The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-07-05
CURIOUS FACTS.

1T Is curious TACT that so many
dwellings once the homes of poets should
have been public houses at one time or
another. Burns native cottage was a
house of this description; the house in
which Moore was born was a whisky
shop, and Shelley's house at Great Mar
low beer shop. Even Coleridge's resi-
dence mt Neither Stowey, the very house
in which the poet composed his sweet
lode TO the Nightingale, became a
beer house. A house in which James
Montgo merry lived for forty years ut
Sheffield was beer shop, and the birth
place of Kirke White is now house for
retailing Intoxicating beverages.
AN unexpected friend to man has been
discovered in kind of animalcule en-
gendered by sewage. which prevents the
decomposing matter from becoming a
dangerous nuisance. Mr.. Angel, the Pub
lie Analyst for Hampshire, having ex-
amined the sewage polluted fluid in
Southampton water, has discovered that
where the suspended matters are thick
est there is going on silent destruc
ton Of the foul matters, through the
agency of millions of the minute Great
ures, by some held to be animal, but by
Mr.. Angel believed to be of vegetable,
origin. On examining the muddy fluid
through microscope it was found to
contain myriads of little brown organ
isms surrounded with gelatinous sub
stance. Each specimen was found to
be active in its movements and of pc
culiar shape, being furnished with
belt of ella round the center of the
body, with long, transparent and very
flexible tail. After death these tiny
atoms give off an odor similar to that Of
sea-weed, and change to green color.
During life they evolve bubbles OF oxy-
gen gas, which serve to purify the water
from the effects of the decomposing
matter on which they themselves feed.
1t is pity, however, that man, by pol
luting rivers with sewage, should stand
so much in need of this self-developed
scavenger.
THE use of horse flesh as an article of
food has made great progress in Paris,
where about thousand horses per week
are said to be slaughtered, the animals
even being imported for the purpose 1t
is said that during the Exhibition the
hlppophagists of Paris intend giving a
banquet once month to the Journalists
of all nations, where horse and ass flesh,
prepared in every seductive form, will
be served up. The snail is becoming
another fashionable article of diet in
France, and for some time past a par
ticular place has been appropriated for
their sale in Paris fish markets. Snails,
says one of the French journals, were
highly esteemed by the Romans, our
masters in gastronomy, and are now
raised in many of the departments with
success. In the sixteenth century the
Capuchins of Fribourg possessed the art
of fattening snails-an art not lost in our
day, for in Lorraine and Burgundy they
raise excellent snails, which find sure
demand in the Paris market. There are
now more than fifty restaurants and
more than thousand tables in Paris
where snails are accepted as delicacy
by upward of 10000 consumers, the
consumption of this mollusk
being estimated at half million. Frank
Buckland tells us that snails are becom-
ing scarce in the neighborhood of Lon
don, where for some time snail-collect-
ing has been a regular trade.
SOME curious facts from the world OF
nature crop up occasionally. which are
we'll worthy OF consideration. For in
stance it has been proved that the bee
may, under certain circumstances, turn
out to be anything but the pattern of
industry it is proverbially supposed to
furnish. Australian colonists have from
time to time taken out swarms of bees to
their adopted land, in the hope of de-
irving practical benefit from the pro-
fusion of flowers with which the whole
country abounds. For some little time
the newly-imported bees maintained
their reputation for industry, storing
up their food in the comfortable hives
provided for them, and supplying the
colonists with far superior honey to that
collected by the Indigenous honey-pro-
ducers, the mellipones." Presently,
however, the hives were discovered un-
stocked at the end CT the autumn, not
the long summers of the
northern parts OF Australia, and it was
found that the bees entirely neglected
10 lay by stock of food, as was their
wont. Though the bees increased and
the hives were always regularly tenant
ed, no honey was brought home. 1t
soon became evident that, finding the
perennial summer of the tropical parts
Of Australia afforded them abundance of
God, without the intervention of long
winters, the bees f rsook their old hab- |
is, gave themselves up to life of hap
oy Incidence, and no longer took the |
rouble to convey their superintendent |
supplies to the hives prepared for them.
IL short, there being no winters to pro-
ride for, the bees gave up the practice
If storing honey.
Novel Uses OF the Telephone.