The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-08-27
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


told in the Literary Digest. A working
man engaged in casting metal for the man
ufacture OF ordnance in the WOOlwich ar
senal lost his balance and fell into a chal-
oron containing twelve tons Of molten
steel The metal was at white heat and
the man was utterly consumed in less
time than II takes 10 tell il. The war de-
partmnt authorities held d conference and
decided not 10 prOfane the dead by using
the metal in the manufacture Of ordnance.
and the mass Of metal was actually buri-
ed, and Church of England clergyman
read the services for the dead over it.
Smoking is a preventive Of disease, ac-
cording to a celebrated viennese profess
sor Of chemistry. He estimates that the
chances Of smoker catching diphtheria.
smallpox, cholera or other contagious
diseases whose germs are inhaled through
the throat and lungs. as compared TO the
non-smoker, are one in twenty-eight He
asserts that smoking tends to check the
development Of bacteria and kills them.
II is well known that smoking is for
Dldden to physicians and employees in
laboratories given over to the cultiva-
ton Snd propagation of germs Of different
diseases for experiments. Smoke kills
these minute organisms. and what ap-
plies to chemists workshop applies
equally to the human body.
There are many curious trades in the
world, but the most strange must surely
be the artificial manufacture of wild
men," says Parsons Weekly. Yet a we'll
known English doctor in China has just
certified from his own personal expert
ence that this art is regularly practiced
IN the fioWery kingdom. First a youth
is kidnapped, then bit by bit he is fayed
| alive, and the skin of a dog or bear graft
ed piece by piece upon him. His vocal
cords are next destroyed by the action of
charcoal to make him dumb, and the dou-
Die purpose Of causing 'etiolatiOn" of
the skin, and utter degradation of the
mental faculties is effected by keeping
MIN immured in a perfectly black hole
Tor number of years. In fact by treat
ing him like a brute for sufficiently long
time he is made into one. At last he is
| exhibited TO the entirely credulous Chi
nese as wild man of the woods, and his
! possessors reap a rich harvest The
| priests, it seems. are adopts at the art
| When kidnaper, however, is caught by
| the people he is torn to pieces and when
| the authorities get him they torture and
| promptly behead him. Such is life under
the rule Of the son of heaven.
| Paper collars are now made to resemble
the real thing so closely that detection is
| quite impossible, the imitation article be-
| ing covered with a coarse white cloth.
| which keeps the paper together when bent
] by the machine, says an exchange The pa
| per collar, so long associated with sha bly,
I gentility, dates from 1851, when it figured
as a startling novelty in the great exhibit
| tion in Hyde Park At that time il was pa
| per, naked and unashamed, and was con-
| sequently only appreciated by the lower
classes. 1t seems there are but three pa
per collar makers in London, and these
turn out somthing like 100000 annually.
| strangely enough, in spite of the improve
| ments made, the trade seems to be going
| to the dogs. Before the year 1880 the paper
collar makers in this country turned out
! 100000 of these articles every
| year. The number of paper collars made
| at our own works during the year" re-
marked one manufacturer, lis 30 900 gross.
or $4,000. The paper used weighs about
thirty tons, and we employ 100 men and
| women who make the collars in forty
shapes and sizes" Asked as to the larg-
| est size he ever made, the manufacturer re-
| piled that he was once given an order for
a 22-inch collar by an enormously fat man.
1t is noteworthy, says the New York
Tribune, that though in each of the Amer
lean crematories more men than women
have been cremated, the movement abroad
was practically begun by women. Lady
| Dixie, of England, and a German woman
| having been cremated at Dresden When
| efforts were made in the years 1S73-1S74 on
the continent of Europe, in England and
! in the United States in favor of the crema-
ton of the dead, Lady Rose Mary Craw-
! shay was one of its prominent advocates
A number of well-known women in this
| country have expressed themselves decid-
eddy in favor of cremation Among them
are Olive Thorne Miller Mrs Lippincott
Mrs. ]. c. Croly, Mrs. Ella Wheeler VIII
cox, Mrs. Alice D. lie Plongeon, the late
J Il o. 70 faT1 II
| Edith Thomas. At a public meeting Mrs
! Darlington Booth referred to the time
| when her body should be carried to the
| crematory. The total number of crerna-
| tons in the United States from 1876. when
the first crematory was established, TO the
! close OF 1885 was reported to be 4647 Near
| ~ loo persons were cremated in the last
year in twenty-one crematories. In the
crematory at Fresh Pond, N Y, IS bows
and 65 girls were incinerated. The number
OF men cremated in New York is more than
double the number OF women.
The American kind is noticeable chiefly
for the much larger size of its crushing
claws, fact which may have struck the
prudent housewife in the course of openinp
! and currying the timed lobster of com
! merce says writer in Longman's Maya
zine. apologize. however, for the obtru-
| sion OF such fact in the present article
! IOF am prepared to admit that no crusta-
cean is really at home when boiled and
potted. I think the reason for this abnor-
mai development of the crushing claws in
| the American species must probably he
| sought in the generally harder nature of
| the solid mollusks on which it feeds. Our
| English species seem to live mainly on
| true fish, soft crabs and such relatively
thln-shelled as mollusks, razor-fsh and
! cockle-like forms. But the American Lob
ster, a great turnover after buried sand
mollusks, makes a large part of his living
OUT OF the very hard clans and other soft
! shelled mollusks of the western shore ex-
! posed to the terrible roll of the Atlantic
waves on the exposed coasts of Maine
| massachusetts, and Nova Scotia. He there
! fore needs larger and more powerful CLAUS
! IN order to crush these very tough food
stufs. Huge heaps of clam shells are oftan
observed at the end of the Holsters bur-
| rows in the west, as are the remains of o,,r
! less protected English shellfsh ar thu
mouths OF the holes frequented by our own
| species. wv"