Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-12-19
FACTS FOR THE CURIOUS.


COOP coral is worth five times its
weight in gold, and the finest pink coral
is worth $500 an ounce.
SETH GREEN says fish never sleep OF
age Of trout is about Is years.
THE longest span of wire in the world
is used for telegraph In India, over the
River Klstnah, between Bezorah and
Sectanagrun. It is more than 5000
feet long, and is stretched between two
hills, each of which IS l 200 feet high.
At an Eastern mill is square block
of compressed paper fastened on turn
ing lathe, and SO hard that if a fine steel
chisel is held against it when it is
moving. instead Of cutting the paper it
viii break the chisel into hundred
pieces. The strength is astonishing.
THERE is residing near Schraalenburg,
n. j., man named Peter Durie, who
was born without hands or arms, and yet
can write remarkably well, chiefly by
using his lips. His ambition, backed by
persevering industry, has enabled him
to overcome difficulties that seemed ill.,
surmountable, and he therefore qualified
himself for an active business man. He
is now nearly 30 years Of age, and Is a
subject of absorbing interest to all who
come in contact with him.
SIR HENRY BEssEMER says that last
year 154, 1S4, 300 tons of coal were mined
in England. This is sufficient to make
o wall 200 miles long, 100 feet high and
forty-two feet thick-a mass which ex-
ceeds that of the celebrated Chinese wall
by sufficient to add 346 miles to its
length. It would construct fifty-five
pyramids as large as the great pyramid
of Egypt, or more than one every week.
It will be curious to know how long the
energy born of the combustion of this
mass annually will require to exhaust
itself.
A NUMBER of English coal mines are
being worked under the ocean. In
Northumberland the net available guam
tity of coal under the sea is estimated at
4O3, 000,O tons, and on the Durham
coast, under the sea, including breadth
of three and one-haf miles, with an area
of seventy one square miles, 734, SOC, 900
tons. The latter mine is in vein of an
aggregate thickness of thirty feet, dis
tributed in six seams. Engineers are
considering now it can be successfully
worked in the future.
ALL have seen the immense powders
called "lost rock" in some sections,
scattered over the northern part of the
United States, which have little or no
resemblance to any mass of rocks any
where in the vicinity, and have perhaps
asked the question: Where did they
come from? Also the heaps of sand,
gravel and cobble- stones of various
sizes, which form many of our ridges,
knobs and hills, and which are totally
unlike any fixed rock near them. All
these phenomena are attributed to q
single cause, and that is the great sheet
of ice which nature stored up ages ago
without the necessity Of protecting it in
an ice-house. According to Agassiz,
the sheet of ice extended in this country
as far south as South Carolina, or Ala
bama, and was thick enough to cover all
the mountains of the eastern part of
North America, with the exception of
Mt. Washington. This peak projected,
a lone sentinel on that vast waste of ice
two or three hundred feet. In the lati-
tude of Northern Massachusetts,, he con-
ceives the ice to have been two or three
miles thick. The powders were..all torn
off by the advancing ice sheet, from the
projecting rocks over which it moved,
and carried or pushed as 'bottom drift, "
scratching and blowing the surface over
which they passed, and being scratched
and polished themselves in return, till
they were finally brought to rest by the
melting of the ice. They were not car
ried SO far south as the ice sheets ex-
tended. seldom beyond the parallel of
40 degrees north. The native copper
OF Lake Superior was drifted four or five
hundred miles south and the pudding
stones Of Roxbury, Mass, were carried
as far south as Island of Penikese.