Connecticut western news., 1885-04-22
NOTES AND COMMENTS.

IN the "keys" south of Dayton. Flori. ds, there are trees called machineels, which are said to be poisonous to any one standing beneath them when the dew is falling.
 THERE is a salt lake in Hidnlgo county, Texas, which is one mile in length, five miles in circumference, and from three to four feet deep. Its bed consists of crystals of pure salt.
 JOSEPHINE COUNTY, Oregon, possesses a natural curiosity in the shape of subterranean cavern. It is situated in the mountains, south of Grants Pass, and has never been thoroughly explored.
 THE Printers Bible, issued before 1702, contained an absurd misstatement in which the Psslmist was pathetically made to say the ''printers persecuted him without a cause" instead of princes.
 TEE Medical Journal states that few handfuls of common salt thrown daily into closets and an occasional hand ful into wash basins goes far toward counteracting the noxious effects of the omnipresent sewer gas.
 THAT begged shoes and boots are still quite extensively used might be inferred from the fact that a peg manufacturing company at Bartlett, N. H., is turning ont the little wooden articles at the rate of eighteen hundred bushels day, and has orders on hand that will require several months to fill.
 ACCORDING to the Medical Record five per cent. of all cancers are situated upon the tongue. The average duration of life in cancer of the tongue is, without operation, stated to be ten and a half months; with operation, sixteen months. In some cases-after operations patients have lived from two to five, and even ten years.
 IN social conversation with his siafi one of them asked Gen Joe Johnston how many times he had been wounded. He replied, "eight times" The stafl remarked that he was the most unfortu- nate General in this respect that he had ever known. "No, sir," said he, "the most fortunate; for it was only by the mercy of God was not killed on either occasion"
 A FEW years ago, says the London Standard, the young people of Eug- land became imbued with the roller skating craze, and rinks were built all over the country. The fever, however, was as brief as any other vagarie of fashion; the enthusiasm died away, the rinks were deserted, the investors lost their money, and roller skates disap- peared in the land.
 TIE ex-director of the conscription under the first empire computed the actual loss of men born within the old limits of France, and destroyed in the imperial wars from 1894 to 1915, at 1, 700, 900. This estimate does not in- clude the wars of the republic, or the loss of men not born in the kingdom of France, and goes far to explain how population in France has kept low.
 AN inventive genius is said to have produced cushion, containing Q spiral spring, to be worn by skaters who have the habit of sitting down unexpectedly. A Philadelphia man is reported to have sat down SO hard upon one of these arti- cles that the rebound, which should have simply brought him to an erect DO. sition, tumbled him violently over upon his nose, whereupon he has commenced suit against the inventor for S10, 1000.
 MIME. PosIAN, the young wife of a well-to-do French merchant, was seen by her husband to secrete paper when he entered the room, and, as she re- fused to say what it was, he leveled a revolver (which every one seems now adays to carry in Paris) at her, and, she being still obdurate, he at length fired, wounding her in the hip. Then, mortified, he threw himself from the third story, breaking one arm and two legs. Madame is likely to recover. Ii was only rather long milliner's bill.
 To NoARcERATE a man as lunatic in Denmark nothing is required but cer- tifcate from competent medical practi' tioner stating that the individual in question is insane. Any one in Den mark is entitled to keep private asylum without license, and the patients in such an asylum are not under State control Denmark has an excess of lunatics, due chiefly to the Scandinavian habit of cor stant dram drinking. They are vel cared for in spite of the defect of tho lunacy laws.
 A TRUSTEE of the Providence Public Library has gathered into 0 scrapbooE the adventures of the boys who rea' dime novels, and has made it bis busi ness to ask the boys one by one who ar' interested in these stories to spend al bour or two in reading, not the imagi native story, but the way in which tn small boy has attempted to realize hoy boys ought to live, and what they ough to be allowed to do. It is said that tn dime novel boy usually reads the scrap book, which is rapidly increasing il size as the fresh exploits of the dim novel adventures are added to it, sbou two hours. He then lays it down il disgust, and nothing can induce him t return to those stories again. He ask the person in charge of the readin room for a better class of books.