The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-10-11
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

-Pro1. FheltShue says that IL we reckon
the depth of all oceans at an average
of three miles, there would be a layer OF
salt 200 feet thick in their basins, should
the waters of all suddenly evaporate
If we are to believe the Washington
correspondent of the Boston Evening
Transcript, Rene Bache, "a machine.
newly invented, will soon be on the mar
ket, by means of which the householder
viii be enabled to supply his dwelling
with indefinite quantities of the life-giv-
Ing gas (oxygen) All he need do is to
turn on the tap, and pretty soon he and
the family will feel as frisky as they have
a mind to. This is no joke, but sober
earnest. The discovery is very import
ant, and the best part of it is that the
contrivance is so cheap that even the poor
man can afford to buy one. 1t will not
cost more than $40, and it is warranted
to last indefinitely, requiring no eXpen-
sive chemicals" Mr.. Bache adds that
the inventor is Prof. Elmer e. Gates.
1T is stated on some authority" says
A. B. Steele in an article on Microscopy
in knowledge, that magnifytng lenses
were not in use till about the end of the
sixteenth century. 1t was known long
before then. however, that letters were
enlarged when seen through a globe fill
ed with water, but it was thought that
magnification depended upon the nature
of the water or of transparent bodies,
and not upon the lenticular form of the
glass. From the gradual deepening of
curves, no doubt, the idea originated of
producing lenses of shorter and shorter
focus, until the combination of a con-
vex lens as an objective with a concave
lens as an eyepiece. distanced apart by
the hands, led to the discovery of the
telescope. Its conversion into a micro
scope would Immediately follow for, as
Herschel says, a telescope used for view
ing very near objects becomes a micro
scope"
Tt is a strange feeling some men
seem to-have of not liking to pay out
money" says a business man to the New
York Times. 81 have come across sew
eral of them in the course of my bust
ness experience. am not talking now
of scamps, but of honest men who were
known to be good for all the bills they
contracted, but who put off paying them
until the last moment. One of them, in
response to a request for the payment of
small bills, always had a fve-hundred
dollar or one-thousand-dollar note in his
pocket which it was not possible to
change. If the collector was familiar
with this habit and had a pocketful of
small bills the debtor could generally
find one in his own pocket of more mod
crate size. Another man with whom
did business for several years never gave
me dollar in actual cash. He gave
notes, and they were as good as gold
and he had no objection to giving a check
One of this mans peculiarities was, have
heard, to pay his grocery bill only once a
year"
"A London reporter, who had a close view
of the car at Leith, says that he sat with
eyes straight in front, looking nervously
toward the horses of his carriage as if
anxious for the start, and showing the APP
prehension of a man under fire, says the
New York Times. He had dark rings
under his eyes, like a man who does not
sleep well. The only likeness to his IA
Their is in his eyebrows, which slightly
beetle, and give the face the only touch
of marked racial characteristics He
looked like man who has suffered, and
like a man who knows fear. The car
riage started and then paused, and the
nervous look came back, and instead OF
the laughing ease of prince there was
the anxious look ahead and nervous side
glance. The face, too young to have
much intellectual appearance, is like that
of one who leans, and perhaps sorrows
now because he has lost that on which
he leaned. There is nascent force of will
in that face, and passion-passion that
may do great and terrible things when
backed with such force. Above all there
is the growing habit of autocratic power
to be read in the eyes-the indifference to
the will of others-the splendid isolation
of soul which is at once so dazzling and
so forlorn. The character is there, still
half-formed, but shaping by the molding
of events, terrible and tremendous, from
the disaster of Moscow to the death of
Lebanon.
Twenty ounces year for each inhabi-
tant has been the unvarying average of
tea consumption in the United States for
twenty-five years, says the New York Sun.
England's average for the same period has
been eighty ounces for each inhabitant,
or four times greater. Tea drinkers, as
rule use more sugar than coffee drinkers
10. Tea-drinking countries are the greatest
consumers of sugar. In Spain, where cho-
colate is more popular as a drink than tea
and in France, where coffee is proverbially
popular, and supposedly best made sugar
is, relatively less used. The annual con-
sumption of sugar in the United States
is now 100000 tons, which is about C5
pounds person. OF the total the United
States produce $4,000 tons, 100000 being
imported. The United States pay annually
over $l0S,000.0O0 for foreign sugar and $40
OVO,VVV Ior the domestic article. The Ameri-
can product of sugar has increased 50 per
cent. in twelve years. The English con-
sumption of sugar is at the rate of seventy
pounds per capita, the average of Holland
and Denmark being 30 pounds, and of
France and Switzerland twenty-three
pounds. The expression enormous" often
enormously used by statistical intent
upon establishing proposition or destroy
ing an adverse contention, is correct. in
the case Of Holland as consuming
country, for the total consumption of cof
fee in year amounts to 10000 tons. and
the total area of Holland is 1900 square
miles-less than half the size of West Vir-
GINA. On the basis of the population the
coffee consumption of Holland is 325 ounces
yearly for each inhabitant, and the other
countries with which comparison is made
have the averages following: United States
$50; Germany, 80; France 20; Austro-Hun-
gary, 50; Italy, II; Great Britain and Ire
land, Is; Spain, 9, and Russia, g. The Eng
fish taste for tea has never extended 10
the United States, but, oddly enough in
those portions of Canada in which A. a.;