Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-02-29
STRAY BITS.
During the last sixteen years 9 5,OO0 sailors on British ships have been lost at sea.

During the last sixteen years a, 900 sailors on British ships have been lost at sea.
 The business of the London postoffice is of general has saved s15,OOO a year in sealing wax and twine expenses alone.
 The little farm house in which Horace Greeley was born, together with 129 acres of farm land, is to be sold at auction at Am
 An eastern man of figures says that an average of ,00O people are drowned through the ice in the United States every winter, and an average of 5000 are drowned by ac- cident in the summer.
 A steel steamboat to cost $5O,0OO, is being constructed to run on the upper Mississippi, the expectation being that it will make the trip from St. Louis to St. Paul in half the time required by the existing wooden craft.
 Electricity has done much for civilization, but it's possibilities, it seems, have not been exhausted. An "electric birch" has been in- vented, by which refractory school pupils can be punished to nicety and no marks be left
 An Ann Arbor student suspected that some one was stealing his coal. He loaded one of the Jumps with charge of gunpowder, and the next morning his landlady's stove blew up and his breakfast executed a beautiful fresco design on the kitchen ceiling.
 "Weight sociables'' are the latest craze at Yankton. The gentlemen pick their ladies, take them to the scales, weigh them, pay a quarter of a cent pound into the general fund, and then escort them to supper. The latter costs not far from six pits pound.
 Professor Malcomson, of Dallas, Tex, who is said to be a teacher of some learning, ad vances the theory that the earth is flat and also motionless, neither rotating on it's axis nor revolving around the sun. He also be lieves that the sun and moon are smaller thar the earth and that the light of the moon ii her own and not reflected from the sun. | A funeral procession which started for thu cemetery at Fremont, N. Y., encountered snow drifts so deep that it couldn't proceed The remains were placed in a blacksmith shop near by and the mourners and friend set to work with shovels. The work was no finished till the following evening, when tn corpse was buried by the light of lanterns.
 The scale bug is the pest of California. l confines it's ravages to orange groves. l feeds on the leaves and burrows in the ter drills. and when its work is complete the lea curls up, shrivels, and the tree dies within short time. A prominent St. Louis manu facturer recently invested s25,0OO in a orange grove near Los Angeles which sui fered from the blight and had to be sold at heavy loss.
 Enoch Robinson, for more than half cen ury dealer in locks in Boston, has just die at his curious residence, known as the Roun house. The building, as it's name indicate is circular in form, and has three stories, tf third story being of smaller diameter tha the others. The interior arrangements al in keeping with the exterior, there being ci cular stairways, entries, rooms, tables, etc in profusion.
 Every man when he takes up his cards a game of whist holds one out of 635, ,013, ,55e 600 possible hands. As for the total numb' of variations possible among all the player l it is SO enormous as almost to exceed belle ] MT. Babbage calculated that if 1000, 900
 men were to be engaged dealing cards at tl
 rate of one deal each minute, day and nigh
 for 100, 100000 of years, they would not th'
 have exhausted all the possible variations
 the cards, but only LOG, ,00Oth part of thel