The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1900-07-23
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

public inyeSment,
Some years ago one of the biggest rail-
road corporations of this country employ
ed a confidential peacemaker with the
idea of preventing suits as far as possible,
for personal damages. 1t has proved
profitable innovation and is being taken
up by other railroads.
The Empire State Sugar Company,
which is building a large beet sugar plant
at Lyons, n. Y, has ordered ten auto
trucks of five tons capacity, which are to
be used 10 cart sugar beets from farms to
the refinery. The company has $500
acres of land contracted for Three
electric omnibuses have also been ordered
to run between Lyons and Sodus Point,
on Lake Ontario, a summer resort, to
compete with the steam rflroad.
--On the Jumna canal, at Delhi, mon
keys swarm upon the banks and, being
overcrowded and consequently unhealthy,
they suffer considerably from various dis
eases. When one monkey is obviously i'll
a few of the larger monkeys watch for
favorable opportunity and then push 1t
into the canal. If the poor creature be
not drowned al once, it is thrown into
the water again after ii regains the trees.
or else il is forced 10 keep aloof from
the res. of the company.
Locomotives are fred by petroleum
residue Oh 10 per cent. of the Russian
railroads and its use is exclusive on the
lines of the Voga and on the Trans
Caspian and Trans-Caucasian systems.
The conditions for the naphtha used are
complete purity. without sulphur. water
or sand. II must be of a greenish color
never black. In order to provide com
bustible during che winter period, when
the transport ton becomes difficult OF i'm
possible, the lines of railroad using
naphtha have, in certain places, a series
of cisterns which contain up to $500 tons.
The locomotives carry their supplies I'M
der the water tank of the tender and can
thus place 5000 Kilograms. The filling
of the reservoirs is carried out by sys-
tenn of pumps and piping, these being
protected against cold and also against
the action of steam. series of metallic
filters are placed in the cisterns and res
ervoirs to retain sand and foreign sub
stances.
When and where the first successful
electric railway was built in this country
is a matter of considerable dispute, sew
eral cities claiming the honor of having
been the first to prove the mechanical and
commercial feasibility of applying cleo
trio traction TO street railway transport
taton problems. Prior to 1880 there Is
no record Of an electric railway embody-
ing the essential features as we know
them o-day-Thomas A. Edison can prob
ably claim on good grounds to have con-
structed the first incidentally success
full road in America, although his was
purely experimental line. This was
built in 1880 near his laboratory in Menlo
Park, N. j., and on it cars were run.
drawn by locomotive taking and return
ing the current through the rails. In 1852
Joseph R. Finney exhibited in Allegheny
Pa, an electric car for which current
was supplied by an overhead copper wire
A small trolley fitted with grooved wheels
running on the wire on track and
connected with the car by a flexible con-
Quoting cord served to convey the current
to the motor 1t was not, however, until
1878 that a road was actually built on
Finneys plan.
-Apricots stand second to oranges as a
money making crop in California, and
more of this fruit is grown on the Pacific
Slope than in all other states and coun-
tries. Roughly estimated the present
apricot yield is worth 81, $50, 900 to the state
and the same estimate has it that there
are between 100000 eco and 5000 600 pounds
of apricots in California this year. Small
apricotS are grown in a few sheltered
places in the Eastern states, and there are
small orchards of the fruit in the south
of France, in Italy, and in Turkey. and
larger ones In Japan, but nowhere in the
world are apricots grown on the whole
sale plan of California. The product of
this fruit in California is more than treble
that of all the rest of the world In five
or six years more when the thousands of
young apricot trees now growing in the
state come into full bearing it is likely
that the annual yield of apricots in Cal
ifornia, will be upward of 100000 900
pounds, and that the product of the rest
of the world will be insignificant by the
side of it. Apricot trees are "shy" bear
ers, and with all that science and the arts
of horticulture may do they cannot make
the apricot a steady bearer. year after
year, like the fig, the orange, lemon, or
plum.
The use of horsefiesh as food is a SUBJ
ject which has been brought into promi-
nence of late owing to the necessities TO
which the beleaguered garrisons in South
Africa have been reduced 1t is, therefore
a matter of general interest that certain
butchers in San Francisco have been de-
tected in using the flesh of the horse as
substitute for beef in the manufacture of
sausages and other viands. There is moth
ing unwholesome in using the flesh of such
a clean feeding animal as the horse but
it is rightly considered that it should not
be foisted upon consumers in place of
more expensive meats. In many CONT
mental countries the sale of horsef1esh for
human food is considerable and the
butchers are licensed; and the animals
are Killed under proper sanitary condit-
ions. The New York Medical Journal
points out that it is comparatively easy
to detect the presence of horse meat even
in such small quantities as per cent.
The suspected meat is boiled for about an
hour in small quantity of water which
is afterward reduced by evaporation.
cooled and filtered. To this LIQUID a few
drops of compound iodine solution Zone
part iodine and twelve parts potassic
iodide in one hundred parts of water)
Is added when fugitive red violet color
alton indicates the presence of horse
meat.
The destruction of trees by the electric
current is matter of some moment lust
now The question as to the right of tele-
phone companies to cut the branches of
trees which interfere with the stringing of
their wires has been taken into court, and
the decisions vary in different states In
New York a recent decision was 40 the
effect that the right of the companies TO
touch the trees must be justified by an
existing necessity, and that no right exists
to touch the trees unless extreme or ex-
traordinary means must be employed 10
q Ia I41l-4