The morning news., 1897-01-01
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

California.
In all. it has been estimated that over
100000 acres are devoted to the main
tenance of deer in Scotland, and that
about 5000 stays are annually killed.
An estimate has been made from pub
lished statistics showing that of $500, 900
spent in twenty Of the leading libraries
in this country a little over $4,000 was
devoted to books while other expenses
consumed $3S5,OO0.
Paris has found it necessary to put a
check to the haphazard decoration of her
public places. The prefect of the Seine
has appointed a technical committee of
artists architects and other competent
judges, to which all plans affecting the
outward appearance of the city must be
submitted
1t is said tnat the ranchers of the
state of Washington are hoping that a
severe winter will rid them of 100000 head
of horses, which eat up their bunch grass
and cannot be sold at any price. Horses
in that neck of woods are said to go beg
gtng at 81 apiece. Cattle and sheep find
purchasers at some price, but nobody
wants horses because they eat their heads
off, and bicycles and trolley cars take
people where they want to go and re-
quire neither food nor grooming.
Some curious figures were recently
published by the Russian government,
from which may be gathered an idea of
the large sums spent on medical matters
in Russia. The figures relate to the thir-
ty-four governments of European Rus
sia in which the system of zemstvos pre-
walls. The ZemStVos are local governing
bodies, something akin to country or par
ish councils. Among other things, they
endeavor to provide the peasantry with
free medical aid, and also act as sani-
tary boards. The total expenditure on
these last two objects in the thirty-four
governments during 1895 was very nearly
18OOO,OO0 roubles (about $9,500,009); the to-
tai expenditure for all purposes being
nearly 66,000,0O0 roubles (about $35 600 COO.
Consequently, the sum publicly spent on
medical and sanitary matters was rather
more than 2 per cent of the total. In
many governments it exceeded the
amount spent on education.
The second bell in weight in the world,
that in Mingoon, in India, has lately been
raised from the ground and arranged so
as 10 ring again, after a lapse of nearly
a century, says the Westminster Gazette
This bell weighs between ninety and one
hundred tons. It is surpassed by the
giant at Moscow in weight, but the latter
has lost large piece out of it, and as
it is used as a chapel, cannot now be rung
There is, however, another bell at Mos
COW, which is used, and is said to weigh
l8 tons. The Mingoon bell is twelve feet
high and about eighteen feet in diane
ter at the rim. The immense wooden
beams on which it formerly hung have
long since been broken down at the
shackle. Tt has recently been rehung on
a steel girder at hight of twenty-five
feet from the ground. 1t is proposed to
encase the supporting columns and grid
ers with carved teak in a Burmese design,
and then erect a cupola over the whole
structure. The bell at Pekin, which is the
third largest in the world that can still
be used, weighs only ffty-eight tons.
The young American Countess of Cas-
tellane, nee Gould, will be debarred from
entertaining on any large scale for some
time to come by the death of her hus-
bands relative, Prince Charles Fuersten-
berg, whose widow is a sister of the
Prince of Sagan, says a correspondent
The late prince, who has died at a rela-
lively early age, being barely 43 years old
was one of the most powerful of German
mobiles, his family having been of sover-
egn rank until the close of the last cen
tury. Some four years ago he quar-
relied bitterly with Emperor William, de-
nouncing that monarch as a bump
tious young prig," and resented
so strongly Williams attemDts to
curtail the luxury and expenditure of
the officers of the guards, that he resigned
his commission in the army, closed his
magnificent palace in the Welhelm strasse
and left Berlin, vowing never to return
thither as long as the emperor remained
upon the throne. About six months ago a
reconciliation took place, however, and
the prince was restored to the army with
the rank of colonel instead of that of
major, and was at the same time ap-
pointed grand master and marshal of the
imperial household and court of Berlin
The prince was an intimate friend of the
Prince, of Wales, a frequent visitor to
Sandringham, and for the last three or
four years has been in the habit of acting
as host to the English heir apparent dur
ing the race week at Baden Baden. He
leaves no children, and his immense es-
tates and wealth now pass to his cousin
Prince Maximilien Fuerstenberg, who is
an Austrian and a son of that famous
Princess Leontine Fuerstenberg, whose
name, twenty years ago, used TO be so
constantly connected with the Prince of
Wales, and whose eccentricities and ex-
travagance of conduct, carried off by
marvellous beauty surpassed even those
of her friend, Princess Pauline Meter
mich.
Now and again, in exploring American
woods and swamps, botanists have come
across floral curiositieS that almost
bridge over the great gulf that divides the
animal and vegetable Kingdoms says the
Designer. One of these, to be met with
nowhere in the world save in North Caro-
lima, is scientifically classified as dionoea
muscfpula, but is colloquially known as
Venus fytrap." In appearance the ex-
traordinary plant is prettily but unassum-
ingly the leafless flower stem, running
from six to eight inches in hight and sur
mounted by a cluster of five-petaled bios
SONS, rising erect like a rosette-like bed
Of leaves. 1t is in the edge of these leaves
that the death-dealing apparatus is set
for this modest little plant which is so
delicate that it dies of the slightest in
jury to root or stem, sustains its life by
feeding upon the unwary insects that
chance to alight upon its leaves, entering
them to their destruction, by exuding
from the edges of its fatal traps a viscu-
GUS fluid, somewhat resembling honey.
The traps consist of two soft velvety
leaves, fringed with delicate bristles and
hinged together on one side. The unsus-
pecting fly lured by the honey, alights on
these bristles in anticipation of a feast
but al fha first tOuob of ite foot tI,o t,f,,.x...