The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1894-11-15
MISCELLANEOUS.


haze those we have abused.-Davenant.
-During the winter the shores OF
South Africa and South America are
alive with penguins that have swum
600 or 500 leagues from the south polar
ice fields to the nearest land.
The use of the carrier pigeon is an
cient. Ovid says that Taurosthenes,
by sending a pigeon stained purple,
gave notice to his father at Acgina of
his victory at the Olympic games.
According to Thucyd des, Pericles
delivered very eloquent Grafton at
the obSequies of those who fell at the
commencement of the PelopOnnesian
war.
The points of a crosS-bill's mandi-
bles do not meet, but cross each other.
This peculiarly is of great service to
the bird in forcing open the pine burrs,
on the seeds of which it feeds.
S .humann, the composer. was long
the victim of me ancholy hallucina-
ton, and finally became hopelessly
nSl c. Before his confinement in an
asylum he tried to drown himself in
the Rhine.
While wild geese are on the wing
they are talkative and noisy, but when
they alight to feed, as they do gem
orally at night, they are so quiet that
enc may pass within few yards of 100
of them and never notice their presence.
-Cottonseed oil, now so important
commercially, has been known to COM
merce for a long time. New Orleans
cure attempted to use it for street
lighting. 1t was an old charge of
abolition days that slaves were fed on
cottonseed, a charge Indignantly de-
MED by the Shareholders though cot
tOnSeed was then used as food by the
peasants of southern Europe.
Out of every 100 families living on
farms in the United States, II are free
from incumbrance 10 are mortgaged
and 81 are rented. The mortgage in
debtedness amounts to 81. 33 per acre,
averaging over all. This is not half as
bad as was supposed. The general i'm
preston has been. heretofore, that the
farmers were borne down with noun
tain of debt. On mortgaged farms the
debt averages IS per acre.
The cormorant is trained by the
Chinese as fishing bird. A ring IS
placed around the birds neck, which
prevents it from swallowing the fish it
has taken. One Chinaman will utilize
a dozen of these birds during the days
tis hing. sending them under the water
in regular succession. They were for
merly used in the same manner in En-
gland. Charles /. had an officer of his
household designated as master of the
cOrnCrantS.
Il observe" said a middle-aged
man, in cigar store windows and else
where an increasing number of signs
of five-cent cigars. No doubt we
are smoking more and more five-cent
cigars-p from a desire to humor
the financial cyclone, partly because
there is tendency to reduce the stand
ard price from ten cents to five. Even
if that should be done it would not
bring the prices down to the prices be-
fore the war. My recollection is that
the price then of what might be called
the standard cigar, corresponding to
the regular ten-cent cigar to-day. was
three cents, or two for five cents and
an imported cigar OF very good quality
and size could be bought for six cents"
Almost the whole body of the upper
ranks of the naval engineer corps is
made up of grizzled old fellows that en-
tered the navy as third assistant engi-
neers before such a thing as cadet en-
gineer had ever appeared at the naval
academy. These men have had to &C.
quire in the course of active duty vast
deal of technical knowledge now drilled
into future engineers at the academy.
Such knowledge becomes more and
more serious in volume year by year as
war ships become more complicated,
and the wonder is that busy men, some
of them of very moderate schooling in
youth, have been able to hold their own
with rapidly advancing science.
Among other exhibitions of their
skill given by the detachment of Brit
ish soldiers that visited this country
last year" said New York resident,
was the driving of piece of light ar
tillery, with the horses going at a gal
lop between Instructions that were
scarcely further apart than the wheel
ITdchS, NllHOuJ IOucnlnp tnem, ana
very beautifully they did it, too am
living now in the neighborhood of a
ire engine that lies in a cross street
just off an avenue in which the ele-
waited railroad runs. Well, YOU ought
to see the engine turn into the avenue,
from the street, between the pillars,
going to a fire. OF course the pillars
are very much further apart than the
artillery Instructions were, but they
are taken on curve instead of going
straight, and then. too. they are rigid
and immovable; to hit one with the
horses on the jump would mean to
wreck the engine or at least to disable
it, and there must not be any mistake:
and there isn't. They go down the
avenue on the gallop and they turn out
between the pillars with the same
swift certainty"
Mammoth Harp.
The largest harp ever built, so far as
is known. was that invented and con-
structed by NJ. Neritau, provost of
Burllli, near Basic. 1t was known as
the gigantic meteorological Eolian