The morning call., 1890-11-21
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

1t is estimated that $4,000 pianofoTtes are
manufactured every year in London.
The people of the United States consu ne.
it is said, 200, 100000 bottles OF pickles an
pually.
Canada has IS, 500 miles of telegraph wire.
aud did business in 1889 Of 4,O27. ISL dis
patches.
At Frankfort, Germany. 5000 horse power
is transmitted by electricity to distance Of
140 miles.
Before the invention of the telescope an
object upon the moons surface h1ty miles IN
diameter could not be seen.
No other branch of natural history ap
proacbeS, in popularity. that one which Is
devoted to the study of birds.
The Hindoos consider flesh food as deil-
ing a man, a vegetable diet BEING the first
essential of their religious life.
The largest factory in the world devoted
exclusively to.rubber-Shoe making was dedi-
Gated in WoOnsocket, K. l., last week.
Hamburg, drives what may be called
roaring trade in wild beasts. Lions ana
tigers can bs ordered at 1900 francs apiece.
A good rhinoceros, however, will fetch from
5000 francs to $4,000 francs.
If you want real good advice, do not ask
your friends but your enemies. and then do
exactly the opposite from what they tell
you to do.
One of the most singular facts about the
growth Of London is its regularity. 1t may
be roughly taken that every mouth about
1000 houses are added
Asafetida is a vegetable. not an animal
product 1t is prepared from the root of a
plant extensively grown in Persia, BeloO-
| chstan and Afghanistan.
Three German steamers, costing in all
| about S125.000, are to be placed on the
African lakes. Germany is determined TO
push her trade on the Dark Continent.
Swifis and swallows fly every year from
England to Southern Africa ana to the Mo-
luccas, and the restless, wandering flight of
various oceanic birds is still more surprising.
Fashionable entertainments have been
enormously extravagant in London this sea-
son. Several have cost between S30, 900 and
$4,000. The flowers for a bachelor party
cost $1,000.
There are few such common-sense prov
cribs as Every man is the architect of his
own fortune" Appins Ciaudius, Roman
censor, used it in speech delivered by him
$50 years before the Christian era.
The accumulation OF wealth, estimated at
IA per cent Of the gross earnings of man
kind, now aggregates S5,OO00oO,0OO per an
mum. and Is increasing, relatively, as we'll
as absolutely, from year to year.
In ancient Greece a law of Pittacus enacted
that "he who commits crime when drunk
shall receive double punishment :" one for
the crime itself, and the other for the in
ebriety which prompted him to commit it.
There are probably 100, 600, 900 of people in
Europe to-day who do not eat meat more
than once week; and the number is not
nconsiderable-it must be reckoned in mill
ions-who have that privilege not oftener
than once or twice year.
1t is asserted by French vintagers that
the grapes at sunrise always produce the
ignlest and most limpid wine. Moreover,
by plucking the grapes when the early
morning sun is upon them they are believed
to Weld q quarter more Juice,
Slaves were sold publicly in Liverpool in
the latter half of the last century. Sir
James Picton, in his Memorials of Liver
pool" quotes two advertisements of the
sale OF slaves in Liverpool which appeared
in Willamson's Liverpool Advertiser in the
years 1865 and 1906
A Michigan man who was going out to
hunt III the trackless forests bought a COM
pass, but about tue time he wanted to use it
he remembered that lie could not tell one
letter Of the alphabet from another, and
that no one had ever told him whether the
needle pointed east, wrst, north or south.
He was lost for four days in consequence.