Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1897 — Current Condensations. [ARTICLE]

Current Condensations.

In New York the average number of persons to a dwelling Is eighteen and one-half. Many of the mediaeval churches were originally constructed to serve also, when occasion required, as fortresses. The Pasteur institute in Paris is still as popular a resort for hydrophobic patients as It was when the fame of the scientist's cures by Inoculation was at the flood-tide. The Chinese have bred a whole colony of goldfish, each having two welldeveloped tails aud two sets of anal fins. Biologists say It would be equally easy to breed quadrupeds with eight legs.' In Wyoming Is a mound of rock and earth standing alone in the middle of a plalu, called Church Butte. It is of most fantastic shape and looks in the distance like the ruins of some grand old cathedral. A Danish author told Dr. Felix Oswald, of the case of a relative who would steal from himself. He used to tiptoe Into his own pantry and make off with uncooked prunes, raw onions or anything of the kind. The flagstaff upon which the first secession flag was hoisted in South Carolina when the State seceded in 1860 is still standing. It is fastened with iron cuffs to the gable end of an old storehouse at Skull Shoals postoffice.

An ingot of gold weighing ounces and worth about SSO is made by the gold beaters into sheets so fine that it would take 48,000 to measure an inch in height. By the labor of beating the gold acquires a value of S4OO, making over 26,000 sheets of gold foil or gold leaf, as It is usually called. Pages at the English court, appointed at the ages of 13 or 14, are mostly the sons of distinguished officers in the army or of high dlgnataries in the royal household, serve usually four years, at about SI,OOO a year, and are then presented with commissions in thg army, unless turned down for some cause. It is pointed out that the only mechanic burled in Westminster Abbey is George Graham, a native of Cumberland, the inventor of the deadbeat escapement, the cylinder escapement and the mercurial pendulum, besides sevral other improvements in apparatus useful in astronomical tvork. He was buried in 1751 and his funeral was attended by all the members of the Royal Society. No theory or hypothesis which has commanded general acceptation has yet been suggested for the explanation of the aurora borealis or northern light. What is known is this: The direction of auroral Jets or rays and the position of the crowns have a connection with the magnetic meridian, and*the aurora produces great magnetic perturbation. Therefore It seems evident that the theater of its action is the atmosphere, and that the agent to which its development is due is electricity, Influenced in some unascertained manner by terrestrial magnetism.