The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1895-06-05
CURIOUS FACTS.

CURIOUS FACTS.
Brazil is country of extraordinary fer
tility.
Two pounds of beef are consumed to
one of mutton in England.
The waters of thdGraud Falls Of Labra-
dor have excavated chasm thirty miles
long.
People in Japan are called BY the
family name next and the honor6c-thus,
'Smith Peter Mr." &
A man in Concord, Mich, makes q
living by raising English sparrows and
selling their heads for the bounty. q
An industrious hive of Andrew County,
Missouri, bees lately made record Of
twelve pounds of honey in twelve hours!
John Stowe of Birmingham, Conn.,,
recently elected live frog, which he
declares he swallowed two years pre-
viously.
The longest railroad bridge span In
the United States is the cantilever span
in the Poughkee pisie IN. ~ bridge
over the Hudson-54S feet.
Melons were first called canteloupes
from being cultivated at Csnteluppi, Q
village near Rome, where they had been
introduced from Armenia by mission
aries. ~
The earliest inhabitants of Greece were
probably the Pelasgi, an Aryan nation
who came from the high table-land Of
Asia, passed around the Caspian Sea into
Europe, and settled in Greece and Italy.
Western Washington loggcrs tell of an
immense log, recently foated down the
Snoqualnie River, which five oxen had
difficulty in hauling. It was fire log
thirty-two feet in length and eighty mine
inches in diameter at the largest end.
Mile. Louise de Beaulin, who sper.
her fortune $4,000 in procuring com.
forts for wounded soldiers and gave hex
own services on the field in the Franco
Prussian war, has been officially author
lied to sell matches on the streets Of
Paris.
Twelve thousand silk worms when
newly Matched scarcely weigh one-quaf-
ter of an ounce, yet in the course OF
their life, which lasts only about thirty
five days, they will consume between
three hundred and four hundred pounds
of leaves.
A Gardiner (Me.) pastor collected 1400
copper cents during his itinerancy, and
paid them over to a merchant in that
city the other day. But the merchant
got nearly even with the good man by
handing him back 1000 of them in the
shape of wedding fee.
A Newberry (Mich.) man named Boil
ton nearly cut tree down and was ad-
vised to finish the job, but put it of. A,
few days after his wife was digging po-
tatoes in the field and stopped under the
tree to tie her shoe when the old birch,
without warning, fell, killing her In
stantly.
There are naturalists in this day and
age who believe that horse hairs will
turn to living snakes; that toads will
i've for thousands of years in the cavity
of rock without food or water; that
| the barnacls goose was developed from
| the shell fish of that name, and that the
bird called Sora is species of the winged
frog. 81
The City of London is put down by
geographers as the centre Of the landed
hemisphere. In other words, radius of
about 5000 miles on tie curved surface
of the earth, with London as centre,
would describe circumference enclosing
more land than any 6000-mile circle that
could be drawn from any other city in
the world.
Down to the time OF Homer, who
fourisied 907 B. c., as little was known
CT the surface of the earth as Is now
known of the interior. Greece was then
regarded as the centre OF the earth,
which was surrounded at the distance OF
500 miles by the ocean river. Later the
land was extended farther and limited
form given to the old Continent.