The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-06-08
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


one sign of eavesdropping is the reced-
ing tone of speakers voice. Some one
has 'cut in" Acting on this hint,
woman who had her suspicious aroused
said to her friend suddenly: Some
one is listening" Instantly, from no.
where in particular, in a strange voice,
came an indignant exclamation: I'm
not doing any such thing" The gov
eminent telephone exchange at STOCK
holm, Sweden, for the last year has
been experimenting with contrivance
the object of which is to indicate to
the subscriber whether or not the CEN
trail station operator is listening to
the conversation.
Vaccination in Egypt is compulsory.
The ants do not control the Egyptian
government, much to the benefit Of the
Egyptian people. Take as an example
Port Said, containing $4,000 natives and
IL, 500 Europeans, the natives, of course,
living in a sad state of inSanitation as
| compared with Europeans. Is the death
rate from smallpox greater among the
native Egyptians than among the Eu-
ropeans? Not at all; 1t is six times
! as great among the Europeans. Among
| the $4,000 natives there were Is deaths
during the year, while among the H.
500 whites there were 3S deaths. 1T
Is possible" writes Lord Cromer, Ito
enforce vaccination among the native
population, but among the Europeans,
| though by the laws of the country vac
cination is compulsory, it is impossible
to enforce it,"
Wood is to be the newest food, says
Heinrich Reh, professor of chemistry
in Berlin. according to London An
| swers. He has secured patent upon
| a form of animal fodder, which has
sawdust as it's chief ingredient. He
| argues that animals have a decided Xix
ing for young shoots, roots of shrubs,
| tree bark, and other heavy food of the
same nature, and, since experiments
have proved that the nutriment con-
| tanned in such growth remains in 1T
| even after it has become wood, he OBJ
| serves that with little salt and water
| added to it the sawdust will prove to
| be a highly nourishing diet. He has
| statistics to prove it. Pine, birch, pop
| lar, alder acacia, beech, and walnut
woods and straw have been analysed
| chemically by him, and he finds that
the wood has vastly more albumen,
| nitrogen, and fatty substance than the
straw. The inventor claims "a very
| cheap cattle food can be prepared in
this manner, to which may be added
| potato Feelings, cornhusks. and shells
of grain. and the residue from the sugar
| beet after the sugar has been eX-
| tracted."
| The Department of Agriculture is
preparing to fight the ravages of the
San Jose scale throughout the country
| with its natural enemy, the ladybug,
| brought from the interior of China.
| Assistant Botanist Marlatt has just
| returned from the Orient, where he
| sought the original home of the dread
| ed scale. Far in the interior of the
| latter country, where European plants
has not penetrated, he found the scales
and also the ladybugs, which keep the
| scales in subsection and permit the ma
| tive plants to flourish. Mr.. Marlatt
| started home with a good supply of
1 these ladybugs, but only sixteen sur
/ vived on arrival in this country and
| fourteen of them subsequently died.
| The two remaining, however, were
| nursed carefully by the government,
| with a view to fighting the scale in
| the same manner as in China. There
| are not fifty of them, requiring the
| constant gathering of scales from the
| department grounds for food. While
| not expecting the scales to be exter-
| minated from this country, experts are
| planning to attack them with the in
| creasing breed of their natural enc
mics.
| British soldiers are to be provided
| with boiled water for drinking, says
the Hospital. "The water will first of
| all be clarified by a kind of rough fill
tration through charcoal containing
a certain amount of potassium perman-
| ganate and will then be 'sterilized'
| either by filtration or by heat, after
which it will be distributed to the
troops by means of water carts re-
served for safe water only. So far
as the method of sterilization by boil
| ing is concerned, the War Office has
| adopted form of apparatus which is
very economical of heat, being so ar
| ranged that the incoming water abb
| serbs the heat from that which has
been through the boiler, and this so
| effectually that although the water is
| raised to boiling temperature 1t flows
| out only Az degrees Fahrenheit hotter
| than it entered the apparatus. By this
! process active pathogenic organisms
are destroyed, although few of such
| as happen to be present in the form of
| spores may escape. Having
| got the apparatus, the question now is,
| What will the British army do with 1t =?
! This depends, not upon the medical de-
| partment, but upon the extent to which
| commanding officers can be brought to
see the necessity of insisting upon boil
L
| ing purposes"
The economy studied by King Vic
tor Emmanuel of Italy in his court and
much applauded by the world has
brought about a ludicrous situation. 1t
| is reported that the 450 men and wo-
| men making up the Kings retinue have
| declared that they will no longer stand
| the bad cooking and short rations Of
| the court, and will resign in a body if
| matters in the royal kitchen are not
| improved. The King has, it is said
| tried to shift the blame on the chefs.
| who have defended their position by
| declaring that they are not responsible
when ordered to have garlic substi-
| tuted for caviar, pea soup for turtle
and are allowed only 50 cents per head
| daily for the meals of the Kings guests
| and retainers. The head of the royal
| kitchen is quoted as saying in a pub
| lished statement: Fifty cents for
three meals Hoy can they be good and
wholesome? 1 would occasionally fur
nish better menu, even If lost money
| by doing so, but the King cut my sal
airy down, giving me one-half what his
| father used to pay" The King of Italy
| recently disposed at auction of eighty
| of the horses in the royal stables, and
| now some Roman tradesmen are calling
| him a. niggard.
Grim forbidding old Newgate pris-
on, which in the course of it's century
and a half of existence has housed so
many men and women condemned to