The St. Johns herald., 1896-08-15

resume the journey.
 The almanacs of the middle ages
 were consecrated almost entirely to
 astrology and alchemy. The oldest
 printed almanac of which we have any
 knowledge is said to have appeared ID
 Vienna in 146O. Fourteen years later
 Regimontanus, a German mathema- tician living in Hungary, published 8
 series of almanacs from 1475 to 1506.
 The only animal known in the world
 which, on the approach of dissolution, seeks out the general burying ground of its species, and there digs its own grave and lies down to die, is the guanaco, or
 wild llama. It is peculiar in other re-
 spects, too. These animals, in fact,
 have a regular sanitary system, which they respect like human beings.
 A Bangor woman who had read that camphor sprinkled around the room
 would drive away flies and mosquitos, jumped out of bed the other night,
 seized the bottle of camphor in the
 dark and gave the bed a plentiful sprinkling. The next morning she awoke to find the white spread covered with ink spots and the ink bottle empty.
 The Foudroyant, which, it will be re-
 membered, was saved from being
 broken up in the German timber yards, is now nearly restored to what she was
 when she fought under Nelson, and is as near as possible an exact reproduc- tion of a line of battle ship of the most glorious period of England's naval history.
 A midget" testament, three-quarters of an inch long and half an inch wide, weighing only twenty-six grains, and mite" Bible, one and three-quarters of an inch high by one and one-eighth wide, containing 936pages and weighing 1S0 grains, have just been published by a Glasgow firm. They are said to be the smallest Bible and Testament in the world.
 The Dominion of Canada, consisting of the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, came into existence on July 1, 1867. It was subsequently augmented by the prov ince of Manitoba and the northwest territories in 1870, by British Colum- bia in 1871, and Prince Edward Island In 1873, and now includes the whole of British North America.
 M. Henry, a French savant of the school of higher studies, has revealed the power of sulphate of zinc to absorb sunlight and give 1t back In the dark. A powder produced from this mineral gives a soft luminosity to fair young face. A cyclist dusted all over with the same material is in himself lamp on a pitch dark night. Damp will not spoil the effect. Rain is incapable of dimln- ishing its brightness.
 There are more Jersey COWS in Amer ica than there are in Jersey, and yet there are more cows in Jersey than in any other similar area. England has twenty COWS to every 100 acres. Jer- sey has fifty-eight, but then every farm there has its COWS, and the farms are small, ranging from three to fifty acres, the reason being that the old Norman laws that still prevail in the island prevent the accumulation of prop erty.
 Dutch fishermen make astonishing by means of the following very simple plan: They put a number of live worms and insects in bottle par tially filled with water and then cork It securely. The bottle is dropped in- to the water, the fisherman sinking his lines alongside. It appears that the sight of the wriggling contents of the bottle so excites the appetite of the f1nny tribes that they fall easy victims to the bated hooks.
 There has been great complaint of ate by foreigners in Paris regarding the quality of the coffee served in the hotels and cafes. Paris has been noted heretofore for the excellence of the coffee dispensed to visitors, but for some unknown reason the coffee served recently has been of the very lowest grade. It has always been difficult to obtain cup of good tea on the con- ;inent, but no complaint against the ,offee has ever been heard before.
 The recent death of pr. Richard Sal non in England, at the ripe age of 106, pears out the truth of pr. Saltymann's statistics regarding the increasing longevity among medical men. From he archives of his province Dr. Salty nam shows that whereas the average iuration of life among doctors In the sixteenth century was 36 years and 5 months, in the seventeenth century 1t lad risen to 45 years and 8 months, md at the present time had reached 56 -ears and months.
 There are at present no less than g. | I00 journals published in Paris, in | which number the technical Journals lold the foremost place. There are 'ver POO financial papers, 190 medical papers, TO political papers, 10S fashion | papers, 104 illustrated Journals, 60 | porting papers, and, among others, 8 1 'dpeIs eHllIely uefoleu lo p1llaIely. l The Gazette de France is the oldest | political newspaper in France, having ately celebrated its 275 anniversary: 1es Petites Of1ches Is 2S4 years old, md the Journal des Debatis 1O7 years.
 A citizen says that he was riding on he front platform of a street car in Boston, and, as there was no one out here but himself and the driver, he, n a fit of absent-mindedness, repeated few lines of Virgil in an undertone. To his surprise the driver of the car nnk I'D the lines where he left off ana