Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1910 — MUSKRATS CAUSE OF PEARLS. [ARTICLE]

MUSKRATS CAUSE OF PEARLS.

Now stovaine shows symptoms of •eveloplng a Peary-Cook controversy. A Boston paper states that food Is abundant That, however, makes no difference In the price. . ============= A board of health in Tennessee has •Mtotdden kissing. Weil, who wants to kiss a board of health? . " " 1 ''- ' = \ When shoes advance materially in price It is, good form to make them last longer by Judicious cobbling. Patti earned 14,000,000 with her ▼©ice. This appears to be a magnificent vindication of the farewell tour; If Christopher (Columbus could discover America again now, he would he almost as much astonished as he was before, ’ : Little Evelyn recently went up to the asylum and quarreled with Harry, after which she gracefully returned to the obscurity that becomes her so well. An Atlanta young man has been lined |5.75 for stealing a kiss. The Jury do doubt had reason to believe that the kiss which was stolen had been marked down from $6. / 1 ■" ’ 1 11 = Congress is again in session, hut the people of this country have no Immediate cause for fear. It Is generally anderstood that Congress will not do orach during ths present session. ▲ New York heiress has publicly deaied that she is to be married to King Manuel of Portugal. The King will doubtless be glad to be thus relieved at the necessity of doing any denying. Figures compiled at West Point ■how that it takes tip,ooo to make 1 •econd lieutenant But how could we have inaugural processions without the to tore second lieutenants from West Point? A Poughkeepsie? N. Y., man drown«d himself because the lady who kept Mo favorite boarding-house went out at business. He probably felt sure that fas could never find another place where prunes would not be served •very evening.

Nearly every catastrophe shows forth anew the capacity for heroism that exMs In plain, every-day men. After Cha terrible mine disaster in Cherry, ni„ the first Bix bodies taken out were tbone of volunteer rescuers, many of whom were not even employed in the mines. If there is any doubt of the pen-dulum-like movement of educational theory, listen to Doctor Shanklln, the newly inaugurated president of Wesleyan, as he refers to the advanced elective system as a “scrap-heap educational fad.” A few years ago would any college president have ventured to put it so strongly T Voting Is getting to be more and more generally regarded as a very serious business. The citizen who Uegleats to discharge his entire duty in the matter of attendance upon the primary and the general elections receives frequent and insistent reminder from his friends or from his party organization as 'to what is expected of him. An election is getting to be less and less the chief concern of a "gang,” and more and more a matter for the conscience and intelligent initiative of the individual voter. The president of Bryn Mawr College for Women upsets some opinions generally, although it is to be hoped erroneously, entertained concerning college women and marriage. She dentes that the college girl knows too much to be willing to do housework, or that bar training unfits "her in any way to be mistress of a home. On the contrary, she says, the college girl graduate makes the best wife in the world; her average health is better, her wages when she works are higher, and the average number of children* bora of mothers who are college graduates Is slightly greater than the number born at non-college mothers. Finally, ahe declares, they are somewhat taller in Stature, and marry stronger men, and, aa a rule, choose their husbands more Tests by members of the United States Geological Survey have demonstrated the fact that a gallon of denatured alcohol can be made to do the same amount of work in an engine as a gallon pf gasoline. The alcohol, moreover, makes no smoke, and is lees likely to yield disagreeable Odors; but the lower cost of gasoline makes it at present the cheaper fuel. The testa are interesting chiefly because the time will probably come before long when Improved processes both of agriculture and of manufacture will greatly lower the price of alcohol. One reason why Germany uses alcohol so extensively as a motor fuel Is the ability of the Germans to make alcohol cheaply from potatoes, and the feet that they can raise four hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre. pp|— * . W - William Cameron Forbes, who was Philippines recently, is the fifth to oocupy the poet since the organization of

civil government in 1901. Ths first was Mr. Taft, and his successors were Luke E. Wright, Henry C. Ide, and James P. Smith, who lately retired. The new governor general has been a member of the Philippine commission since 1904, and has been occupied with public Improvements and with the preservation of order. The islands are orderly now, save for an occasional outbreak of one of the savage tribes; and public improvements ace under way that will elevate the social and industrial condition of the people. Highways have been built where there were merely trails, and when all the contractors have completed the work on which they are engaged there will be a thousand miles of railroad in the islands. A water and sewer system has been built for Manila, and that city is now the only one in the Orient which has modern sanitary improvements generally Installed throughout its limits. Free schools are maintained, In which half a million children receive instruction in the English language and in other subjects. It is said that more native Filipinos now speak English than Spanish, although Spanish was the official language for two hundred and fifty years. The new Payne-Aldrich tariff law permits the free entry into the United States of large quantities of sugar, cigars and manufactured tobacco, and on rice only requires the payment of duty on the full amount of imports. The law was intended to improve the business of the islands, and will probably be successful in Us purpose. The government is evidently attempting in good faith to do its duty toward the dependent races that have come under its care in the Orient i

Contain Larvae Which Becomes Encysted In Body dt Clam. Muskrats cause pearls, according to Charles B. Wilson, an investigator of the United States Bureau of Fisheries Without muskrats, he says, there would he no baroque pearls, a Springfield (Mass.) dispatch to the New York World sayß. Wilson asserts pearls are merely cysts in shellfish, which have formed around a microscopic larva or worm that Is indigenous to the muskrat. The curious life cycle seems to be that from <the muskrat there are adult dlstomld worms. The eggs are discharged in such a manner as to reach the water, where they get lodgment In the shellfish. Hatching into larvse, they pass through the substance of the mullosk and find themselves a new home In the muscle of the back. Here some of them produce the irritation of the disease of which cysts are the symptom, and some of th«se cysts become the centers of pearls. What the shellfish does in covering the cysts is purely mechanical, its ordinary act when any substance gets into a position hurtful or annoying to the creature. Little fish that swim into the shelves of bdvalvea. or bits of dirt that get between the soft body of the animal and its shell, or articles Introduced intentionally by man, are covered with pearly shell, but all such objects are usually attached to the shell itself, and are not valuable. , The round pearls, which are more eommpdElally valuable than the baroques, Wilson says, are caused by a second species of the same family of worms thait, in their larval form, make their home in the mantle of the mollusk —in the thin part of the shellfish that surrounds the body, and which in the case of the oyster frills so nicely when the mollusk is cooked in a stew. The round pearls are made in the midst of the mantle, where there Is softness on every side and an organ capable of secreting pearls In Its every part. With the worm cyst established, the protecting material Is built around It with the greatest regularity, resulting In the pearl. The pearl larva spend only their childhood in the clam. In their adult form they Uve in some species of duck, but whether the domestic or wild duck has not yet been decided by the government investigators. They feel sure, though, that ducks cause the valuable pearls.