Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1892 — ODDS AND ENDS. [ARTICLE]

ODDS AND ENDS.

A pneumatic tube connects Paris with Berlin. It is used tor postal purposes, and makss is possible for a letter mailed in Paris to be delivered in Berlin in 30 minutes. The largest whale ever captured was run down by tho New London Conn., whaler Lizzie Simmons, in 1884. It was captured in the Cumberland inlet, and yielded 168 barrels of oil and 250 pounds of whalebone. Russia has become infected with the vice of ether driuking and the pernicious habit has spread so rapidly that the government has judged it necessary to prohibit the free sale of ether and of certain of its compounds and to schedule it among the poisons. With the opening up of the world bv railway aud steamship communion'!on the demand for diamond hsn inor used marvelously. The world u«rf purchases about *25,000,00(1 worth per annum. Twenty years ago the amount was about 500,000 sterling. A wire rope has been manufactured at Cardiff. Wales, which is behoved to be the longest and largest iu the world. It U 2,400 fathoms in lougtn which would mak c it two mile nnd 103 yards long, taking our measure ment as the standard. Globe-Democrat, Oue of the prettiest mlcrosoopieal studies is the examination o. tho lungs of a plunt. Most peoplodo not know a plant has lungs, but it has, and its lungs are in its leaves. Examined through a high-power microscope, every leaf will show thousands upon thousands of openings, infinitely srt>:ttl, of course, but euch provided with lips which, in many species, are oontiiiunlly open* ing und closing. These openings leud to tiny cavities in the bodies cf the leaf, and by the opening and closing of the cavity air Is continual IV passing in and out, so that, the set