The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-01-16
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


colleges. libraries, charities and the like,
aside from their ordinary income, as
against 1885,, Ils in 1894.
in the Sea OF Galilee-Or Lake Tiberias.
as il is often caIled-there is a strange
fish named the Chromfs Simonis which
IS more careful Of its young than fish
generally are. says Public Opinion. The
male fish takes the eggs in its mouth and
keeps them in his natural side pockets,
where they are regularly Matched. and re-
main until able 10 shift for themselves.
BY this ingenious arrangement the brood
Is comparatively guarded against its nat
ural enemies; IL Is easily fed, too. but il
is puzzle how the little ones escape be
ing eaten alive. y month ago, says
| traveller. l found in my net number
OF ChrOmis SimOnis without eyes. Oth-
ers Of the species. when lifted them up,
dropped a number of little fishes out OF
their mouths, which swan away hastily.
1t is getting to be quite the proper
thing nowadays. says the Washington
Star. TO make your own after-dinner cof-
fee in the dining room or parlOr instead OF
having it brought in, lukewarm and per
haps not half strong enough, from the
kitchen. There are all sorts of dainty cof-
fee pots made for this purpose, rather or
namental than otherwise, and lots of men
/ pride themselves on their ability to make
q cup OF coffee that is fit for a king. With
| powdered coffee and steady-burning alcO-
| hol flame the trick is not a hard one to
| learn, and the result is a beverage as clear
| as amber but as black as the inside Of an
| ELnlODldlS pocket on a dark night. II Is
| a pretty sight, too, to see a young matron
presiding over a pretty copper outfit, and
| it goes way ahead of 5 O'Clock tea. Then,
which is no small consideration. your col
| fee is steaming hot when poured into the
! little eggshell cups. and the aroma that
| fills the cir Is not the least part OF the
/ charm. Which reminds me of an old prov
! erb relating to after-dinner coffee. The
| Spanish use it. though it may not be orig
inal with them. They say that coffee, TO
| be good. must be 'as strong as love as
| sweet as life, as black as death, and as hot
| as hell" The quotation may not be liter
! al, but it will do.
| One Of the greatest combinations of
natural and artificial curiosities on the
coast of California is called the Devils
| Pump. The pholas or shell miners, a
! species of mollusk which eXcavates i'm
mense caverns in the very hardest stone,
have tunnelel the entire coast in the Vi
| entity of the pump. Water rushes INTO
| these caverns with each succeeding tide
| flow, and, in this particular case, finds
| vent through a cylindrical opening some
distance from the waters edge. 1t is es-
| timated that this hole, which connects
| with the sea. cavern, is 20 to 100 feet in
| deph. Every time the tide rushes into
water to the hight of full 100 feet above
the mouth of the opening. The Indians
! formerly called it by name which sig
nified fairy water gun" but the irrev-
erent white men have given it the title
of the Devils Pump and by that name
| II will probably be known to future gen.
|
| Horn Head County Donegal, Ireland,
| where hole in the rocks is called NC
| Swiney's Gun" says the ST. Louis Re
| public. Like the California oddity, il is
! on the seacoast, and has connection with
| a submarine cavern. When the north
wind blows and the sea is at half food
| the wind and waves enter the cavern and
| through the gun" Travellers who have
visited Horn Head and vicinity say. that
each charge of water sent from the gun
| is accompanied by an explosion that can
be heard for miles.
1t is a fact, not so well known but
that it may be said to be curious, that
the letters and w are modern additions
to our alphabet. The letter j came into
| general use during the time of the com
monwealth-say between 1919 and 1858.
From 6l30 to 1916 it's use was exceedingly
rare, and have never as yet seen a
book printed prior to 1852 in which it APP
peared, says an English writer. In the
century Immediately preceding the seven
teenth 1t became the fashion to tail the
last / Wnen roman numerals were used,
as in this example: VIII for s, or vii in
place of Y. This fashion still fingers but
only in physicians prescriptions, l believe.
When the French use j it has the power
of 5, as we use it in the word vision. =
What nation was the first to use it as 2
new letter is an interesting but perhaps
unanswerable query. In like manner
the printers and langua ge-makers of the
latter part of the sixteenth century be-
gan to recognize the fact that there was
a sound in spoken English which was
without a representative in the shape of
an alphabetical sign or character, as the
| first sound in the word wet" Prior to
that time it had always been spelled a.
vet" the having the long sound of
u, or of two us together. In order to
convey an idea of the new sound they
began to spell such words as wet, -
weather" web etc, with two us. and
as the u of that date was typical V, the
three words above looked like this;
"Vvet," weather" web" After a
while the type-founders recognized the
ia "a hn q h16 80 e.f,
so they Joined the two us together, and
made the character now so well known
| as the w. | have one book in which three
forms of the W are given. The first is the
old double (vv), the next is one in which
the last stroke of the first crosses the
first stroke of the second. and the third
is the common W we use to-day.
"A unique and remarkably useful little
instrument has been devised in England
says the New York World. 1t is known
as the. tintometer, or color measurer -
Though it seems only a scientific toy il
is nevertheless an instrument of immense
practical use 1t is not generally known
that the quality of nearly every sub
stance, natural or manufactured, can be
| determined by its color, if only its color
he ascertained precisely and unerringly
This is exactly what the tintometer ac-
composites. Some scientist has calcu-
lated that there are, approximately, sixty
million shades and tints of color. Under
ordinary circumstances it is impossible to
distinguish, even roughly, shade from
shade by the naked eye, or even by the
use of the most powerful microscope. BY
the tintometer, though, exact distinction
of tints becomes possible This curious
little instrument consists of a carefully
graded series of colored glasses that are
about the shape and size of small micros-
cope slides. These slips of glass are
placed on a slide at the end of a double
parallel-sided wooded tube which has two
eye-pieces at the upper end. All that is
necessary is to exactly match in tint the
substance whose quality is in question
=. This is done by putting a. substance un-
der one of the apertures of the double
wooden tube and working the slips OF
glass at the end of the other, either singly
or superimposing one upon the other un.
til the tint of the glass is the same as
that of the article to be gagged. The tin
| tometer is thus able to match practically
every shade of color to be found in any
thing, and then the quality is quite easy
to ascertain by means of records 1t is
quite possible. as well to detect any adul-
| teration in any substance by the use OF
this instrument. In the case of flour
the tintometer has been especially valu-
able, and it has been used with great eff.
feet also in a variety of other trades