Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1897-06-11
MATTERS OF INTEREST.
The mercantile and armed navies
the world have 100000 seamen.

| Ahe mercantile ana armed navleS
OF the world have 1908, 90 seamen.
London has penny in -the-slot de-
vice for providing incandescent lights.
Killarney boasts an echo that re.
ports a cornet note nearly twenty
times.
A Salem, Mass, genius has invented
an umbrella that can be put in his
coat pocket.
! 1t is computed that 10000 tons of
canned salmon are consumed annually
in England.
A California naturalist is studying
sea-life around Santa Catalina with
glass-bottomed boat.
1t is the boast of the dairyman OF
Holland that in their country there is
cow to every inhabitant.
Arabs use camels' milk; Persians,
sleeps milk; Spaniards, goats milk.
Cows are rare in the East.
Some old leases of buildings in Bos-
ton, Mass, still in force, stipulate that
the rent shall be paid in iron or grain.
Mice are fond of music, and this
fact induced a machinist in Bruges,
Belgium, to construct a trap with
music-box attachment.
The woman tennis champion of
New Zealand has but one hand, and
that is the left one; but she can serve
a ball that is exceedingly difficult to
return.
A revolving palace, 1862 feet high, is
planned for the Paris Exposition of
1900. 1t will be used for restaurants
and theaters, and will revolve con.
tiuously on central pivot.
If a piece of strong cotton cloth is
tightly and firmly pasted over small
holes in broken plaster before being
whitewashed or papered, they will
scarcely be noticeable.
The cocoanut treee of Florida have
grown from nuts washed ashore from
vessel sixteen years ago. Now the
State furnishes nearly all the cocoa
nuts used in the United States.
Dwellings are to be heated by elec.
tricity in Lewiston, Me-, power for the
current being furnished by waterfall
at Turner, on the Androscoggin. The
projectors say they can furnish power
at $36 per horsepower by the year,
and heat a ten-room house with three
horse power the year round.
1t is the custom in Bulgaria for
newly married women to remain 81.
lent for month after marriage, ex-
cept when addressed by their hus-
bands. When it is desirable for the
customary restriction to be perma-
nently removed, he presents her with
gift, and then she can chatter to her
hearts content.
A curious statement is made by
United States Consul Morris at Ghent,
Belgium, to the State Department at
Washington. According to this COM
| munication the most expensive pro-
duct of the world is charcoal thread,
which is employed for incandescent
lamps, the article for the most part
being manufactured at Paris, coming
from the hands of an artisan who, for
the present, remains unknown in Or
order to better protect the secret of
manufacture. 1t is by the gramme-
Isl grains-that this product is sold
at wholesale, and in reducing its price
to the basis of pounds, it is found that
the filament for lamps of twenty
candles is worth $1,000 per pound, and
that for lamps of thirty candles is
rated at $4,000 per pound; the for
mer have diameter of O.020 of a
millimetre-one millimetre equals
O.0394 inch-and the latter of 0.0O45
of millimetre.
In one of his lectures before the
Lowell Institute, Boston, recently,
Prof. G. F. Wright combated the sup
position that the conclusions of mod
ern, physical science are free from
difficulties and free of all doubt. In
stead of such being the case, science,
he declares, is leading deeper and
deeper into mysteries, and substitut-
ing instead of single mysteries an
ever-increasing multitude for each one.
He instanced, in illustration, the
Newtonian theory of gravitation as
involving paradoxes to this day un-
explained, arguing that, if bodies act
upon each other at distance without
any intervening medium, then thing
can act where it is not, which is an
absurdity; while, on the other hand,
if there is material medium filling
all space, and gravity is transmit
ted through that, by a push rather
than by pull. then the transmission
ought to occupy some appreciable
time, but this it does not do; and at
any rate, if its action is not absolutely
instantaneous, its velocity must be at
least fifty million times greater than
that of light.
"What kind of language was that
YOU were talking to baby just now