Huntsville gazette., 1881-08-13
GENERAL.


GENERAL.
-Four Survivors of the English
prison-ship g Dartnnoor" are living at
Marblehead, Mass, all of them nearly
M ninety ! esHffR klsfEf II
&-Mexico has voted away s9o,0oo,ooo
| in the last four years in forty-three rail-
road grants No Mexican railroad has
ever paid its stockholders profit
In the vicinity of Big Hole, M. T.,
the bears uneartheds q large number of
Indian Skeletons, and have sstrewn the
ground with bones. It is probably the
scene of an old battlefield.
Capt. Reub. Kolb, of Eufala, Ala.
IA w pulled from his sixty-fve acre water
melon patch one day recently, 10000
melons, the largest number that was
ever pulled from single patch in one
- ssssss day in the State of Alabama, if not
the entire South. tA
a "A story comes from Bloomington,
g sAllegany County, Md, to the effect that
few days ago freight engineer on the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had 6 fall
81 ing out with his sweetheart, who lives
- ....ss ct or near that place, and that the dam
< : s sci in revenge oiled the rails on the track
in front of her swain's train which was
struggling up the seventeen-mie grade
1t is said to have taken the locomotive
& "a proper, shelper'' and several tons OF
sand to overcome the effects of the girls
strategem.a ns
In the South of France Gagged decoy
birds have their eyes put out, and they
-, sing to the rays of the rising sun, which
they feel but can not see, and they at
tract free birds from the woods. The
latter birds-thrushes nightingales, lin
nets, woodpeckers, robins, blackbirds,
yellowhammers, and larks-are merci-
lessly shot, twenty or thirty at time,
and are used for food. There is also
fts much netting of these birds. Insects
are increasing in number. An effort is
>. being made to stop the slaughter of the
birds.
& "A favorite sport in Brazil and the
West Indies consists in hunting hum
ming birds. The natives arm themselves
with blow-guns made of reed, perhaps
- s only fourteen or fifteen inches long, and
take pellets of cotton wool; with these
they so stun the little creatures that they
fall an easy prey to their pursuers, and
lis their beautiful plumage is uninjured.
Travellers in countries where the hum
= tgaasE ming bird abounds form themselves into
parties for this sport, and use common
table salt as shot. Penetrating the skin
and yet not spelling the plumage, such
& charge kills the bird, and great num-
bers are secured in this manner. hst
General Longstreet recently, in re-
sponse to the question "Who was your
greatest SOluleT! TeSpOuucu. LII many
4s. respects, General Lee. AS have said,
he was noble character, but he was
-e not perfect field marshal. He was not
always cool in the heat of battle, and
that is really the greatest test of a COM
mander's power. General Stonewall
Jackson not only had perfect control of
his nerves in battle and out of it, but he
had the additional merit of being able
to- move his troops with great prompt
ness and of executing his plans with
- marvellous decision. Jackson was q
f-''' great field marshall
In the general passenger office of
the Union Pacific Railway at Omaha
there is an object which attracts consid-
erable attention and comment 1t is a
section of a mountain pine tree, about
20 or "a inches in diameter, into which
m the bones of the head and the end of one
horn of very large mountain sheep
have grown. The horns hang over
na~en limb, three or four inches thick, which
evidently was dead when the section
sAswas cut from the tree-probably killed
ss.slt by the weight of the animals horns and
head. The section was cut six feet from
the roots of the tree, and much specula-
ton is indulged in as to how the ami
mails head got into the tree at that
height The horns, which are extraor-
dinarily large, have evidently hung upon
r. the small limb thirty or forty years, but
are in good state of preservation. The
tree in which they were found stood
o near the present site of the Rams Horn
@ Mine, near Chalhs, Idaho, and gave the
name to this discovery, and the suppo-
sition is that an Indian shot the beast
and hung the carcass upon the tree, in
. tending to return for it, but was not able
s. to find his way back to the spot after
ward made famous by his exploit. The
= laie cuilosity was PIesenleu 10 the
ss eaa Union Pacific by an Indian mine opera
tor about two years ago, and hundreds
have called to see it since it was set up
sss in the general passenger office.