Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1889 — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. [ARTICLE]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

A train of twenty-one cars loaded with bananas recently left New Orleans for Cincinnati. man trade journal, ma/ be easily. tested by carefully weighing samples, then putting them for a quarter of an hour tot® boiling water that is fairly free from lime, saltpetre and ammonia; on re weighing the slates, those that show the greatest increase in weight are the most capable of resisting deterioration One of the most remarkable and unique of the characters that have recently visited America is a native Esquimau woifian named Oiaf Kraver. She is a little being, 40 inches tall, dark complexion and golden hair. She left Greenland, her home, fifteen years ago on a dog sledge, reaching Iceland, in search of education. From there she reached in time Manitoba, and thence Wisconsin. She leptures in tolerable English < n the domestic life of the Arctic N< rth. This is the first appearance of a descendant of the cave dwellers as a lecturer among A) yans. Nothing is heard from Washington of the appeal to Congress for the coinage of half-cent pieces that was adopted by the Convention of the Newsdealers’ National Association. These coins are greatly needed in trade, according to this appeal, which says that “the American cent represents a higher value than that of the smaller European coinage, higher than. English farthings, French centimes, German or Dutch halve centen, and that the difference in value between the American cent and the small Asiatic coin is still larger.” It is understood that Senator Blair of New Hampshire favors the coinage desired by the Newsdealers’ National Association, but he has few backers. St. Nicholas has a good account of the JEpyornis maximus, the largest bird ever known to exist. It was a sort of gigantic ostrich, taller than our largest animal, and almost as bulky. It was wingless, depending for safety on its speed and strength. It is estimated to have traveled at the rate of a mile in two minutes, which is good time for steam. The bird is extinct, and the only complete known egg is in the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris. It is cracked, but complete. It measures 3 feet in circumference, and holds 8 quarts, with a shell of half an inch in thickness. The evolution of the earth has been stoadily toward a reduction of the size of living creatures, and a perfection of organic power and function. The humming bird of to-day ranks vastly higher than the uEpyornis of the older ages. ‘ : : ___ - ~"' j-' Senator Cullom, Chairman of the Inter State Commerce Committee of the United States Senate,who put Chauncey M. Depew, Chas. Francis Adams, and other railroad men under examination in this city last makea a specialty of looking like Abraham Lincoln. With the natural resemblance of a long and lean figure and a strong-featured face enhanced by shaving his upper lip, and leaving his beard to grow, the Illinois Senator really does look at firstg lance a good deal like the great President, or rather as Lincoln might have looked if he had less trouble on his mind during his public life, for there is nothing indicative of an over-weight of official burdens about the feature of Senator Cullom. Those who knew him well accuse him of carrying his desire to appear a second Lincoln even further than looks, and say that he affects mannerisms that are populary supposed to have been peculiar to Lincoln, and that he tries to tell stories like those of the immortal Abe.—N. Y. Sun.