109 pounds a year, the Freuchman 87, the German 64, the Italian 26 and the Russian 51. Of bread the Englishman consumes 380 pounds, the Frenchman 540, the German 560, the Spaniard 480, the Italian 400 and the Russian 635.