Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-06-10
CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS.

| 1900 duels a year.
There are million and more specie,
of insects in the world.
Uncle Sam provides $4,000 new mail
bags annually at a cost of $4,000
-Seven-eighths of the bread baked in
| London is made OF foreign wheat.
On rough average $4,000 sovereigns
pass over the Bank of England counters
every day.
Thirty thousand women spend their
lives in driving and steering the canal boats
in Southern and Midland England
The poorest paid parson in America |,
said to be Mr.. Wainfieet, of Molesworth,
Me-, very small village. His salary Is s3a
week.
Umbrellas made of paper are coming
into use in France. The paper fs made
waterproof by gelatined bi-chromate OF
potassium.
American lifeboats, if it is found prac-
tical. are to be furnished with an electric
motor and propeller which is to furnish not
only power, but.a search light.
Over 70, ,0OO, 900 sewing needles are made
weekly in the town of Redditch, in Worces-
tershire, where the most extensive needle
manufactures in the world are situated
Among males during the working wears
of life the average annual time of sickness
is ,3A weeks or q fraction more than nine
days in each year; in females fraction
more.
One of the participants in sleep-fast-
ing contest, held recently in San Francisco,
remained awake for l5S hours, or z days and
nights. He is now an inmate OF a lunatic
asylum.
The people of no race have such per-
sfstent and deep-rooted carelessness in re-
gard to human life as the Chinese. They
are not only capable of committing suicide
to spite an enemy, but they neglect the
simplest precautions for preserving them
selves from DEATH
"A correspondent of an Eastern paper
suggests that the "aster' be adopted as the
national flower, on the following grounds:
That it is q native American plant. Among
its species are red. white and blue flowers,
our three national colors. and that its name
III English means "Star."
The Electric Automatic Voting Machine
Syndicate is the somewhat formidable title
of a London company which is introducing
an apparatus for recording the votes of the
free and independents electors with secrecy,
accuracy and dispatch. 1t is contained in
case foot square and feet high.
The English Royal Marines are unsur-
passed by any troops in the world. They
enlist with a character, and they learn q
trade. They serve for IL years, or for Il with
pension, instead of being turned adrift at
"a. And when they are discharged there is
competition for them among employers.
The photographic Bureau at Washing
ton for two years has been trying to learn
something sf the characteristics of the
Atlantic Ocean as great moving body of
water by means OF bottles. As O result the
whole Atlantic is shown to be slowly circu-
lating round and round, like an enormous
pool.
"A celebrated writer, who fourished
under Julius Caesar, tells us that the flowers
OF the violet were not only used to adulter-
ate or counterfeit the celebrated blue OF
Athens, but were also employed to moderate
hunger, to cure ague and inflammation of
the lungs. etc., and the blossoms worn as
garlands were considered as a charm against
falling sickness.
The Columbus celebration at the Span
tsh port of Palos, from which the navigator
sailed, will begin on August and continue
to October Is. The announcement of the
opening of the festivities will be made by
heralds going abont the streets with trum-
pets and cymbals. The whole celebration
will be very picturesque. and as romantic as
the Spanish mind.
in Portugal Belgium and some parts of
France it is usual to add the maiden name
of the wife to the husbands name. For
instance, if NJ. Lemaire marries Mile. Motto,
they are known as Monsieur Madame Le-
maire Motto, though when spoken to they
would always be addressed as Lemaire. II
their son should marry Nj. Obry ne and his
wife would be called Lemaire Obry.
The discoveries and inventions of the
nineteenth century have most of them been
nnte-dated in the very morning of human
The manufacture of liquid glass
was an art known to the ancients, and the
science of making steel produced the Dam
ascus blade, with its keen and sinuous elias
ITCHY, centuries before the cutters of Shelf
field could make respectable pair of scis-
SorS.
The natives of the Philippine Islands
have many peculiar notions and practices
One of the rudest acts, in their eyes, Is to
step over a person asleep on the floor,
Sleeping Is with them a very solemn matter.
They are strongly averse to waking anyone,
the idea being that during sleep the soul is
absent from the body, and may not have
time to return if slumber is suddenly
broken.
The mightiest of gunpowder blasts in
connection with railway works, If not the
very greatest blast ever exploded, was that
by which Sir William Cubitt blew away,
with one charge of 1900 pounds of gum
powder, the entire mass of the Round Down
Cliff. which rose to the height OF $50 feet
above the level of the sea, within few miles
of Dover. The dislodged stuff covered a
space of more than ID acres.
"A gentleman who has recently returned
from Abyssinia, says curious custom pre-
walls there. If q young man wishes to be
adopted as the son of one of superior wealth
and station, he takes the latter's hand, and,
sucking one of his fingers, declares himself
his child by adoption, whereupon the new
parent, although he should hold q financial
position analogous to the Rothschilds, would
be bound to assist him to the best of his
ability.
An account of tree-climbing pig
comes from Australia. For a number Of
years wild pigs have been numerous in
Queensland, and the theory is that the COM
mon pig has been changed, partly by neceS-
stiles of his wild life, into the variety dis
covered. The fore feet are furnished with
{ -ook-lilze claws, but the hind ones with only
TWO hooks upon each hoof The tail Is
thick, about q foot long, and curled like the
dgure 8.
Primitive man originally subsisted on
diet consisting purely of fruits and roots;
put he soon became omniv orous from neces-
;ity, and his stomach readily adapted itself
70 every kind of food. II the Darwinian
,heory be accepted, and the descent OF man
rom cimian ancestors be granted, we have
urther argument in support OF the fact that
1esh eating was the outcome of civilization
Ind climatic necessity rather than OF
natural craving.