Connecticut western news., 1890-05-14
ODDS AND ENDS.

A real estate and trust company in Lynchburg, Va, composed of colored men, has declared a dividend of 10 per cent.
 On the west coast of Africa there are now 200 churches, 39, 900 converts, 100, ,0OO adherents, 2,750 schools and 30, GOO pupils. Religious books have been translated into 35 dialects of the section.
 It was while Gibbon was sitting in the ruins of Rome, in1764, that he saw and heard barefooted friars singing in the.temple of Jupiter. The idea came to him at that hour to write the his tory of the decline and fall of the em- pire.
 In Paris the horse is a behest of fash ion rather than source of pleasure. Few French women ride we'll, and the Frenchman, as rule. looks upon the animal as difficult and dangerous ar- ticle to navigate, ship whose rudder is in the wrong place.
 The lace owned by the femipine members of the Astor family is said to be worth at least $500, 900. That which the late Mrs. Astor bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was val at from $40, 900 to $50, ,OOO.
 There are three men in the Oregon State prison, each of whom cut off a hand to avoid work. They are con fined in solitary cells. Two others cut of the ends of their fingers.
 Postmaster General Wanamaker considers the proposal to make eight consecutive hours labor days work for postoffice clerks, etc., impractica- ble, and estimates that the cost of do- ing this would be s, 378, 727 year.
 Not less than fifteen parishes, or one fourth of the state of Louisiana is af fected by the present flood, aud the damage is almost incalculable. In 1882 1t is estimated that the loss was $15,- 900, ,000. It will probably exceed half that amount this year.
 Last year sixty-seven persons in the Loochoo islands of Japan were bitten by the poisonous habu snake, twelve of whom succumbed and fifty-fve re- covered. Forty-two of the victims were males and twenty-five females, but the greater proportion of deaths occurred among the females, seven out of the twenty-five cases ending fa- tally.
 As a curiosity the sensitive plant mimosa pudica) is well worth culti- vating in the window garden. The leaves of this plant are very orna- mental, and so sensitive that when touched with the hand they immedi- ately droop and fold up, regainipg their former position, however, within a quarter of an hour or so after. A breath of wind will also cause the leaves to act in a similar manner. Hence its common name.
 An example of English as she is wrote" is found in an interesting Por. tuguese official document. The leaflet contains instruction concerning to bacco," and is issued by the custom house authorities. Here is one of its clauses: "All tobacco the said visi may find on board, besides what may have manifested in this transgression will be subject to imprisonmente anc other penalties the law imposes"
 One of the most extraordinary o1 African trees is that known as the bao bab. It is almost a forest in itself and serves as 6 complete sylvan palace on the largest scale. Rarely growing more than seventy feet high, it! branches extend horizontally, support ed by trunk which has girth great CT, it is believed, than that of any other known tree. One of these extra ordinary trees was found on measure ment to be forty feet in diameter. Tn age of another, counting the concen tric rings, was found to be 6,ooo year as tho very leAst