Omaha daily bee., 1885-06-13
SlNGUuARITIES.

Rutland, VT, has red headed colored
man.
An octopus measuring nearly fifteen feet
| from tip tc tip is on exhibition at San Jose,
| Gal.
Ceylon spiders weave webs 80 strong that a
walking stick. when thrown into it, is en-
| tangled among the meshes,
T. II. Lewis, st. Paul archnologst, has
| discovered mound at Prairie du CHEN that
perfectly outlines mammoth buffalo.
DIR. Goucher, of Nashville, Mich, is having
mounted a fve.pouud calf, born at Castletop,
| Barry county. 1t is perfectly formed and be-
| lieved to be the smallest calf ever born.
The largest grapevine in the United States
| grows on the premises of Mr. Madden, in
| Pike county, Georgia. 1t is eighteen years
old, is thirty four inches in circumference at
| its base, is quarter of mile long, and yields
five wagon loads of grapes.
A young lady OF Portland, Ore, while
breaking eggs for making cake, few days
ago, found lizard nearly two inches in length
and alive in one of the eggs. The Oregonlan,
which tells the story, vouches for the honesty
of its informant, who is the father of the
young lady.
A Lowell Mass, man found two perfect
white roses growing on his pear tree recently.
Their stems, together with the stems of three
pear tree leaves were joined in woody stem
lees than an inch in length, which supported
them. The pear blossoms have all disappeared
from the tree and the fruit is set.
The tropical gooseberry, which is cultivated
in Florida, grows on handsome tree from
ten to fifteen feet in height. The fruit is
rather smaller than the Siberian crab-apple,
and the shape o flattened globe. 1t contains
one hard seed. The fruit is only moderately
valuable, but the tree is ornamental.
A curious discovery was made recently when
lightning rod, which had been in place fif-
teen years, embedded in soft clay, was re
moved. There was found attached to it
solid lump of iron weighing ninety-six
pounds, supposed to have been produced by
the conversion of the clay by the action of
electricity.
Among other forms of animal life which ha ve
disappeared from the earth is the sea COW.
This great animal, which has been variously
classed with the whales with walruaes and
SEALS and with elephants. was toothless veg
etable FEEDER -and often weighed three or four
tons. 1t was seen alive and described in 1741,
but in 1880 it appeared to have become en-
tlrely extinct
A Salt Lake jeweler has invented o novel
timepiece in the shape of steel wire stretched
across his show window on which stuffed
canary hops from left to right, indicating as
it goes the hours of the day by pointing with
its beak at a dial stretched beneath the wire,
and having the figures from one to twenty
four. When it reaches the latter figure it
glides across the window to one again. There
is no mechanism whatever that can be seen,
it all being inside the bird. The inventor
says he was three years in studying 1t out.
A few days since a gentleman living above
Dalton went to his crib. and lying in a coil in
one corner was a rattlesnake-in bulk large as
q half bushel. A few feet from it was his cat
gradually approaching the monster in q creep
ing manner, eyes iiveted yet lacking that
springy electricity peculiar to the feline when
ready to spring upon its prey. He hurredly
killed the snake, breaking the charm which
was Turing the cat to certain destruction, when
it skulked away. The snake was said to have
been five inches in diameter, and when skin
ned the hide held measured half bushel of
sand. Dalton ga Argus.
The white ant is small insect, with a
bloated yellowish white body and some
what large thorax, obong shApsd and colored
disagreeable oily brown. There is no limit
to its depredations and it is so much feared
that no one in certain parts of India and
Africa attempts to travel with such thing as
wooden trunk. On the TaDganylka plat
eau says recent traveller, have camped on
innocent of white ants apparently as the
pavement of st. Paul's, and wakened next
morning to find a stout wooden box almost
gnawed to pieces. Leather portmanteaus
hare the same fate, and the only substance
,hich seems to defy the marauders are tin
d iron.