Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1885-01-02
after ho and his friends had left, had finished
cooking II and eaten 1t all. "Cdnni6dlisn as
@ CnstOm, IN P0pukar Science MonthiN.
IN GENERAL.

One eminent authority reckons that 800 =
600 600 packages Of canned goods are put up
in this country yearly-10 to each person.
Judge Atwater Of Minneapolis tells how
he was offered the whole Of the land now oc-
cupied by the city for $50 10 1S49, but didn't
take it,
Tennessee has 16 coal mines in success
ful operation. The concerns at Ssvranoe and
South Pittsburg alone employ 1900 men and
want 600 more.
The room at Worms, Ger, where Martha
Luther made his famous speech before to
Emperor Charles " is now a beer saloon,
with wooden similitude OF a red faced Bur
gundiau king doing duty as a sign in front
"A writer ia a French medical journal
proposes that cities be supplied with fresh
country air large field In the country is
to be surrounded with high wall and plant
ed with balsamic trees to absorb the dust, and
the air from this field is to be conveyed
through pipes into every city house.
Early last Friday morning a house was
burned near Montreal, and two persons we're
burned to death. The other members OF the
family escaped in their night clothes and
were obliged to walk two miles through the
snow with the mercury 15o below zero
Florida orange growers are much dis
turbed by their meagre returns this season,
which in some cases scarcely covered the cost
Of shipping the fruit. The market is said TO
be glutted, aud they begin to think that the
orange business, like everything else has
been overdone.
1t is said by local paper that a market
woman in Peoria, ILL.,, is trying to avoid pay
ing an election bet on a teohuicslity. She
was to wheel a man around the public square,
but declares there was nothing in the bond
about wheeling his clothes, and declares that
he will have to go without them or not at all.
"A Kansas editor makes the following an.
nouncement in his paper Last week when
we were coming home from Topeka, we we're
held up by two road agents who took all the
money we had left. We hope therefore that
our delinquent subscribers will pay their sub.
scriptons promptly, rs we are mighty hard
up"
The Commercial Cable company. owned
by James Gordon Bennett of the New York
Herald and j. W. Mackey, the Pacific coast
millionaire, has opened for business TO Great
Britain, Ireland aud France at the rate of 40
cents per word, which is reduction of ten
cents per word from the rates charged by
the other companies. Ia the early days Of
Atlantic cable telegraph, the transmission of
message containing twenty words or less
cost 500.
Tree culture on the plains is making rap
id progress under wise encouragement by
the government. 1t is not unusual now to
see in naturally treeless regions farmers and
mechanics homes surrounded by thriving
groves. The cotton wood, the tree indigen-
GUS to the water courses of the West, is re-
inforced by the western catalpa, white ash,
white elm, black walnut locust, mulberry,
silver maple, red cedar and the willow.
The largest stationary engine in the
world is at the famous zinc mines at Fried
ensville, Penn. 1t is known as the "Presi-
dent, and there is no pumping engine in the
world that can be compared with the mon
ster The number of gallons of water raised
every minute is II, 500. The driving wheels
are 30 feet in diameter, and weigh 40 tons
each. The sweep rod is 40 feet long, the
cylinder 10 inches in diameter, and the pis-
ton rod Is inches in diameter with a ten n-foot
stroke.
Prof Richard A. Proctor, the astrono-
mer, says that the rejection of the theory
that the suns heat is due to the combustion
in that body, and of the suggestion that il
may be due to chemical changes, leaves no
recourse so far as our present knowledge ex-
tends but to regard the process of contrso-
ton taking place within the solar globe aa
the true source of all, or very near all, the
heat and light " hich the sun emits. In q
word, he regards gravity as the cause of light
| and heat.
Prof. r. Ogden Doremus of New York
says that the Egyptian obelisk in Central
Park is slowly disintegrating under the inhu.
ence of the climate. Particles of the stone
are constantly falling and can be gathered by
the handful at the base any time. The dis
integration is more rapid in the winter than
in other seasons. Prof. Doremus thinks that
under present conditions the characters upon
the obelisk will be oblterated within 500
years, though they have withstood the eli
mate of Egypt 1000 years.