The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-03-02
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


queer things which sometimes find their
way into the Kansas papers: "Mr. Edi-
tor-Please print this letter to quiet the
storm raised by some half-idiot who has
been telling that / was going to be mar
ried, and by several smart Alexis who
have made it their business TO ask my
boys about it. I Will say that the talk
is all bosh. l want it understood that
when / want a husband / won't ask the
community to select one for me; l con-
slider myself fully capable of deciding that
question to suit myself. Miss Lydia
Peach"
Two New York chappies who are ex-
ceedingly English in everything they say
or do were among the guests at a dinner
party in Gotham the other evening. Many
original toasts were drunk, the guest vie
ing with each other in devising startling
excuses for another sip of cha npagT e.
The climax was reached when one Of The
chappies proposed the health of the host
ess with Highland honors" While others
were content to stand and drain their
glasses, each of the two youths put ore
foot on his chair and the other on the
table while tossing down bumper The
idea was voted picturesque, but undigni-
fed.
The Brooklyn Eagle is authority for
the statement that Ernest Veughn of
Brooklyn has been obliged to leave La
fayette College of Easton, Pa, on account
OF severe illness as a result of continuous
and hard hazing, such as, it is said,
would put West Pointers to blush" The
young man himself will not admit the
hazing, and even now denies it, but mis-
father, DR.. John A. Vaughn, learned the
facts from friend, and says the boy will
IN bn ha
cause of Vaughn's present illness Is said
to have been a severe hazing given him
shortly before he left college. The story
is that he was held under pump and
his head soaked with cold water until his
tormentors tired of working the pump
handle. Then he was compelled to walk
mile out into the country and back
again bareheaded and drenched with
water He caught cold and his lungs were
soon affected. His condition grew so Sc
Tieus he had to come home. His father
said this morning that the young man is
recovering, and he is hopeful for q COM
plete return 10 good health.
The remarkable romance of Elise
| Hensler, the Boston girl who married
King Ferdinand of Portugal, is recalled
by Mabel Percy Haskell, in the March
Ladies' Home Journal. At her marriage
Miss Hensler was created the Countess
! of Edia, and with her royal husband took
up her home in the beautiful Palace of
! CIntra. Had she wished it the Countess
| of Edla might have been Queen of Spain,
! for King Ferdinand declined the crown
! OF Spain in 1859, soon after his marriage
to the beautiful American girl. II was
! offered to him by Gen. Prim and Gen.
! Serrano, and both the King and his love
| 1y wife decided that their quiet life so
! free from cares of state was infinitely to
! be preferred to the worry and fret of a
| great European Court. Ferdinand died
| In 1885, and since then the Countess has
| lived in retirement in the Palace of Gin
| ira. She is visited by members of the
present royal family and is greatly be-
| loved by them, for they never can for
get how fine and good was her gentle
influence over the King, and they shared
! his admiration for her She is treated
| as if she had been born to the purple
| instead of far across the sea-
"A simple and ingenious method of es-
timating the earth's age from the amount
4 of lime contained in the ocean has been
devised by Dutch professor His reck-
oning is thus given in La Nature Oec
| 2S): Prof. Eugene Dubois of Amsterdam
asserts that the ocean, which gets its
| carbonate of lime from the rivers now
| contains as much of this substance as
| 1t can dissolve. and that the streams are
carrying an excess down to it. A con-
| siderable quantity of this carbonate is
| often found in matter held in suspension
in great rivers, and it is evident that in
| these cases the water must be saturated
! The quantity of carbonate in the rivers
| is determined by the rocks of the drain
| age-area. The author gives reasons for
| believing that not more than thirtieth
! of the carbonate discharged by the riv-
| ers into the ocean Is formed by silcates
| His calculations, based on the quantity
| annually carried to the ocean. show that
| the minimum of carbonate existing on the
| earth would require about 100000 years
| to be deposited thus, and in reality the
time has probably been much longer He
| estimates that the actual transfer of
| carbonate of lime on the earths surface
represents an annual fraction of l-277O-
| 600 Of the total The final result of his in
vestigation Is that the time elapsed since
| the formation of the solid crust and the
appearance of life on the globe may ex-
coed billion years"
r.. L. Ditmars, who has charge of the
| reptile department in Bronx Park, told
the members of the Linnaean Society at
the regular meeting last night in the
| American Museum of Natural History
something about his recent trip through
| OOulH OdfOilnd undertaken 10 ger snakes
for the Zoo, says the New York Sun He
found South Carolina exceptionally rich
in snakes. As a result of his visit the
state lost ninety-two, which represented
| fourteen species. Some of these unwill-
ing immigrants were shown to the mem
bers of the society last night i'm glass
jars, the tops of which were covered with
gauze. A RATHER so nearly got out
through the gauze while Mr.. Ditmars was
| explaining it's fine points that one of the
| feminine scientists suggested that he had
| better keep his eye on the jars. One of
the snakes exhibited was a new kind of
garter snake. II is red in the daytime
which is a new color for even that kind
| of a snake and dark at night Nearly
all the snakes were found in the low
| ground of the state, but the only vene-
| nous ones were eleven cotton rnouth ned
| moccasins. One OF these. four-footer
disgorged when caught a water snake
three feet long. The black bandewater
snakes, many samples of which he found,
float perpendicularIy in the water with
| the tail twisted about an aquatic plant
at the bottom. Mr.. DitmarS caught his
| snakes with a long bamboo pole on the
end of which was a moose
In an article on 1.-THE Sun and His Sys-
tenn" the March number OF Popular AS
tronomy says: 1T may readily be under
stood that with each increase of optical
power new satellites of the various plan