The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-05-07
ITEMS OF INTEREST,".

balloon. They left at O'Clock in the az
ternoon and came down at o'clock, hav-
ing risen to an altitude of 10000 feet dur
ing part of the journey. The distance
between the two cities is covered by an
express train in seven hours.
in India the military programme for
the year includes the rearmament of the
native army and volunteers with the mag
azine rife, rearmament of mountain bat
teries and the reorganization of horse. field
and mountain batteries. Military factories
are to be improved and apparatus provided
for the making of lyddite. Experiments
will be made with war balloons, and the
ambulance and hospital services will be
improved.
England has struck off the Warrior
the first British ironclad, from the roll
of vessels in active and effective service
The Warrior was launched in 1860 and
completed the next year She has armor
of four and one-half inches of iron, an
armament of thirty-two muzzle-loading
guns, and is rated at a speed of fourteen
and one-half knots. Till this year she
was included in the British navy list of
armored battleships, though Brassey's An
nual excluded her. People in England are
wondering whether many more such relics
are still included in the effective list.
Monte Baldo, between Lake Garda
and the valley of the Adge, in Italy,
was once the center of volcanic action.
but in the early part of the present CEN
fury this activity had apparently ceased
Last March, however, an indistinct rum
bling was heard in the mountains, which
seemed 20 come from the interior of the
mountain. Deep assures formed on the
crest, whence hot steam is still elected
from time to time, which melts all the
snow in the neighborhood. The indica-
tons are similar to the preliminary symp-
toms which preceded the terrible erup-
ton of Mount Tarawera in New Zealand
some thirteen years ago, says the Scien-
tific American.
"A cheap fence telephone system for
farmers has been in use in Texas for a
long time. "A Midland on the south
eastern foot of the great "Staked Plain"
a large number of outlying cattle ranches
are connected with the city telephone sys-
tenn in this manner. Some of the lines
are twenty-five to fifty miles in length
and according to one source of informa-
ton are even 100 miles long. The dis
lance owing to the angles is usually
twice the airline length. During ordin-
airy weather they render perfect service;
in damp weather they work rather poor
ly, owing to lack of insulation. The prac-
ticability of this plan has been known in
that section for seven or eight years. The
system had its origin in Australia.
The mountain fires In the interior of
the state have driven may snakes from
the woods to the fields, and the farmers
are afraid that more trouble will follow
from this source, says the Philadelphia
Ledger. If they did but know 1t, the
snakes, or most of them, are their best
friends. Few of the reptiles now to be
found in the state belong to poisonous
IL
and water snakes, all of which are bene-
fetal to the farmer, as they devour bugs
and mice and form tolerably effective
substitute for the inSectivorous birds
which the farmers have allowed to be
killed off. They do no harm, except that
the black snakes may swallow a few eggs
laid in unprotected places; they will not
injure man or beast, and they are rather
to be encouraged than destroyed. But 1t
would be hard to make the average farm
er believe ali this.
Mr.. Lacey of Iowa, the chairman of
the House Committee on Public Lands,
is advocating the project of setting aside
a certain tract of land in Arizona as a
petrifed forest national park. This for
est is one of the greatest natural curiosi-
ties on the American continent and if
properly cared for it will almost rival in
interest the wonders of the Yellowstone,
the Yosemite and the Mount Rainier res
ervations. The petr.fed park lies short
distance from the Grand canyon of the
Colorado, in Apache county. The trees
probably grew beside some inland sea.
After falling the cell structure of the
wood in the tree was entirely replaced
by silica. One of the most remarkable
features of the park is a natural bridge
forty-five feet in width which spans the
canyon. Fifty feet of the tree lies on
one side so it is visible for nearly 100
feet. The wood is handsome when pol
ished.
"A writer in the Atlantic Monthly says:
We have spoken of the Milton book at
Trinity as being the most precious manu-
script of English literature in the world,
and the longer we consider its constiiu-
ton, the less likely are we to dispute this
claim: Nothing of Shakespeares work re-
mains in his own handwriting; nothing i'm
portant, SO far as we know, of Chaucer's
or of Sponsors. OF later poets, indeed
we possess manuscripts of more or less
value and interest. But in no other case
that can recall, ancient or modern, has
1t been our privilege to examine the sheets
in which, through several years of the
highest creative intensity, a great poet has
left on record the very movement of his
mind and the hesitations and selections of
his art in the act of its production. When
that poet is Milton, the most splendie.ar-
list in verse whom the English race has
produced, the importance of the document
stands revealed beyond any need of en-
phasis or insistence. Now, in the Trinity
manuscript. everything is the unquestion-
ed handwriting of Milton, except some of
the sonnets, which have evidently been
copied by successive amanuenses.
Both the war and navy departments
are at present paying consider able atten-
ton TO the question of high explosives,
and are having conducted exhaustive tests
Of the recently invented matsIte. Senator
Proc tor has introduced a bill in the Senate
nppToprlating 100000 for the purchase by
tbs government of the right 10 mlnu-
facture the high explosive thorite, but 1t
is understood the ordnance departments
are for the present opposed to making the
purchase, believing that a more satsfac-
tory explosive can be obtained, says the
Army and Navy Journal Soma appre-
hension is felt by Rear Admiral OiNeil
that the ammonia in thorfte may corrode
metals, and in order to settle this point
Lieut.. Strauss, in charge of the naval