The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1880-12-16

FACTS FOR THE CURIOUS.

IT is said that no rhymes exist in the
English language for the words silver,
orange, month, kiln, bilge and gull.
IT has been said that man is the only
animal that makes use of tools, but the
statement has been controverted, OBJ
servation having shown that other ami
mails do occasionally employ tools. This
is especially the case with monkeys,
which in confinement have been OBJ
served to use stones to crack nuts, and
sticks or leather straps to draw toward
them objects which lay beyond their
reach.
SHAKESPEARE uses more different words
than any other writer in the English
language. Writers on the statistics of
words inform us that he uses about
$1,000 different words in his plays and
sonnets, while there is no other writer
who uses SO many as 10000. Some few
writer's use as many as Il, 900 words, but
the great majority of writer's do not en-
ploy more than 5000. In conversation
but from 5000 to 5000 different words
are used.
In the city of Dublin there are d, 600
families, averaging five members, who
are each living in single room. The
death-rate of the city is 40 per 1000,
which is equivalent to 60 per 1, 600 in
the tenement-house districts. These
two facts, the enormous number of fami-
lies living in a single room, and the high
death-rate, prove that the horrors and
dangers of Irish distress have not been
exaggerated. These families Of five,
shut up each in a single room, depend
for support upon wages of from 10 to II
English shillings week.
THE ease with which the Esqui-
maux of st. Lawrence island can see to
great distance, and the marvellous way
In which news is transmitted from the
most distant points, is really wonderful.
A native will describe the dress and ap-
pearance of man who is approaching at
great distance. A white man, even a
sharp-eyed sailor, can Just make out
that it is a human figure. So If ANYTHING
occurs on the coast, if piece of wreck
comes ashore, the full particulars will
be known in a short time 1000 miles
from the place where it occurred. 1t is
wonderful system of telegraphy-one
native rushing off to pass the news to
another, and thus speeding intelligence,
over hundreds of miles in a single day.
FROM the examination of book COM
piled 1000 years B. G. it has been as
certained, what has long been supposed,
that Chaldea was the parent land Of
astronomy; for it is found, from this
compilation and from other bricks, that
the Babylonians catalogued the stars,
and distinguished and named the con-
stellations. They observed the seventh
day as one of rest. They invented the
sun-dial to mark the movements of the
heavenly bodies, the water-clock to
measure time, and they speak in this
work of the spots on the sun, fact they
could only have known by the aid Of
telescopes, which it is supposed they
possessed, from observations that they
have noted down of the rising of Venus
and the fact that Layard found crystal
lens in the ruins of Nineveh. These
"bricks" contain an account of the del
uge, substantially the same as the mar
rative in the Bible. They disclose that
houses and lands were then sold, leased
and mortgaged, that money was loaned
at interest, and that the market garden
ers, to use an American phrase, "worked
on shares;" that the farmer, when plow-
ing with his oxen, beguiIed his labor
with homely songs, two of which have
been found, and connect this very re-
mote civilization with the usages of
to-day -tt.-