The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-06-18
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

during the recent troubles in Johannes
burg one of the first acts Of the officials
was 10 close every saloon, compensate the
owners Tor their stock. and then destroy
lhe l-quid by pouring ii on the ground.
A medical authority says that in the
continued use OF the eyes in such work as
sewing, type-setting bookkeeping, read
ing apd studying. the saving point IS in
breaking OF work al short Intervals and
looking around the room. This may be
Practlsed every ten or fifteen minutes. BY
DONG 50 the muscular tension is relieved.
the eyes are rested, ald the blood supply
becomes better.
The finest engineers in the world. con-
sidering their size, are certain South
American ants. Tunnels constructed by
lnem nave been traced distance Of two
miles, one OF them passing under a stream
- yards wide. South African ants have
alsO considerable mechanical skill, as In
some Of their subteranean homes have
Deen found suspended bridges passing from
one gallery 70 another and spanning CULTS
5 TO 10 inches wide.
kings have governed England for Sos
years, queens for 40. and protectors for
eleven years. The average reign of the
kings has been twenty-three and a half
years; Of the queens, thirty years the
average reign OF all the sovereign being
between tWenty-three and tWenty-fOur
years. The average reign of the kings
OF the Angevin sty-thrty and q
naI years-is greater than that of any
Other re-gning family, although the
average reign of the house OF Brunswick
very nearly approaches it. The avera ge
OF the Yorkst kings-eight years-is the
least of all. -Four sovereigns of England
have been of the Norman dynasty, and
relgned Lightweight years; eight were
Angev.ns, or Plantagenets, and reigned
10 years; three were OF the house of Lam
caster and reigned sixty-two years; three
or that of York, and reigned tWenty-four
years; five were Tudors, and reigned
Hnz ha..
six soVereigns of the house of Bruins
wick. which has existed now for ISL
years.
The lord chancellor is the only mem
Der of the British cabinet who is not al
lowed to go outside of Great Britain
because he must have the great seal in
his personal custody, and to take the
great seal outside of Great Britain
would almost be an act of high treason.
When Cardinal WOlsey was lord chan
cellor he took IL with him on a visit
to France. and thereby FASTENED his fail
IN the opinion OF many. The great SEAL
which is a double silver die into which
molten wax IS poured when an impress
ION is required for a state document was
once used Tor culinary purposes. While
Lord Chancellor Brougham was staying
in 1888 at ROthiemurchus, the Scottish
residence of the then Dover Duchess of
Bedford. the ladies Of the party GOT nos
session of the great seal and hid 1t, much
TO the lord keepers distress of mind,
folded by the ladies and sent to search
for it in the drawng-room. At last, to
his intense joy, he dragged it forth from
a tea chest. and then, TO celebrate its
recovery, used it for making pancakes
in the kitchen.
The earliest instances of women as
Stunning their husbands name on marriage
appears to be furnished by the Romans.
The Greeks, like the Hebrews, We're a
single-named people, although there are
instances Of an approach to the, double
name, as, for example, ThucydideS, the
Athenian, and Alcbiades, the son of Gil
MUS. Among the Romans, however, is
found a definite practice which is be-
lieved to have been derived from the Sa-
bines, of using both the prenomen and
cOgnOmen, or christian name and sur
name. A man would thus have his given
name prenXed to the general name of his
genus or tribe, and when he married his
Wife frequently adopted the feminine
form of the family name. Thus, suppose
the family name was Tullius, the wife
would take the surname Tullia. In Eng
land surnames were introduced very
gradually. They appear to have originated
as nlcknames, such, for example, as Har-
old Bluetooth, Edmund Ironsides and
Ethelred the Unready, but these did not
descend from father 10 son. Hereditary
century, and by the fourteenth century
became usual; and this will, therefore,
mark the epoch when 1t became custom
airy for English wives to take the hus-
band names.
Though the sound of a baby's crying
is never agreeable music, even to the most
devoted mother, it has been held for cen
turtles that this was an atiiiction from
which there was no escape, says the New
York World. 1t has remained for the very
new women who are in charge of a we'll
known New York nursery to discover that
an infants screams are wholly Superfiu-
Gus in a well-regulated home. This is the
method by which discontinued babies are
naTgTIa0g1
as a child begins to cry the nurse catches
II up, holds it gently and places her hand
over its nose and mouth, so that it cannot
breathe. The crying ceases directly and
the child is allowed to breathe freely
again. Should it a second time attempt
to scream the same simple and effectual
method IS applied. This is repeated till
the baby imagines that the painful stop
page of the breath is caused by its own
efforts to scream, and so is careful TO keep
quiet. The nurses attest that this regime
works to a charm, that the most we'll
bred quiet is always preserved in the nur-
sery and that the self-control exhibited
by the tots of three months old, even when
in actual pain and distress, is something
remarkable. Roaring will, therefore, be
eliminated from the accomplishments of
the modern baby
The rotifer is a wonderful creature.
says the st. Louis Republic. The chances
are that you are not acquainted with the
infiniteS.ma speck of life and on that ac-
believing everything that is told concern
ing him. He measures $50 the scientists
and microscopists tell u.s. only one one
thousandth of an inch in length. If you
nave paid close attention to the headlines
you are now wondering what we mean by
alluding to an animal one One-hundredth-
thousandth of an inch in length and then
taking up space by describing one which is
infinitely larger The rotifer is one of the
minute wonders of the world, however, and
we could not afford to miss such a splen-
did chance of comparing his size with that
Of his little relative. Rotifer vulgaris Com
mon rotifer) is a water nudge well known
to all microscopists. Ten thousand of
them can sport in a single drop of water
without causing any more commotion IN
II than single sturgeon in the Atlantic
ocean. One would naturally suppose that
such creatures were the most minute
forms of animal life but such is not the
case. Common rotifers are, as noted above.
only about one One-thousanath OF an inch
in length. Wherever there Is a herd" of
them, however, they are accompanied bv
another species which are so small that In
descriptions of the two they are likened to
rats and horses. These tiny attendants
on the rotifer vulgaris are the creatures
mentioned as being only one one-hundred-
thousandth of an inch in length. A half