The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-06-14
NATURAL FRUIT ELANoRS.
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

A WORKMAN who was witness in an English
court declined to state his calling until, threat
ened with commitment for contempt of court
he admitted that he was ''wormhole borer" for
weil-known dealer In old furniture.
WoRKMEN engaged in ref1tting the Central
hotel at Pittsburg, Pa, found quite q lot of
curios and relics, among them a trade dollar
an old liberty dollar bearing the date Of 1899,
two round lead balls, supposed to have been
used In slug-shots an egg-shaped piece Of lead
used in handy billies, three watches, two large
coppers of 1877 and 1854. an English penny of
1867 Chinese coin, two copper coins of the
army and navy reunion two watch charms, two
marbles, five Knives two revolvers and a plain
gold ring. The relics were found in an old
sewer and are all much eaten with rust.
DR.. ANDERSON, the medical secretary of
health for Dundee. Scotland, in report on
the possibility Of infection by the use of the
telephone mouthpiece by successive speakers,
as supported by some facts brought forward
in the British Medical Journal gives some i'm
portant advice to telephonists. He says among
other things, that if person who is suffering
from sore throat of an infectious nature brings
his mouth into close or even near relation TO the
mouthpiece of a telephone instrument in the act
of speaking and expiration of air from the
lungs and throat it is possible that infectious
particles might adhere to the mouUhpiece. 1t
should be frequently cleansed, whether.the in
strument be public or private room, and per-
haps the simplest and most convenient cleanser
ID warm water and carbolic soap,
THE famous Colossus of Rhodes, which has
been described so often that the subject is be-
coming threadbare, cost 800 talents, or about
1915 o, o in United states currency But the above
is tritts compared to the price paid for a colos-
sal statue of Mercury made for the city Of
Averni, in Gaul, by Zenodorus. The artist was
engaged on this great WORK for ten years. and
the total cost to the cty~was S!,775, 600 What
the gold and ivory statues of Athena, in the
Parthenon, or the Zeus at Olympia both of
which made nv P6idiaa &c nOt cd
by any ancient or modern author Athena was
arrayed in movable drapery of pure, unalloyed
gold which weighed 40 talents. The coin value
of the drapery alone, according to the above
figures. would be $3.50, 900. The head of the
Olympian Zeus was covered with locks of pure
g0ld each weighing six minR, or about the
value of $4,000 in United States money.
TaE Noworosisk Telegraph. Russian paper,
reports: "a German military air vessel landed
few days ago not far from Browary Station,
the gamekeepers cottage, in the domnal
forest. Two gentlemen in civil attire, aliRh
from it and in broken Russian ordered break
fast, which they calmly partook of with evil
dent relish. Having paid for their omelet, and
being unsuccessful IN their inquiry for some
beer they lit their pipes and assembled In the
direction of Kew" The correspondent of a
Paris paper writes from London that the British
war office has got hold of q balloon which is
declared to be the best attempt at aerial navi-
CATION yet produced. The model is at White
nun, anu according TO Information recently re-
ceived from the German aeronautic headquar-
tiers, some balloons of the new type are to be
made and tried at an early date. The machine
is said to be the invention of Pole.
No sToRY-TELLER, says the Baltimore An1eri-
can can beat the one told by Rev. ]. W. Steele,
the pastor of the Methodist church at Barton
The story is that u coal miner was working In a
mine near Barton, and when he stuck his pick
into very large clock of coil to break il up
branch of fossil tree was presented to view.
1nf Of h
with the wood preserved, have been discovered
in coal mines in Nova Scotia and at other points
But the remarkable part of the story
was that, nestled in the branch If
the tree we're two bats, and these bats gasped
and died as the air struck them, after their sup
posed long imprisonment from the day when
the coal was formed in the geological carbon
ferrous period. The miner has preserved the
TWO bats and has refused $50 for them. They
now appear like shriveled mummy bats. Mr..
Mock suggests that the bats may have lately
gone into the mine and be attached to the
outside of the lump of coal, and In the uncer-
tain Pickering miners lamplight the miner
naturally concluded that they were inside the
coal. Not SO, reasons the discoverer for he Is
positive they are carboniferous bats.
THERE is now to be seen in London what is
declared to be the finest Persian carpet in the
world. This is the holy carpet of the MOSQUE of
Ardebi in PERSIA carpet which for size beauty
condition and authenticated age is said to be
unrlyaled by any known example. Its dimen-
sions are "a feet inches by II feet inches
The ground of the body of the fabric is of a
rich blue, covered with floral uracery OF ex-
uuiSite delicacy. A center medallion of pale
yellow terminates on its outer edge in sixteen
mnaret- shaped points, from which spring six
teen cartouches, four green, four red and eight
cream; and from two of these are suspended,
in the direction Of the respective ends of the
carpet, two of the sacred lamps of the mosque.
But the most interesting detail is the pale
cream cartouche placed within the border at
the upper end of the carpet. bearing an in
woven inscription. which is thus translated: II
have no refuge in the world other than thy
threshold. My head has no protection other
than thy porchway. The work of the slave OF
this holy place, MakSoud of Kashan, in the year
942" Now, 942 of the Hegira is 1885 of our era;
so that the carpet was actually in existence, in
the mosque of the sacred city of the Suffayian
dynasty, when Queen Elizabeth sent Anthony
Jenkinson on an embassy to Shah Tamasp
Carpets thus signed and dated are extremely
rare, and are historically important, but
carpet not only dated and signed, but of such
size and beauty as this, is said to be something
unheard of before.
OXFORD co UNITY, MAINE, turns out nearly all
of the spools on which the thread of this coun-
try is wound. says the Philadelphia Press The
spools are made from white birch timber and
they are produced by the million in oxford
county. There are several other points in
Western Maine, also, where the industry is i'm
that part of the state which are kept
busy the year round saving white
birch logs into strips four feet long and
from one to two inches wide and of the same
thickness. These strips are sent to the spool
factories, where they are quickly worked into
spools by most ingenious labor-saving machln-
cry. The strips of white birch are fed into one
machine and they are not touched-in fact are
hardly seen again-until the spools all finished
for market except polishing, drop out by the
bushel from another mac0ine several rods
away from where the strips started in. The
spools get their gloss by being rapidly revolved
In barrels by machinery, the polish resulting
from the contact of the spools in the barrel In
the backwoods villages of Oxford county one
sees scarcely any other industry but spool max
ing, and every one is in some way interested in
the business. The factories have been eating,
into the Maine birch forests for years.
but there seems to be enough left
yet to feed them we'll for years TO
come. Hundreds and thousands OF feet of
logs are cut and sawed into spool timber am
nualy. Shoe peg lactories are also an i'm
portant branch OF business once peculiar to
Maine, although it has of late been followed TO
some extent in other eastern states, and is
spreading to the hardwood forests of Northern
Pennsylvania. Maple is used largely in the
manufacture Of shoe pegs, although white
birch is used at some factories. Shoe pegs
are sold by the bushel, and are worth ali the
way from 3 shlllings to 81 a bushel accord
ing TO quality. More than Sl50, 900 was received
by Maine shoe peg factories last year for goods
curious and profitable business has grown up
in the Maine woods about the saw-mills in the
utilizing of the immense Quantities of sawdust