Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-09-30
CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS
ENGLAND Is as large as Iowa.


Trains In Russia run % miles an hour
Great Britain is reported to have liz, 500
locomotives.
Iron pavements were first laid in Lon
don in the year 1871
"A woman in Cincinnati has bed quiis
which contains 1,1l6 pieces Of silk.
About 1000 stump speakers are :"
present said to be at work in this campaign.
New Jersey courts have decided tnas
oysters are not real estate, but persons'
property.
On several of the railroads in Russia
iron telegraph poles are to be subsntuteo
for wooden ones.
"A hunge timber raft, comprising o,Ooo,.
900 feet and valued at s75,00o. was toweo inSo
San Francisco Bay last week.
In Bremen the textile factories are
working half time, as their trade mas Deen
embarrassed by the cholera quarantine
"A professional billiard expert o. View
York prophesies that two-ball billiards VIII
be the great professional game within tne
next few years.
France has imposed tax on travelling
bicyclists. Every foreign wheelman who
enters the Republic will be obliged TO Fay
duty of from $l5 to $50 on his machine.
There is large carriage mandatory in
which the chief art decorator is q woman,
Caroline Kilby, who has 20 women employed
in the department which she controls.
Two land grants, said to bear the
signatures OF John Adams and Martin Van
Buren,, were recently found in lot of waste
paper at the paper mill in Palmyra, Micht-
gan.
The Japanese Government contemplates
the construction of six lines of railway,
aggregaJing 800 miles in length The pur-
chase of the private railways by the State is
also projected.
The modern souvenir spoon doubtless
owes its origin to the still existent Apostles
spoons, which in sets of II or less were
common Christmas gift in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
The poet Rogers, whose hospitality was
proverbal, has the credit of establishing
the break fast party as a link in London So
ciety. The ''mornings" at his house arc
famous among the literati OF England.
President Hamilton, of the National
Burial Case Association, now in session in
Chicago, uses a gavel that is said to be made
of an artificial skull, with an arm bone for
the handle-quite humerus arrangement.
Earrings are no longer fashionable, and
the best dressed women appear now at the
opera and ball without even the solitaire,
pearl or turquoise screw which was the
gradual abandoning of the ornamental ear
bobs.
The most powerful electric light in the
world is ut Hantsholm, on the coast of Jut-
land, in Denmark. where, from the light
house situated at that place, there is flashed
nightly an electric hsht OF 20 0OO, 900 candle
power.
An English physician who mas made
study of bronchial diseases says that women
teachers are subject to a peculiar throat
affection He recommends that they be
taught in training schools how to manage
the voice.
The sea water originally put in the
great aquariums at the Crystal Palace,
Sydenham, in 1854, is still used there having
been used over and over since that time,
record without parallel in the history OF
similar institutions
japanese china for everything is used
now. There are red and blue and gold tea
ets,pink and blue china boxes for the dress
ing table to hold cold cream. powder, etc,
and whole table services in the light and
dark blue varieties are no novelty.
1t appears that a colored or dark pig
ment in the olfactory regions Is essential to
perfect smell. In cases where animals are
pure white they are usually totally devoid
OF both smell and taste, and some, the white
cat tor instance, are almost invariably deaf.
Much of the paper money used in the
Spanish-American Republics is engraved in
New York and it not unfrequently happens
that the same firm of banknote makers IL
called upon to furnish currency for sue
cessive revolutionary governments In the
same Republic.
The announcement of forthcoming
wedding contains the request that the old
custom of throwing rice and flowers should
be dispensed with. Throwing a slipper after
the bride is an old Saxon custom, but throw
ing rice is Oriental, and in England dates
only from the time OF the Indian nabobs.
Insects generally breathe through
special pores in various parts of their body,
and If these pores are closed by oil they are
suffocated. Anyone may test this by drop.
ping sweet oil on the thorax or back of q
wasp; it very soon dies. For this reason oil
has been found one OF the best things to use
for the destruction of Insects.
M. Adam Paulsou, of the Royal Danish
Academy, has been conducting a series Of
experiments to measure the heights of the
aurora borealis. At Godthaab the approxi-
mate height was from one to four miles, at
Spitzenburg from one-third of a mile to 18
miles. The measurements were made with
theodolites.
In Kiukiang there is man who has
taken a vow to watch three years at his
mothers grave, during which period he will
lively entirely in a small hut His neighbors
provide for him. He will not wash himself.
The straw upon which he lies will not be re-
moved, nor will he change his clothes. He
speaks to no one, and spends his time NUT
tering prayers and burning incense.
The first Presidential election to be de-
termined by the popular vote cast in the
several States and not by the choice cf cleo
tors by the respective Legislatures, was thas
of 1924, when Andrew jackson, Henry Clay,
John Quincy Adams and William Ii. Craw-
ford were the opposing candidates. The
total vote cast then was 352, 002, which was
5. 600 less than the total vote of Texas polled
four years ago.
The Malayan savsges know that it 10
possible for q plant or flower to be real
oddity, for botanist5 tell us that they have
an extraordinary flower which is known to
them by name which signifies wonder.
Wonder" 1t is a flower, and flower only,
having neither leaves, stem nor root 1t Is
q gIobular parasite about three feet across,
and bursts into dream of loveliness from
the surface of decayed logs and stumps.