The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-01-09
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

and the most acceptable bid was signed
MCPHERSON" Notice was sent to the
said Mcpherson to complete the contract
and 10! he appeared in all the glory of
yellow hue and pigtail! But" gasped
the president of the board your name
can't be McPherson?'' IAN lightee,"
cheerfully answered John Chinaman, no
body catchee contact in Otago unless he
named Mac" The contract was signed
and the Mongolian Mcpherson did his
work as well as if he had hailed from
Glasgow.
The Scourge of China" is what they
call the Yang-tse-Kiang river. During the
last 200 years the floods have fourteen
times forced the massive dams of the cen
trail provinces, and each time covered it's
banks with thousands of human corpses.
In 1893 its inundation ravaged the province
of Hu-Pae to an extent which can be re-
trieved only by the labors OF many sue
cessive generations. Another terrible flood
occurred a few years since, which spread
its havoc over an area of $4,000 square
miles in the most densely populated dis
tr.cts of China The loss of life on that
occasion has been estimated a 10000
even after deducting the hundreds of
thousands that succumbed to the subse-
quent famine and those slain by maui
rauders and hunger-crazed cannibals.
There is a barber in Kensington, says
the Philadelphia Record, who has trained
a number of common sparrows from the
street to fly in and out of his shop at will.
The birds are never molested by the bar
ber's customers, who have grown as fond
of them as the barber himself. The spar
rows simply own the shop whenever they
want to, and they have learned some very
amusing tricks under the tutelage of their
friend. Some times, when the room is
pretty well filled with the chipping little
fellows, the barber will make a sweep with
his hand and pretend to catch a fly. I'M
mediately all the birds win flutter over to
him and perch upon his arms, shoulders,
or knees, and watch the hand in which
the fly is supposed to be imprisoned The
barber opens his hand gradually, one fin
ger at a time, While the birds sit with
heads cooked to one side, eXpectantly
waiting for the prize. If there should
happen to be a fly there, which is seldom
the case this weather, there is a grand
rush and scramble of chirping rivals
The naAralists, according to the st.
Louis Republic, have not as yet been able
to answer the burning question: Can
bees hear?" but their researches along
that line have resulted in many queer dis
coveries. Simply because a bee has no
ears on the side of his head, it is no sign
without some
sort of an auditory nerve This last as
sertion is proven by the fact that grass
hoppers, crickets, locusts and flies all have
their ears situated in queer places-In-
der the wings, on the middle of the body.
and even on the sides of their legs. The
common house fly does his hearing by
means of some little rows of corpuscics,
which are situated on the knobbed
threads which occupy the places which are
taken up by the hind wings of other species
of insects. The garden slug or shelless
snail has his organs of hearing situated
on each side of his neck, and the com
mon grasshopper has them on each of his
broad, fiat thighs. In some of the smaller
insects they are at the bases of the wings,
and in others on the bottom of the feet!
Speaking of hunting, a correspondent
of the News Orleans Times-D Democrat says
that nearly 500, 600 head of game have been
killed by the earl of Grey during the last
twenty years. He was only Is years old
when this record commenced, and to give
an idea of the rapidity with which he
shoots, it may be stated that in December,
1884, he shot at fifty pheasants in three
minutes, and killed forty-nine of them.
In this immense total, which places the
earl at the head of the sporting shots of
the old world, are included eleven tigers,
several rhnoceroS and elephants, a num-
Der OF hons, olson. RUSSIAN ana ROCKY
Mountain bears and wolves. The earl is
the eldest son of the marquis of Ripon,
and bears the family name of Robinson.
He spent some time at Washington as
secretary to the special embassy of his
father in connection with the Alabama
claims, and is married to the widowed
countess of Lonsdale, sister of Michael
Herbert, who while charge d'affaires of
Great Britain in the United States mar
ried the daughter of Richard Wilson of
New York. Curiously enough, the man
who comes next to lord de Grey's sporting
record is Lord Walsingham, whose pa
tronymic is de Grey, although he is no rel
alive whatsoever of Lord Ripon's rather
homely son and heir.
The machete, in the hands of the in
surgent Cubans, is knife about two feet
long, with a blade very slightly curved
at the end and unprOVided with a hand
guard. 1t is a deadly weapon for close
fighting, but has the disadvantage of be-
ing only cutting knife. 1t cannot be
used to advantage for thrusting. These
disadvantages have been realized in ac-
tual warfare, says the New York Herald,
and consequently the insurgents have
placed an order with German and Eng
lish firms for the manufacture and ship
ment to Cuba of a weapon that the nsurg-
enIs have decided is the ideal one for their
use. 1t is machete with a short hand
guard and a blade twenty-eight inches
long and two and a half inches across
in the widest part. 1t will make a weap-
on that in the hands of men who have been
used from boyhood to welding a heavy
cutting implement, will prove a deadly one
at close quarters. The still more elab-
crate machete that are made for the use
of officers are shaped more like an ordin-
airy army sword than a machete. These
officers swords look pretuer than the ug-
ly business-like machete made for the
rank and file, but the officers themselves
do not take kindly to them, preferring a
weapon that is guaranteed in the right
hands to decapitate a man as easily as a
knife slices a lemon.
in the course of speech the other
day Congressman Brosius of Pennsylva-
MIA gave this account of the beginning of
civil service reform: In the reign of Ed
ward ii, l3OS-l327, it is said there were
kept in a tower in London six horse
shoes and sixty-one nails, which, by an
Gent custom, the sheriffs of London were
compelled to count when they were sworn
into office. Their ability to do so was
regarded as proof of sufficient education