The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-12-22
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

1t is estimated that this years yield
/ OF olive oil in California viii reach l5,gO
/ gallons. But the industry is still IN It's
I infancy. The department of agriculture
/ reports that more than 5000 gallons or
I olive oil IS annually imported into the
| United States.
/ the late Robert Louis Stevenson, on ex-
| hibition in New York. there is a letter
| showing the difficulties which even such
| master Of English as he experienced in
/ writing the language. When invent
/ language" he writes, there shall be
I a direct and indirect pronOun differently
/ declined, and then writing will be some
/ fun" This idea he illustrates as follows:
''Direct-He, him, his. Indirect-Tu, tum.
| seized tum by tus throat, but tn at the
same moment caught him by his hair A
I fellow would write hurricanes with an
! infection like that"
! An American tourist is said to have
/ recently sent his bicycle from London to
/ Paris by mail at a cost of a few pence,
and received it in perfect order. That
/ looks like yarn, but it is straight. The
| English parcels post now carries mail
! packages not over twenty pounds in
weight, and not of a higher value than
/ 500. from any point in England to any
| place in France, at what appears to be
/ a ridiculously low tariff. The bicycle
/ weighed Just twenty pounds. The wheels
| and handle bars were removed from the
| frame, and carefully wrapped in heavy
/ paper, so as to make a compact bundle,
! before the postage was paid and when
/ the wraDpings were removed at the tour
istss hotel in Paris the machine was in
! perfect condition.
The fern was supposed to seed only on
| st. John S night and thus to possess those
! singular properties for which it had be
| come almost sacred. says the Boston
! Herald. The gathering of the seed was
! believed to be attended with consider
| able danger. Povet, in his "Pandemo-
/ num- published in 1884. says: much
! discourse hath been about gathering of
| fern seed (Which is looked upon a magi-
cal herb, on the night of midsummer
| eve; and L remember l was told of one
| who went TO gather it, and the spirits
| whisked by his ears like bullets. and
| sometimes struck his hat and other parts
| OF his body; in fine, though he appre-
| hended he had gotten a quantity of ii,
| and secured it in papers and box beside,
| when he got home he found all empty.
But most probable, this appointing of
| time and hours is of the devils own in
| stitution, as well as the fact that having
once ensnared people to an obedience TO
ms rules, ne may with more facility oblige
| them 10 Str1cter VaSSalage.
The reported method originated ty
| NJ. Nillou of Paris, for disinfecting rooms
| by mems of perfumes is at least of COM
| forting assurance to the sick. As eX-
planned, he prepares special sachets cap
able of dinusing the odor with which
they are charged in any kind of a recep-
tacle, all that is needed being to place
a couple of these sachets in a little water,
the substance, which may be violet rose,
Jessamine or other essense, is mixed with
oXalosaccharic acid, and inclosed in a
white Sachet, while a second, cOlored blue,
contains dry bicarbonate of soda, these
substances mixing when the sachets are
soaking in water, liberating carbonic acid
gas, which diffuses the odor throughout
the room. Sachets with oxygen as a basis
can be prepared with powdered perman-
ganate of potash in one and binoXide of
barytum in the others. Briefly, il is stat
ed, the sachet has merely to be treated
with medical essences or any volatile sub
stance to set free a constant for saturat-
ing the atmosphere Of the patients apart
ment.
Rice is the most important of all the
! Japanese crops. There are two distinct
varieties, the lowland and the mountain
rice. The latter is but ABOUT 20 per cent.
of the whole 1t needs but little water or
sun, and is grown over about q, 500 acres.
The lowland rice is sub-divided into two
kinds. the ordinary and the glutinous. The
latter, however, forms but s per cent.
of the annual crop. Ordinarily lowland
rice occupies Y per cent. of the entire acre
age devoted TO rice crops. This again is
subdivided into two varieties of which
early rice forms p per cent, medium rice
Al per cent, late rice 81 per cent. of the
whole amount of ordinary rice cultivated.
the rice eat ii only on fete days, subsist-
ing the rest of the year on barley, corn,
millet and sweet potatoes The upper and
the middle classes consume the greater
portion of the crop. although it is in much
: demand for export. The surplus raised is
very small compared with the total pro-
duct; 100000 TONS however, were exported
: last year. Since 1886 Japan has produced
| a yearly average of 19S.500,000 bushels. A
little way over 10 per cent. of the product
is used in the manufacture of sake.
"A Fifteenth ward man who has been
a lifelong sufferer from rheumatism has
a queer collection of alleged cures" ar
, ranged in neat cabinet, says the Phila-
delphia Record. One shelf is devoted to
a series of small, wr.nked objects, which
look and feel like large pebbles. They are
not pebbles, however, but potatoes, which
| have become almost petrified drought be-
ing carried for a long time in the pocket
, of the rheumatic gentleman Each po-
tatoe is marked with small label bear
ing some such inscription as this: Car
+ ried from Nov. r. 1873, to May Is, 1880.
Very efiicacious." The collector claims
that the potato carried in the trowsers
pocket has proved to be the best of the
many remedies he has ever tried He car
ries one potato until the return of his rheu-
matte twinges seem to testify to the
decline of the tuber's curative properties.
Then he takes a new potato and locks
> the old one up in his cabinet. On the
! other shelves of his cabinet are several
/ shriveled horse chestnuts, a string of
amber beads, a dried-up rabbits foot
the right foot of IAN eastern sho' crow. .
a number of iron finger rings, a few
horseshoe nails, and several other odds
and ends. All these things seem to have
given me more or less relief" says the
! collector.
) Capt. James. in a lecture recently de-
: livered at the Royal United Service In
D stitution, said that battles were the dra-
' matte incidents of war, but the periods
between the battles though not so strix-
D don Times The tendency of modern devel-
[ opments was to greatly shorten the period
= of war In the first place, the enormous
- number of men called out would paralyze
r the productive energy of any country and
Y the gigantic cost of the operations could
not possibly be maintained for long The
/ cost of war to-day between France and
S Germany, for instance, would be at least
a million and half sterling per day AS
r to loss of human life, it was lessened i'm
modern warfare by improved means of
e treating the diseased and wounded; but al
! the actual points of conflict war was far
e more deadly than ever before. and the
e moral effect resulting from the infiction
of heavy losses was more rapidlv nro-
duced. The waste of life in war, however
1 was due not so much to battle as to the
t fatigue and exposure which the troops slf
n fered between the battles. There were
e practically only three rules guiding active
/ operations. The first was to concentra Re
as strongly as possible at the decisive
> point; the second was to cover the Sources
of the supplies of men, material and food
and the third was to threaten the enemv's
source of supplies The feeding of trooDs