The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-10-13
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

A report issued by the Russian gov
eminent on the production of platinum in
that country shows that Russia stands
first in the world in the yield of that met
al, the amount reaching some forty times
the product obtained by all the rest Of
the world 1t appears that in the year
1880 the quantity produced was reckoned
at nearly 5000 kilos; in 1895 it reached
more than AGO, the amount increasing
up to the last year, when it diminished
on account of the unfaVOrably wet wealth
er in summer. Curiously enough. though
TINS strange metal is found in the South
ern Ural, the manner of its being worked
up is unknown in Russia; this is done in
Germany, to which country the platinum
is exported in a crude state and what
ever Russia requires of the Worked-up ar
ticle it has to buy back of Germany. The
price at present named is 900 marks, or
about 1925 for one kilo of crude platinum
in Russia. Small quantities of the still
rarer metal, iridium, are found in mining
for platinum.
Though the confederate army. when
Gen. Lee surrendered, surrendered many
thousand muskets," said an ordnance Of
ficer of the army to the Washington Star,
Il have great doubts If 100 of them are
still in the possession of the government.
In the armories of the government in
Illinois, Massachusetts and California a
few may have been kept, but there are
but few. The war department. has a few,
but the wagon loads of them have disap-
peared, no one knows exactly where. AS
an arm the rifles surrendered were with
out value, except in a few commands
where they had secured modern guns.
They were hurriedy and cheaply made,
generally by contract work. l can't state
now exactly how many thousand mus
kets there were but there were at least
as dor
ed. My own idea is that the most of them
were broken up as valueless, though a
great quantity of them were sold as junk
and scrap iron. The cannon have also
gone out of eXistence-most of them in
the same way
In its last session, July to August, 1897,
says the London Times, the Icelandic par
lament decided to accept the offer of the
Great Northern Telegraph Company in Co.
penhagen. This company undertakes to
lay submarine cable to Iceland from
the north of Scotland via the Farce Isles,
provided the Althing, or Icelandic parlia-
ment, grants an annual subsidy of $4,000
kroner for twenty years to the said COM
pany. The Althing has now granted this,
and it is estimated that the cable can
be laid early next summer in six weeks
from Scotland to Iceland. The Danish
government has promised ample financial
help and active cooperation in the
scheme. The distance from the nearest
point of Scotland to Thorshavn, in the
Faroes, is about $50 miles, the greatest
depth 254 fathoms, while the bottom is
composed of debris of shells and mud.
From Thorshavn the cable goes first
either to Haldervig or Westmanshavn.
The distance from the Faroes to Iceland
is-according to the landing place select
ed in the last named country-to Ingolf-
sholdi, $50 miles; to Portland, $50 miles;
to Bernfjord, 240 miles. When the cable
is landed at Bernfjord, where the condi-
tons are most favorable, it must be con-
Hnued overland to Reykjavik.
Prof. Goldstein has been making some
remarkable experiments at the Royal As
Economical Observatory, Berlin, which
are likely to throw a great deal of light on
the theory of comets and other astronomi-
cal and meteorological phenomena. II is
we'll known that when solid body is in
terposed in the path of the cathode rays
in a vacuum tube that ii becomes itself
| a secondary source of cathode rays and
upon these the primary cathode appears
to exercise a repulsive action. In Gold
STEMS theory the sun is the primary ca
thode, and sends out cathode rays to i'm
mense distances into space, and the solid
portion or nucleus of a comet Is second
airy cathode, which also sends out ca
thode rays, always directed away from
the sun. These secondary cathode rays
form the visible tail of a comet. Gold
stein has been able to produce in his va
cuum tubes nearly all the characteristic
phenomena of comets tails and to explain
| some curious forms and movements which
have defied previous theories. The ex-
periments are not yet complete, but he
hopes to be able to explain by this theory
many other phenomena, such as the red
flames and prominences which are OBJ
served around nj aI
and also the magnetic storms, earth cur
rents, aurora borealis and thunder storms
upon our earth, which have long been
suspected to be greatly influenced by solar
action.
There are some curious pictures in the
Dutch museums, which would suggest
that at one time the removal of "stones
in the head was a common operation.
says the London Lancet. Thus, in the
picture of Pierre Brueghel lie Veux, in
the engraving room of the Amsterdam
Museum, and of Van Bosch in the same
collection, and also in the picture by Jan
Steen, in Boijman's Museum Rotterdam.
all of which are of the sixteenth century.
there are unmistakable indications of a
patient undergoing an operation for the
removal not of one stone, but of quite
a pile of stones. In an interesting paper
by DIR. A. Cartaz, in La Nature he an
plies himself to the question as to what
was the operation which the painter in
tended to ridicule. 1t is probable that
the pictures related to operations which
were for the most part purely Fictitious,
and addressed to subjects of disorderee
minds. In other words, it was an oppor
tunity which quacks even at that time did
not fail to seize. In the picture by Brueg-
hel lie Vieux may be seen, hidden under
a stool, a confederate with a basket fun
of stones, ready to be passed at the
proper moment. as the ball is passed to
the Juggler. In Jan Stems picture the
operation is evidently being conducted at
home; but here the operator is not with
out skilful accompices-the matron. his
habitual assistant, with her cunning ex
preston, and the urchin who laughs Mt
the humbug of the thing as he passes
the pebbles, which the crafty charlatan
causes to roll over the neck of the suffer
ing patient.
1t Is generally believed here" SAYS
New Orleans dispatch to the Baltimore
Sun, that full-blooded negroes are prac-
ucally exempt from yellow fever. as much
as they are prone to smallpox infection
There is no rule by which 1t can be stated
who are especially subject to the infection