The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-02-12
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

The only animal which is really dumb
is the giraffe, which is unable to express
itself by any sound whatever
AT Hartland, Vt, a cat discovered a
chimney fire and awakened her master
and mistress by mewing at their bedside.
1t cost a man $25, plus the legal cost
Of prosecution, TO throw a polecat through
neighbours window at Waterbury. VT.
The eye of the vulture is so construct
ed that it is a high-power telescope, en-
abiing the bird to see objects at an almost
incredible. distance.
"A snake does not climb tree or brush
by 'coiling around it, but by holding on
with its scales. A snake on a pane of
glass is almost helpless.
Six thousand people sleep in the open
air in London every night. Nearly $780,
900 worth of patent medicines are export
ed from the United Kingdom each year.
in ancient Egypt, when a cat died in
private house the inmates shaved their
eyebrows. The killing of cat, even acct
dentally, was considered capital offense
Veneer cutting has reached such per-
lection that a single elephants tusk,
thirty inches long, is now cut into a sheet
of ivory $50 inches long and twenty inches
wide.
The busiest time on the Atlantic cable
il. between the hours of 10 and II in the
forenoon. During that time on an aver
age about 800 messages pass over the ca
bic each way.
The tolling of church bells on the &C.
casion of a burial is based on the old pa
gan custom of banging gongs when body
was to be inferred in order to scare away
the bad spirits
In Manitoba you can turn a furrow 100
miles long and not encounter a stone as
large as your fist. The earth, for a dis
tance down from three to five feet, is a
rich, black loan, made by centuries and
centuries of decaying vegetation.
An immense meteor, followed by a
shower of meteoric stones, fell near the
big sand butte about twenty miles south
east of Duboise Ia, last week. The con-
cussion was so great that it caused per-
ceptible vibration of the earth which was
distinctly felt within a radius of twenty
miles, and was at first SUPPOSED to be an
earthquake.
Most people have heard of the old ex-
pertinent of firing a taliow candle from a
gun through the panel of a door, and can
easily imagine the feasibility of the feat,
for door panels are usually very thin and
of soft wood, says Public Opinion. 1t is
far more difficult to believe in the posi-
biity of using a lump of clay as a projec-
tile to penetrate an inch-thick iron target;
but this has recently been done at Wool
witch Arsenal in the course of some ex-
periments for the purpose of ascertaining
the condition under which gas is fired in
mines. A special form of gun was en-
ployed to represent a bore-hole, and cyl
inders of clay were used to initiate the
tamping Shots were fired in various ex-
plosive mixtures of gas and air. coal dust,
etc, and at distance of twenty-five feet
from the gun an inch-thick iron target
was placed at an angle, so that the clay
could be broken up into dust and scattered
upwards. After the first three or foIN
shots, it was found that the clay had gone
right through the metal and the hole was
gradually enlarged by subsequent impacts.
A machine has been devised for type
writing in books. The machine is sup
ported on an adjustable frame, so that it
can be quickly accommodated to a single
sheet of paper or to a thick book. and it
works as readily on a small book as a
large one. Letters can be written without
taking the book leaf off the plates. In
writing letters the sheet may be superim-
posed upon the page of an ordinary tissue
book, so as to make a carbon copy thus
filling an entire letter book without ever
wetting the sheets These machines are
now being used in many freight offices
where they have been adapted to make
WaVhillS u inches wi Anoh hoe
from top to bottom. Ten or more mani
| fold copies can be made at once. In this
| adaptation some of the main principles of
| ordinary typewriters are reversed; the pa
| per is fastened on a large fixed platen and
| the priting point is brought to the paper
instead of feeding the paper to the writing
| point. The writing point moves one space
to the right every time q key is struck
and when a line is completed the writing
| point is spaced down instead Of the paper
| being spaced up.
In a London entertainment hall there
is shown a model of a gold mine worked
by electricity. The entire fittings in the
model which fill a good sized room, and
which includes working miners, lifts,
| trolleys, stampers, aerial railway, etc,
| are all operated on one circuit Near bv
| is model OF a coal mine, with a centrifu-
| gal fan, actuated by electric motor, and
| capable of displacing 100000 cubic feet of
| air per minute One of the objects shown
| is miners electric lamp, in which it is
| impossible TO open the top before unscrew-
| ing the bottom. While the bottom part is
| being detached the air is shut off, the Iamr
| goes out and so the light cannot come into
| contact with explosive gas. An electric
| drill bores a hole four feet deep in one
minute, and the methods of firing fuses
electrically are shown, together with cleo
| trical appliances for haulage, telephone
communication throughout every gallery
| etc. AS a notable achievement Of electric
| photography, an animated picture taken
| by machine standing on the platform of
train running through a tunnel at the
| rate of sixty miles an hour is shown on a
| screen. The moving scenery, the approach
| of the dark mouth of the tunnel gradually
widening until every thing is enveloped in
| total darkness; the appearance of a light
| speck in the distance, becoming larger and
| larger as the further end of the tunnel is
| approached, and the bursting of the sunlit
| landscape on the view give a most COM
| plete illusion, accompanied as they are by
| the snortng and whistling of the train
and other incidental noises supplied from
| behind the scenes.
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