Connecticut western news., 1879-12-17
NOTES AND COMMENTS.

been for some years back falling off in the produce of oranges and lemons, with simultaneous diminution of the rainfall. The inhabitants of Rhodes, who formerly sent some hundred ship loads of fruit in all directions, are now unable to supply their own needs, and have to import lemons from Candia. Tn is year there has been scarcely any fruit crop at all. The trees have been asssiled by destructive insect, which appears everywhere in myriads.
 The average annual quantity of an thracite coal marketed from the Penn sylvania region is 10000, 900 tons. To | obtain this amount it is necessary to | mine 50,000, ,000 tons, 30,000,000 tons l being wasted. The great bulk of this waste is the fine screening from the | breakers, called culm. The area of the | anthracite coal fields in Pennsylvania is 470 square miles. It is estimated that when mining began in 1920, there were 13, 180, ,2S8, 900 tons of marketable coal in thls field. About 75,000,0O0 tons have been mined and marketed. P. W. Schaeffer of Schuylkill county, engi- neer of the anthracite region, estimates tn at the natural annual increase in the amount of coal mined will be such that by the year 1900 anthracite to the amount of 1 1,464. 720, 827 tons will have been mined. He calculates that 76,- GOO, 900 tons year will be the maxi mum annual product of the Pennsyl- vania fields, at which rate of produc- tion there will be no mora anthracite coal at the end of 156 years from the beginning of the next century. Hence the people who inhabit this country in 2O56 will have to fall back on bitumin- ous coal, which is plentifully deposited beneath 200, ,000 square miles of United States territory.
 At the meeting held at Oastlerea, in Ireland, on Sunday, to promote the agi- tation in favor of a radical change in the Irish land laws, one of the speakers said "that the rent which the landlords got for the past year or two did not come from the soil, but from America" As we understand. this, the reference was to money sent from this country by the thrifty sons and daughters hsre of fam
 flies resident in Ireland-money sent to help the old folks at home by dutiful children who have pr ospered in the
 New World.
 A Kentucky widow recently planned second marriage without taking the
 pains to inform her son, lad of twelve
 years. While the ceremony was in pro-
 gross the urchin escaped from the nur-
 sery, and approaching the gentleman
 who was rapidly being converted into
 his stepfather, gave him violent blow
 under the ribs with fire-shovel. The
 widow ordered the temporary elimina-
 tion of the child from the domestic prob.
 lem, and the minister was enabled to
 catch up the broken thread of the ser.
 vice and to tie the knot.
 What will not women endure to
 preserve their beauty? One of the most
 astonishing instances of surgical pa
 tience and human endurance, is exem.
 plified in the Pennsylvania Hospital in
 the case of 8 young girl whose lover shot
 her in the face, is related by Forney's
 Progress. She was only sixteen and
 very beautiful, but the jealous dastard
 had by his act, apparently rendered her hideous for life, the whole skin of the
 face being pitted with shot and powder.
 One of the physicians at the hospital, who looks upon surgery as restorative art, after extracting the shot picked out each separate grain of powder with 8
 needle. The writer saw the patient after she had recovered. and her skin was as smooth as an infants.
 Baron Nathaniel RothschiId, of Vien- na, procures the servants for his resi- dence through his head cook, whom he
 pays at the rate of six horins per diem for each domestic engaged. The Roths- child menage employs at least thirty servants, who cost on an average one t forin per day each, so that the cooke , commission amounts to five forins pel
 head, or 15O Aorins (9l2) per day, g , very neat sum. especially when in- creased by the yearly salary as cook oi $500. No wonder that Monsieur le cor. s don bleu" occupies a first floor in 6 a fashionable quarter and drives up tc a the Palais Rothschild in his satin-lined ? "coupe de maitre."
 The idea of making train lay dowr 8 and take up it's own rails as it moves ? along is not new one, but an interest. 7 ing realization of it is now to be wit t messed in the Jardin des Tuilleries s Paris. From the mechanical point o [ view, one is struck with the smallness o 5 the force required to move train thus q arranged. In the Jardin des Tuilleriei 0 the train consists of three carriages, ca @ pablo of containing in all thirty childre1 h and often full. These are drawn by two t goats, which work thus for seven hours v The total load is about 1000 kilo @ grammes. To d1aw like weight il |, three carriages on ordinary roads would @ require dozen goats, four for each ve tt hicle. The normal speed is two and | /. half to four miles per hour. The sys
 tenn is, of course, not designed for pas
 senger traffic, but for goods, and il
 many places, with bad roads or none 6 might be very serviceable.
 e The appearance of the remarkabl, red spot on the planet Jupiter has ez
 slol oI1 S~ko