News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-07-24
FACTS FOR THE CURIOUS,

THE leech has eight or ten eyes set il
its back near the head.
The great gray slug climax maximus,
has supply of %, 900 teeth.
IT is said that the ostrich is able tc
discover when an egg becomes added,
and that it Immediately elects it from
the nest.
OVER 100000, 600 bushels of corn are
produced annually in the United States.
Over half of it is fed to cattle and hogs,
and much is used in the manufacture
OF sugar, starch and alcohol.
The Able Fontana kept a hair-worm
In drawer for three years, at the expi,
ration of which time it was perfectly dry
and hard, and exhibited no signs of life,
but, on putting it into water, it soon re-
covered its former vigor.
LIEUT.. SCHwATKA reports that there
are no weddings among Esquimaux he
visited. Men and women live together
as man and wife, but frequent exchanges
are made, sometimes for a few weeks,
sometimes to remain permanent. Chill
dren are often affianced, and when the
y
tattooed about the face.
"SMITH" is one of the oldest words in
the world-the sister of "soph, which,
in almost all languages, has the mean
ing of science, craft or skill. The Irish
pronounced their word "sibht," and
they had the habit of calling a man
without a trade "sibhtless or "shift-
less" Their goddess of letters or knowl-
edge was "Som" or "Saf," and their
learned men were "samtu" or "saftu -
the German "zunft, " Il guild. Those
"samts or "sibhts were the lights
and leaders of practical civilization long
ago.
The State M5neralogist of California
says: cit is an established fact that
some of the greatest mountain chains
and the soil beneath our feet are COM
posed chiefly of the siliceous remains of
animalcules, invisible to the naked eye"
proving the truth of Byron's line that
"the dust We tread upon were once
alive" Securing soaps are mainly COM
posed of the siliceous earth which once
formed the skeletons of myriads of dia-
toms. Under the microscope they pre-
sent wonderfully beautiful and varied
FIFTY-Two is a remarkable number.
There are fifty-two cards in pack and
weeks in the year. The five
books of Moses were written l, $50 years
before the present mode of computing
time. The building of Rome was COM
menced 752 years before the same event.
Julius Caesar made the first inroad into
Great Britain ffty-two years B. c., and
the King of Great Britain was carried in
chains to Rome A. D. 80. Constantine
pie was taken by the Turks A. D. 1852,
and the new style was introduced into
in 1852. The highest Egyp-
tian pyramid is 452 feet in height.
ID1ENEss does more to reduce the
average length of human life than the
full normal exercise of ones industrial
energies. In other words, more men
Ease and the abundance of the good
things of this lie have apparently little
influence in staying the hands of decay
and death if the mental and physical
are restrained by will or cir
from useful employment.
Care, also, as the proverb says, will kill
4 cat with its nine-fold hold on exist
snce, popularity speaking. Lack of
proper sanitary conditions appears to
nave less to do in narrowing the space
the cradle and the grave than
worry and the intense, mischievous re-
actions caused by attempts to ease the
burdens of life by mental or physical
These general statements
nave received abundant confirmation
rom statistics compiled by DIR. G. f.
zoib. He seems to think that infant
mortality could be reduced if mothers
would suckle their own children, and in
of this he says that out of 100
;hildren sucked by their mothers, only
50 died the first year of those nursed
~ wet-nurses, 1888 died; of those arti-
icially fed, 60 died; of those brought up
n institutions, 80 died.