The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-10-19
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


the line.
Miss Lucertia Estes, who lives at
Head-or-the-Bay, near Reckland, Ne, IS
in her 1Olst year, and reads and sews
without spectacles. Next door to her lives
Mrs. Mary HiX, who is % years old, and
her eyesight is as good as Miss Estes.
The Mississippi river is so low at st.
Louis that navigation is practically sus-
pended. There is barely sufficient water
TO enable ferrybOats to cross between the
Illinois and Missouri shores. Naviga-
slight hopes are entertained that 1t will
be resumed again this season.
While excavating at Bellville, n. j.,
workmen recently came across a cannon
ball five inches in diameter. which is re-
garded as relic Of revolutionary days.
Two English coins were found, one dated
1871 and the other 1877. The relics were
found near the old Dutch church, which
was used as fort by the British during
the revolution.
-Cocuswood has for many years been
used in the manufacture of flutes, be-
cause il gives forth a flexible and mellow
tone; but it has been found by certain
fiutists that this wood not infrequently
poisons the lips. This particular form of
poisoning was the subject under discus
sion at the recent meeting of the Massa-
chusetts Homeopathic Medical Society.
One Of the most common mistakes.
and one prevalent even among the edu-
Gated classes, is that the heart is on the
left side of the body. 1t will doubtless
come as a surprise to most people to learn
that this is all a mistake; but il is new
ertheless. an indisputable fact that il is
the smaller section of the heart that is
on the left side, as careful study of the
human anatomy will verify. The popular
error regarding the. position of the most
important organ of the body doubtless
owes its origin to the fact that the aurice
through which the blood is forced from the
heart into the veins is on the left side,
and when any twitch is felt II is, of course,
at that part.-JeWish Messenger.
-Londoners, it appears. are now ex-
peCted to flock to a new attractions
floating chamber of horrors, which prom
ises to rival the chamber of horrors at
Mmc. Tussaud's famous works exhibition,
says cable letter. This floating exhibit
ton OF the terrible happenings of the
times past is an old convict hulk. the
Success, which recently arrived here from
Australia, after a voyage of five months
duration, and which is moored at Black
wall, while being prepared to receive the
public. The Success has been used for
exhibition purposes in Australian waters
Tor years past, but Just as she was on the
point of being demolished she was pur-
chased from the government by specula-
tors and brought to this country. The
hulk is over 100 years old, and is the only
Ons established by the government of the
colony of Victoria from 1850 to 1866, as the
result of the discovery of the gold fields
of BendigO and Ballarat, and the subse-
quent rush to the colony of, among others,
many thousands of desperate, lawless
men of nearly all nationalities Every
side of convict life in the old days on
board the hulk will be depicted upon the
Success, especially the different modes OF
punishment, and the spectators who have
purchased her expect TO reap small for
tune as the result of their enterprise.
Why for ages, says the Popular Sci
ence Monthly, have people eaten apple
sauce with their roast goose and sucking
pig? Simply because the acids and pee
tones IN the fruit assist in digesting the
fats so abundant in this kind of food For
the same reason at the end of heavy din
ner we eat our cooked fruits, and when
we want their digestive action even more
developed We take them after dinner in
their natural, uncooked state as dessert.
In the past ages instinct has taught
men to do this; to-day science tells them
why they did It, and this same science
tells us that fruit should be eaten as an
aid to digestion of other foods much more
than it is now. Cultivated fruits, such as
apples, pears, cherries, strawberries,
grapes, etc, contain on analysis very SIM
liar proportions of the same ingredients
which are about l per cent. of malic and
ing albuminoids, with over so per cent of
water Digestion depends upon the action
of pepsin in the stomach upon the food,
which Is greatly aided by the acids of the
stomach. Fats are digested by these acids
and the bile from the liver. Now, the
acids and pectones in fruit peculiarly as
sist the acids of the stomach. Only lately
even royalty has been taking lemon juice
in tea instead of sugar, and lemon juice
has been prescribed largely by physicians
to help weak digestion, simply because
these acids exist very abundantly in the
lemon.
There is. says the Cornhil Magazine,
something strange and weird when one
comes to think of 1t, in the familiarity
and commences Of so ancient a resin,
the indurated gum of mighty forest
trees that nourished and fell ages before
man had set foot upon this planet How
little we think, when we put the mouth
piece of the matutinal pipe to our lips,
that the amber which forms ii exuded
drop by drop 100000 years back from
the stems of great pines in world whose
very shores and seas are now forgottenl
The plants which composed those vast
woodlands where the Baltic now stretches
have been driven southwark long since
by the slow coming on of that secular
the glaclal epoch; Of the pine winch
chiefly yielded amber not a single speci-
men now survives on our earth; and even
the great Wellingtonias, which lowered
over the rest, have dwindled away in our
own time to two solitary and dying groves
in the uplands of California. The trunks
themselves are gone or reduced TO Ignite,
but the gum that flowed from them in
such strange abundance is still common
object of commerce the world over, and
familiar in our mouths as the pipe it
holds. there. Nay, more; 1t has suppned
our language with a whole group of
electric" and electricity" and
"electrotype," and so forth--and in all
probability it has given us the sole clue
without which we might never have pos
sessed the telegraph and the telephone
or the unknown wonders of the next gen.
Grafton.
Alaska has developed an unexpected
store of precious minerals in the last few
years and just at present miners are spec,
ulating as to the quantity of platinum
that might be found in that territory ana
worked with profit, says the New York
Sun. For years it has been known that
platinum exists in Alaska and traces of
it have been found on the banks of the
Yukon river, but it is only of recent date
that the miners have given the matter
any serious thought. This neglect seems
strange when one considers that platf-
mum is worth from $3.50 to $3.50 an ounce.
Platinum is nearly always found in bars
associated with free gold in placer de-
posits. Platinum ore, as it is sometimes
enormously called, contains iridium rho
dium gold, copper and iron 1t is usually
found in rounded or f1attened grains hav-
ing a metallic luster, though it comes oc-
caSionally in cubes and octahedrons Had
the miuers who have been working on the
different creeks i'll the Yukon basin FOR
the last two years known the value OF
the globular masses of platinum they
would not have been so quick to resent
their persistent presence in the rifles. AT
present the most important sources of
platinum are the hydraulic mines in the
Ural mountains of Russia. About so per
cent. of the worlds production comes
from this source. Next in Importance
perhaps, are the gold washings of the