The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1899-06-14
FACTS AND FIGURES.
y l|I

Field rats are esteemed as a table
delicacy In Cuba.
Wooden legs are used by over 1,000,-
600 E1glish-speaking men.
The Sandwich Islanders estimate the
beauty OF women by their weight
About 100000 umbrellas are left In
London public conveyances every year.
There are more than 10000 mud ca
bins In Ireland which contain only
single room.
Thursday Island, in the Torres
Straits, exports $500 900 worth of moth
er-of-pearl annually.
japanese do not care much for no
vels Among $1,000 new books printed
last year only 462 were works of fic-
ton.
Owing to the difference in the aver
age death rate, it may be said that
three Englishmen live as long as five
Russians.
Among the 3,405 newspapers printed
in Germany, 6S are In foreign languages
including 80 Polish, 10 Danish and sew
en- French journals
In Germany new houses are being
supplied with floors made of compress
ed paper. They aye soft to step on,
and having no cracss of any kind har-
Dor no dust.
In Fiji there is a curious sea worm
which arrives in myriads on the coast
on a certain day. The waters are so
full of them as to resemble vermicilli
soup. After laying their eggs nothing
is left of them but empty skins.
The weights of classes of students
before and after examination have
been made the subject of recent inves-
tigation. In high classes, where nat
urally the examination was most felt
several pounds were lost, showing how
the mental strain was felt. In lower
classes the loss was not so great.
Tobacco was discovered in San Do
mngo in 1893; in Yucatan, by the
Spaniards, in 1920. 1t was introduced
into France in 1860, and into England
in 1888.
What is probably the most venerable
piece of furniture in existence is now in
the British Museum 1t is the throne of
Queen Hatsu, who reigned in the Nile
Valley some 1000 ears before Christ.
German biologist says that the two
sides Of face are never alike; in two
cases out of five the eyes are out of
line; one eye is stronger than the other
in seven persons ont of ten; and the
right ear is generally higher than the
left.
Some of the wooden churches of Nor
way are fully 700 years old and are
still in an excellent state of preserva-
ton. Their timbers have successfully
resisted the frosty and almost Arctic
winters because they have been re-
peatedly coated with tar.
The fact that skeleton remains of
elephants are so rarely found in any
part Of Africa is explained by an ex-
plorer who states that as soon as the
bones become brittle from climatic in
1uences they are eaten in lieu of salt
by various ruminant animals.
One of the strangsst streams in the
world is in East Africa. 1t flows in the
direction of the sea, but never reaches
it. Just north of the equator. and
when only few miles from the Indian
Ocean, it flows into a desert. when it
. suddenly and completely disappears.
War correspondents were employed
as far back as the time of Edward II.
Scribes, specially commissioned, were
sent up with the English army which
invaded Scotland at that time. But, in
credible as it may sound. not one Of
the London newspapers was specially
represented at the battle of Waterloo.
Silicon carbide crystals or carbon
undum," as it is called is to a great
extent to replace diamonds in the pro-
duction of finely graduated scales.
Small, fiat hexagonal crystals are chos-
en-, from one-half to one milli-meter in
size. They are mounted in a steel hol-
der by means of drop of shellac. 1t
is stated that the lines are much more
even than those produced by a da-
mond. They have been examined and
nagniied fifty times and found to be
still sharply defined.