The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-04-06

within a radius OF ten blocks of its Of
fee there are twelve abandoned
churches. The population in the same
area is greater than it has been at any
time in the history of the city.
The New York Board of Health
maintains a department of its own
where the Pasteur treatment can be
administered to sufferers from the
! bites of animals. The authorities in
charge are preparing for the use of the
| police pamphlet of instruction telling
them what to do when people are Bit
ten. In all cases the dog or other an
irnal is to be taken alive, if possible,
| and delivered to the health officers in
order that they may determine wheth-
er it Is suffering from rabies.
Admirers of goldfish as house pets
and ornaments for aquariums and arti-
fetal ponds may be able to show that
their favorites have something besides
their beauty to recommend them. Prof.
| NJ. l.. Underwood of the Massachu-
sets Institute of Technology reports
that mosquito larvae are favorite food
| for goldfish and suggests that their in
| PRODUCTION into small bodies of water
| where mosquitoes breed would be pre-
\ ferable to the use of kerosene in de-
stroying the pests. Goldfish will thrive
in our natural Northern waters, and
can easily be bred in any sheltered pool,
where the water is not fed by too many
cold springs.
The speaking light" is the latest
novelty which has made it's appearance
in Paris. 1t is the invention of Ger
man professor, improved and perfected
by M. Charles Heller. an electrical en-
| gineer. residing in France. The APP
paratus consists of an ordinary arc
lamp, minus the globe; this lamp is
placed on a table, and is connected on
| the one hand with a microphone, which
can be placed at any distance, even
miles away. On the current being
passed and the lamp alight anybody
singing or speaking in front or over
! the microphone board is Immediately
| heard by everybody in the room where
the lamp is placed. The arc lamp re-
produces every sound with startling
| clearness.
The remarkable flight of carrier
pigeons has recently been exemplified
in the case of one of kse birds, which
alighted in the door yard of Ransom
r. Barnes of Clyde at the noon hour on
March l, says the Rochester Democrat.
Mr.. Barnes son, Levan, caught the
wanderer, slipped ring on one of its
legs and tied a. note to the ring, stat
ing the hour of its arrival and depart
ure from Clyde, and requesting who
ever received the pigeon to notify him
of the time when received Mr.. Barnes
permitted the bird to continue its flight
two hours later and a few days ago
received letter from Mrs. Hazel Cush-
man of Dalkhart, Tex, stating that the
bird had just arrived, making the jour
ney of about $500 in a little less than
nine days.
That hearty old monarch, Christian
TX of Denmark, is to celebrate his
Saith birthday on Tuesday of next week,
says an exchange, and then there will
be a gathering of the most pervasiVe
royal family in the world, and one of
the most prolific, numbering six chill
dren, AZ grandchildren and 20 great
grandchildren in 1898, and increased
since; with the Queen of England, the
King of Greece, the widow of the late
Car, the wife of the Duke of Cum
berland, the husband of Princess
Maude of Charities, the husband of the
daughter of the Swedish King, on the
list. The Queen died four years ago,
but the old King, as simple. and demo-
cratic as a king can be (having, in
| fact, very little to do and scarcely any
| sponsibilties), always has his birth
| day celebrated with a gathering of the
| family.
The banana, says Longman's Mag
azine, was named musa, after Antonius
Musa, the freedman and physician of
| the great Augustus of the Romans,
| says Linnaeus. The sapientum-the
| wiseness-in it's name is a graceful trib-
ute to it as the wise mans food for
| incredible as it may seem, it is per-
haps the best food product of the earth,
being far more productive than either
| wheat or potatoes-the staple food of
other nations. Long ago it was calcu-
lated that it is 1873 times as productive
as wheat and A times as productive as
the potato; in other words that the
| ground that would give 80
pounds of wheat or 80 pounds
of potatoes would, as far as
mere space is concerned, give 1000
| pounds of bananas, and with a frac-
| tional amount of the same trouble. 1t
has been called the prince Of the
| Tropics because it takes the same
place, only to an even greater degree,
in these hot countries that wheat, rye
| and barley take in West Asia and Eu-
rope, and that rice takes in India and
China
Gen. Henry l.. Abbot has recently
discussed the climatic conditions that
obtain along the lines of the proposed
Panama an Nicaragua canals
Throughout the entire year the tenn
perature varies but little from the an
nual mean of 70 degrees Fair. High
temperature and high relative humid
ity forbid hard manual labor on the
Part of white men. The hospital rec
ords of the Panama Railroad Company
for the past twenty years show that
there is no reason to apprehend serious
troIble from sickness in the future. At
Colon the annual rainfall is about 129
| inches, in the interior it is about "a
inches, and on the Pacific coast the
| precipitation is about 5 inches. There
| is dry season of about four months
everywhere along the route of the
Panama canal, and the difficult engin-
eering operations can be then carried
on. Gen. Abbot concludes that the
conditions are less favorable on the
| Nicaragua route. Near the Gulf
coast where the heaviest excavations
are required the rainfall is about $50
inches and there is no dry season. On
the Pacific coast and in the interior
there is a dry season, though the rain
fall in everywhere greater than along
the Panama route.
In. the more or less popular ac-
counts that have been given of the
theory of comets tails advanced by
Prof. Arrhenius, it is generally stated
that the smaller the diameter of the
| oorr,1ScnIe 11nnI1 which fha light iS fail