Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1916 — SCRAPS [ARTICLE]

SCRAPS

A locomotive going at express speed is said to give 1,056 puffs a mile. Fireworks are said to have been first used in Europe in the city of Florence in 1360. Rats every year destroy about 5 per cent of the growing sugar cane in Jamaica. In times of peace London contains sixteen embassies and legations representative of foreign countries. Uruguay has organized a government institute of geology with a director and assistants from the United States. Japan is becoming interested in sheep raising. The imperial stock farm at Hokkaido has bought animals in Australia. The women of the Philippine Islands make some of the finest lace in the world from a strong silk-like fiber obtained from pineapple leaves. The government of Uruguay conducts an experiment farm, one of the chief objects of which is the production of seeds of the best quality. Nicotine is found in only one plant besides tobacco —a large shrub known to botanists as Duboisia hopwoodii, which is native to the interior of Australia. The government of New Zealand supports and regulates the bee-keep-ing industry and maintains an experimental apairy, where students are trained.

A party of four persons in an automobile was recently carried through the air 225 feet above the surface by means of an aerial cableway over the Elephant Butte dam. Horses imported into Argentina are ytaught to avoid a poisonous vhied that the native animals shun naturally, by forcing them to inhale smoke from burning piles of the weed. Wigginsville, Mo., domiciles a horse which when whipped ejaculates, “Oh,” according to its owner, Clay Goodloe, who now plans teaching the animal various other words. An elects fan has been invented in are covered with gauze/which enters a tank of water at each revolution and helps to cool the breezes the fan creates. In a German steel works a hydraulic press that can exert a pressure of 11,000 tons has replaced a steam hammer that shook the earth for a long distance every time it was used. Pr obably the largest gaps well ever struck in Oklahoma was brought in recently at FOx- pool, south of Cushing, a gusher which now spouts approximately 100,000,000 cubic feet a day, enough for a city of 100,000 people. The Queen's Gift Book, a remarkable anthology from the best British writers, on which authors and illustrators have collaborated with great enthusiasm, is meeting an unprecedented demand in England, and

the proceeds, which will be devoted to the Queen Mary convalescent hospitals, will he large. E. ill. Greeley, of Ellsworth, Me., first drove over the road from Columbia Falls to Ellsworth, a distance of forty-four miles, May 10, 1842, when he was ten years old; this year, on the same date, Mr. Greeley, at the age of eighty-four, made the same drive. The trip took six hours, and Mr. Greeley did it without a stop. A first edition of “Pickwick Papers” was sold in New York City at auction for $5,350 the other day. Among the attractions of this copy were “all the advertisements” (the volume consists of the original parts inclosed in covers, advertising pages being inserted before and after the leading matter) and a page of the original manuscript. Charles Phelps was the lone graduate of the Wheatfield (Cal.) high school the other day. Mrs. Margaret McN'aught, state commissioner of elementary schools, made the commencement address. He was the guest of honor at the alumni dinner and party, the hero in the annual class play and the board of education traveled more than seventy-five miles to present his diploma to him. An interesting result of a well being drilled at Charleston, S. C., to a depth of 2,000 feet below sea level was the finding of the shells of oysters and other maritime organisms even down to the very bottom of the

well. • All of them excepting thono found within seventy-five or eighty feet of the surface, belonged to a species which lived during past ages, and is now extinct. Mechanical devices for repeating prayers are familiar in the east, but they are outdone, in saving of labor* by the “prayer flags” of Tibet. These, as described by .1. (’. White, in the National Geographic magazine, are suspended on long lines, sometimes reaching across a river. As long as they are moving in the breeze they are supposed to be recording prayerg for the benefit of those who put them up. An unlimited number of positive films of moving pictures can be made from a single photographic negative. After positives of sufficient number to supply the exchanges throughout the country have been made, the negative is usually kept by the producing company. Additional positives can he made at any time. The pictures that appear in a scratched condition are films that have been exhibited considerably. These “second-run” films usually cost the exhibitor less than the films when they are first released. The life of the films is usually sufficient to supply the demand of the theaters without printing additional positives. The South African Journal of Science records the steps that have been thus far taken at the suggestion of the South African association for the advaheefuent of science, to obtain legislation in various countries relative to the * preservation of meteorites In the interests of science. The committees of Sections A and 0, of the British association, adopted the following resolution at the Australia meeting: “That in view of the fact that meteorites which convey information of world-wide Importance are sometimes disposed of privately in such a way as to deprive the public of this information, the council be requested to take such steps as may Initiate international legislation to the matter.”