Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-02-13
STRAY BITS.

A Chicago man claims to be living on eight cents week.
 After the manner of all other exhibitions, the Melbourne exhibition closes with ded- cis of $1, ,oOo, 900.
 During the year 1888 nearly TOO persons disappeared in Philadelphia. large percent age of whom were never heard of.
 A scheme is about to be launched to build a canal between the Bristol and the English channels. It will be abont forty-fve miles long.
 Rhubarb came from China about 1573, and when introduced into England was called ''patience." Turnip leaves were first eaten as a salad.
 Christmas Island, the last annexation of known, rising three or four hundred feet from the sea.
 colored woman testified at a trial in Stanford, Ky, ''that she would have been killed had she not seen the bullet, which was coming straight at her, and dodged it."
 The pet dog of lady at Dumbartonshire, Scotland, which died recently, was placed in an elegant mahogany coffin with brass mountings and deposited in the family burial grouKd
 4 St. Louis coal company recently mined at Danville, Ills. a lump of coal that weighed 37,0OO pounds It was shipped to Chicago, and the timbers in the mine had to be taken down for its removal.
 The production of the coca plant in South America is so enormous that one-eightieth part of it would be sufficient to swamp the markets of the outside world. Almost all of it is consumed in South America.
 At type writing contest in London a month ago there were 126 entries and nearly all appeared. The first prize was for seventy nine words a minute, twenty or thirty words less than have been achieved in the United States.
 For the supper to be served at the inau- guration ball in Washington, there will be provided 10000 raw oysters, 10000 stewed oysters, 5000 chicken croquettes, 5000 sweet bread pates, 800 gallons of terrapin and other articles of food in proportion.
 A party of San Bernardino, Cal, hunters who went for days sport had very hard luck until they hired small boy to play the harmonica for them. As soon as the music began the canyon swarmed with rabbits, and the hunters loaded themselves down with game.
 People on Broadway, New York, saw small boy working a folding bed in the win dow of a furniture house. He looked so ex- hausted that some one raised row and it was then developed that steam engine in the ba wac 5oino tha opd fho boy was playing stool pigeon.
 The advertising card is of entirely modern origin, although the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans knew something about advertising They accomplished the desired result through the medium of posters, as several bills, painted in black and red, were found on the walls of the Pompeiian dwellings.
 A man applied at the Campbell county, Va, clerks office for a marriage certificate, but wanted it for quarter. The clerk ex- acted s1, the usual price, Next day the man returned and asked the clerk to refund, as the girl refused to marry a man that was so stingy as to try to beat down the price of a marriage license.
 The Los Angeles Tribune says that the quickest time on record of a sailing vessel from Australia to the United States has just been made by the American clipper South American, which arrived at San Diego har- Dor recently, after run from Sydney of 5000 miles in ifty-three days. The next best record is sixty-one days.
 John Wilson, living near Astov, Fla, cut a big cypress tree in the swamp, and found therein a live alligator seven feet long, As the opening in the tree was not half large enough for the gator to get through the pre- sumption is that it craWled in when quite young and lived on birds and reptiles that sought refuge in the same tree.
 The waters of nearly all the hot springs in Black Rock region, Nevada, are so strongly impregnated with mineral matter that they will petrify vegetable or animal matter in a few years. One enterprising genius has the bodies of three Indians in soak, and when they are converted into stone he expects to make fortune exhibiting them.
 J. Devlin, a train employe on the New York Central and Hudson River railroad, found a pocketbook containing $50, 900 last Sunday in seat of a drawing room car att tached to an east bound train. He returned the money to its owner, J. E. Loftus, @ Bos- tonian, who was returning from the west. Mir. Loftus handed Devlin $1, ,OOO.
 Last fall Mrs Cyremius Hall, of Isle of Hope, Tenn, to encourage her hens to lay, placed China nest eggs in half dozen nests Not long afterward the eggs disappeared, and where they went was complete mys- tery until the other day, when a chicken snake was killed near the hen house, and in the snake were found two of the china eggs
 A floating island is said to exist on Henry's lake, Idaho. It is about 800 feet in diameter, and is cratic in its travels, frequently, though, going with the wind, which catches in the trees and thereby carries it along. It is said that the curiosity might remain near