The morning call., 1891-06-14
PERSONAL SCIENCE.
Facts and FaRCiGO Applied TO Utilitarial
PURPOSES.

DR.. Felix L. Oswald, writing to the Phila-
delphia Times, says:
The list of ancient court officials often in
cluded an accomplished faster" whose
preliminary experiments saved his royal
master from the risk of poisoned or indi-
gestible food. The instinct of animals
might frequently be utilized for the same
pdrpose. A famished wolf will refuse salt
meat and mustard sardines. Monkeys will
reject many sn-called fruit jellies which,
indeed. are merely a compound Of diluted
bone glue, glucose and artificial flavoring
extracts. No animal, bird or insect will
touch brandy unless its taste should have
been disguised by large admiXture of
syrup. Bees refuse beet sugar II exposed
side by side with cane sugar, and neither
bees nor wasps have the least use for the
chemical product known as saccharine.
CLIMATIC sANCTUARIEs.
There is hardly vegetable or mineral
product that has not been tabulated, with
special reference to its geograp hical distribu-
ton, in the elaborate statistics of the last
census report. Mr. Charles Hallock has
published work on the game supply of
every county in the Union, but we still lack
a list of mosquitoes summer resorts. Our
national territory includes localities free
from insect plaques, but the location of such
sanctuaries cannot be inferred from any in
dicationS of latitude or altitude Mosquito
swarms infest many parts of the Rocky
Mountains at an elevation Of 1000 feet above
sea level; they haunt the dry prairies Of
Western Missouri as we'll as the breezy sea-
shores of Eastern New Jersey, and no part
of Florida can match the gnat-lnfernoS OF
Lake SuperiOr-the beaver meadows Of
Chippewa County, Mich, and the maple
swampS of the Canadian shore, opposite
Sault Ste. Marie.
A BUSINESS FUNERAL.
few years ago a stranger, describing
himself as an Arab merchant" called upon
Colonel John Bundy of Chicago to inform
him that Nine. Biayatsky had died of a sun
stroke IN Cairo, Egypt. but all the same
was now walking the streets of New DIRK
City. Colonel Bundy Instituted private in
quIrleS, which proved the mystic Arab to
labor under the disadvantage of an unreli-
able memory, and the Religi0-P Philosophical
journal naturally suspec is that the recent
obsequies of the sp0Ok queen were merely
the preliminaries of another business ad-
vertiSement.
EPIDEAIICS OF CRIME.
The Government of Paraguay few years
ago prohibited the publication of suicides to
prevent epidemics Of self-murder. The
butcheries of Jack the Ripe" have been
emulated in at least twenty different cities
of Europe and North America. Dynamite
outrageS and misunderstanding have re-
manias, but even extraordinary and cOmpli-
Gated crimes have occasionally been imi-
tated with all details. Only a week ago the
citizens of Wiltshire, Ohio. were Mortified
by the discovery Of woman'S body IN a
howell near the Indiana State line, where
couple of miScreants outraged and murdered
the victim, young school-Jeacher.
Now an exactly similar case is reported
from Sandy Hook, Elliott County, KY. A
young lady who had discouraged the suit of
a rustic admirer was enticed to an out-of-
the-way part Of the county, dragged to the
woods and killed, after having been chained
few days in a deserted cabin.
MEAN TEMPERATURE.
Next to the stereotyped inducement of
railway facilities" the faVerite bait of cur
Western land agent is a climate table prov
ing that the mean temperature of their
alkalI desert exactly agrees with that of
some favored district Of Southern France or
Northern Italy. For the table-lands of Ari-
IONA a Summer-heat of 1869 Fahrenheit, off
set by a winter-frOst of 10o, may be sum
married. in yearly average of.65o.
PNEUMATIC MAIL TUBES.
For nearly tour years company of capt.
tailStS and engineers has continued expert
mentS with more and more improved CON-
binati0n of pneumatic tubes and electric
appliances intended to forward mail matter
at rate Of speed far exceeding that of the
fastest express trains. For short distances
cylindrical boxes. holding about 200 letters
apiece, can undoubtedly be shot along at the
rate of 100 miles an hour, and by means of a
system of quick transfer stations the transit
time from New Orleans to Philadelphia
could thus be shortened to ten or twelve
hours. The establishment of an expert
mental line between Philadelphia and New
York seems an assured fact, and the State
of California would find it profitable RveSt-
ment TO spend a dozen millions in encourag-
ing the Invention.
SIBERIAN RAILWAYS.
There is a story of Western railway
Speculation who urged the establishment of
a new line TO the Pacific on the ground that
it would 'subserve a great end" q Yes,
two ends" said his friend. lone at Xville
and the other at San Francisco; but there
will be no midway Inducements" That
remark would apply to nearly all the pro-
jected liCes of Siberian railways. They
would afford the possibility of RAPID transit
from Orenburg or AStrakan, but there
would be little between hot sand in summer
and snow in winter With all possible
allowance, the fact remains that the nosth-
ern part of Central Asia is the most uRin-
Yiting region of our planet-colder than the
Arctic borderlaads of Norway and more
destitute of food resources than Spitzbergen
or Northern Alaska.