The Hickman courier. [volume] (Hickman, Ky.) 1859-current, 1881-08-19
FACTS FOR THE CURIOUS.

SCIENTISTS agree that ants possess
something approaching to language.
THE common garden spider has been
known to live ten months without food
FLIES have been known to recover af-
ter having been immersed twelve months
in wine.
PEARLS are sometimes so numerous IN
the pearl oyster that the animal cannot
shut his shell, and so perishes.
LIE VALIANT says that he heard a
parrot repeat the Lords prayer from
beginning to end in the Dutch Ian
guage.
A TAME owl has been known to hop
about upon the keys of piano, APP
parently delighted with his perform
ance.
THE sense of smelling is less perfect
in the hon than In most other ami
mails. He hunts rather by sight than
by smell.
COMPRESSED air as motive power has
recently been used In England to run a
locomotive. The experiment was re-
garded as success.
BY English law boy is manageable
at IA and a girl at II. A Frenchman
OthA1Ot dt tBC NllIOuA blAC
consent of his parents, if living.
A FLEA will eat ten times its own
weight of provisions in day, and will
drag after it chain a hundred times
heavier than itself. 1t leaps a distance
of at least 200 times its own length.
Two CROWS built nest in one of the
two fine plane trees in the center of the
city of London, inside the archway in
-SA.Paul's Churchyard The plane trees
in question are remarkable as the home
each night of from 5000 to 5000 of the
London sparrows.
NERVE impulses are conducted along
the nerves very slowly in comparison to
the speed of electricity along a copper
wire The latter travels 5000, 600
times as fast as n nerve impulse, and yet
the nerve impulse travels with the speed
of the fastest railroad train.
The waste of material in coal mining
Is enormous. 1t is estimated that only
two-thirds of the coal in workable veins
is taken out; there is further loss of
% per cent. in the preparation and de
livery. The Reading Railroad Company
has spent $500, 600 in the attempt to
utilize waste coal by burning it in loco
motives constructed for the purpose.
THERE are 90 injurious insects in our
vegetable gardens, 80 in our vineyards,
10 attack our apple trees, more than 100
iniure'ou shade trees and more than 80
our grain fields. Seventy-five millions
of dollars was the damage done to the
wheat in Illinois in one season, and near
" ten years ago the annual loss in the
United States, from insects alone, was
500, 900, 900.
AT meeting of the Maryland Acade-
my of Sciences DIR. Theobold showed
a species of beetle and gave the follow
ing figures: Weight of beetle, grains;
weight moved by it, 81 ounces-2, $40
grains, or 1920 times the weight of the
beetle. A man weighing $50 pounds,
endowed with the strengthen this insect,
should therefore be able to move 19S,-
600 pounds, or nearly 100 tons.
IL Jessamine county, KY, man by
the name of Bowen would never enter
his house except by the back door, and
never leave except by the front. He
selected early in life the spot for his
burial, beneath an old oak tree, remote
and there was buried Mr. Mackey
Duncan, of the same county, whose oc-
cupation, that of a carpenter, is alto
gether unfavorable to the pursuit of
knowledge, is one of the most learned
men, after a fashion, in America. He
knows the date of every important event
in the worlds history, year, month and
day, and, when essential, the minute
His knowledge of the family history of
y SroIInent people is something mar