The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-09-18
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


Royal Ulster Yacht Club flag, which
the Shamrock flies. THE tradition"
says the Chronicle, els a weird one.
Two Irish ehieftains sailed with sails
on the sea in a contest for the crown.
Whoever first touched the shore should
be King. O'Neill, seeing his competi-
tor just ahead, took the rule literally
and. cutting of his hand, flung it on
land. Thus he conquered and thus
he ruled. Sir Thomas Upton takes
the legend TO heart in the true spirit
OF il. which he reads as a lesson that
the competition should be a keen one.
demanding every sacrifice and strain
ing every nerve"
A test to show the presence Of for
malin in milk where il is used as a
preservative was recently announced
by Gustav Luebert at a recent meeting
of the American Chemical Society. He
tells us that if five grains OF potassium
sulphate be placed in a flask and FIVE
cubic centimetres of milk be poured
over il, and ten cubic centimeters of
strong sulphuric acid poured down the
side of the flask We have delicate
means of detecting formalin. After the
above treatment the flask is allowed
to stand. When formalin is present a
violet coloration takes place in a few
minutes. If no formaldehyde had been
added to the milk ii will assume a
brown color, rapidly changing to black.
This test is sensitive TO dilution of at
least one part of formalin in 100000
parts Of milk.
1t will perhaps be startling to the
Bostonians for them to learn that their
far famed culinary chef d'oeuvre, Bos-
ton baked beans, is produced more than
2.G00 miles from the waters in which
sport the sacred Goldfish, says a Wash
ington dispatch. Indeed, authorities at
the Agricultural Department say that
for many years nearly the entire out
put of beans was grown in California,
instead of Massachusetts or any of the
| New England states. The bulk of the
crop of California beans is produced in
one county, Ventura, whose soil and
climate are specially adapted to the
raising of that peculiar variety of
beans that all good Bostonians are sup
posed to eat for breakfast every Sun
| day morning. 1t is said that hun
dreds of thousands of dollars are in
vested in the bean industry in this
specially favored county of California.
An Inca mummy in the Peruvian
exhibit at the Pan-American Exposition
recalls the fact that an English coro-
ner actually held an inquest on a sim
liar specimen. says a Buffalo CORE
spondent. In April. 1899. a Peruvian
mummy arrived at Liverpool on a
steamship and was to be forwarded to
London by rail. In some way or other
| the box containing the mummy got
mislaid. Some time later a clerk open
| ed it and was Mortified to discover it's
contents. He at once notified the coro-
| ner. who took charge of the box. A So
Der British jury. in considering the
matter, returned verdict to the effect
that "she died on some date unknown
in some foreign country, and they were
satisfied that the body did not show
any sign of crime in this country" The
matter is again called to public atten-
ton by suit which the owner of the
mummy has brought against the rail-
way company.
According to Engineering, the Rus
sian Hydro Technical Congress has re-
Gently been seriously considering the
project of constructing a canal between
the Black and Caspian seas. The in
| dustrial center of Russia keeps steadily
moving southwark, owing to the devel-
opment of the naphtha, iron and coal
| industries. AT present the yield of
naphtha in that part of the empire
amount to some 400, 000. 900 pools (about
400. 900 tons) annually, and that of
| coal to 900 900, 900 pools 90, 500, 900 tons)
The existing railways are even now
unable to satisfactorily handle the
large traffic, and new means of trans
portation are urgently needed. The
proposed canal to have a depth Of %
feet and a breadth of $50 feet. 1t is to
commence at Astrachan, and its termi-
nus will be at the roads of Taganrog.
on the Azov sea. The estimated cost
is 40,000,000 roubles ($2O 600 .0O0).
Timed ants" are the latest deli
cacy which our British cousins propose
to give us. A syndicate is at work
over there collecting and canning form
| icidae, with a view to putting them on
/ the market. One London paper re-
marks with a smack of the lips: Ants
| are now regarded as a great delicacy.
and the only trouble is that there is
not enough of them 1t is said that
men working in cold climates, far to
the north, first found out how good
| ants were. In cold regions a man de-
yelops desire for something sour,
| and, as pickles were hard to get, they
tried ants and found them a palatable
substitute. 1t is not hard to collect a
quart pail full. and, after killing them
by scalding, the ants are spread on a
| Doard ana dried IN the sun. When
ready to eat they look like coarse
brown powder, and have an agreeable.
aromatic smell. Here is a chance for
epicures to cultivate another acquired
taste" 1t is doubtful If canned ants
ever will become really popular as an
article of food. however.
"A Berlin cable says: An eminent
throat specialist here has discovered
that the perfume of certain strong
! smelling flowers is particularly dan
gerous to the voice He specially men
! tons the violet, the rose, the lily of
the valley, the narcissus and the white
| lilac. He asserts that a singer can
never sing so clearly in a room where
the scent of flowers prevails. The
| known vocalist, Maris Sasse in
formed her doctor that once between
acts she lost her voice from smelling
violets. Christine Nilsson discovered
that the perfume of roses impaired her
voice and carefully removed all strong
smelling flowers from her house SINH
lar testimony is given by the famous
| bass singer, Delmas. Nine Rene Rich
ard, the great Paris teacher of sing
ing, noticed that girls who came to
her classes wearing flowers always
| sang better when the flowers were re-
| moved into another room Faure. an
other great authority, says violets are
| most dangerous, their perfume being as
hurtful as tobacco or alcohol
The construction by the Pennsyl-