The Savannah morning news., 1902-02-19
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

! worm has been much extended in Hun
garia, Servia, Persia, Turkestan and
the regions Of the Caucasus.
Dickens says in the introduction
to David Copperfield" that he spent
two years in the composition of that
4 novel. He did not usually require so
| long time, many of his novels being
| finished in less than a year, and most
of his shorter stories in a few days.
The Roman Catholic cathedral in
London, now in course of. erection. is
| $50 feet long and 1856 feet wide. Apart
/ from the site it has already cost $780,
| coo. The material used is red brick,
| with Portland stone courses, and it's
! Oriental decorative features suggest a
mosque rather than a cathedral.
Recent statistics show that the
Church of England provides in England
| and Wales about seven million sittings
IN places of worship, against over eight
millions provided by the Monochrome
! lists. The church communicates are
| said to number 1975,629, as against l.
94o,9S2 in Nonconformist congregations.
The biggest induction coil known
has just been completed in Paris by
an electrical engineer for the Russian
government. Whereas very powerful
COILS only give a spark from % to so
centlmeters long, the apparatus in
| question produces one so centimeters In
length. 1t is nearly one meter long
and consists of seventy kilometers of
WIRE This gigantic coil is to be used
Tor wireless biography.
In an address before the British AS
ISOLATION at Glasgow, recently, Francis
Darwin called attention to the sense of
graVltation in plants. 1t is that sense.
Tor example, that makes a pine tree
grow straight upward. A plant that
curves assumes that position because
lts sense of gravitation makes it take
the one best suited to it's needs. Some
mower stalks are very curiously guided
py the graVltation sense. The narcis-
sus is an example. At first there is a
straight shaft piercing the ground with
It's compact pointed flower bud. But as
the flower opens the stalk bends close
to the top and brings the flower tube
INTO roughly horizontal position,
Where 1t shows off its bright-colored
crown to attract the insects, on the
visits of which it depends for fertiliza-
ton. The flowers are guided to the
right position by the gravitation sense.
and they increase or diminish the an
gular bend in their stalk until the right
position is attained.
From Virginia. says the New York
Post. comes the plant that the pea
nut crop is no longer what it used to
be. Prices have steadily fallen until
now the farmer gets but about IS cents
bushel for his crop; at this rate, it
is said, filters of the soil about Peters,
burg are no longer able to exc out a
living Even a colony of Bohemians.
Industrious, thrifty frugal folk, who
give but little of their goods for pleas
ures or frivolities, have decided to
abandon the venture and move further
West. Peanuts, it appears, cost from
10 cents to one dollar a bushel to raise
ana to that may be added the further
disadvantage of greatly exhausting the
SOIL. Good crops cannot be grown
without extensive application of fer
timers, While the cost of this aid to
their growth eats up what profit might
Otherwise remain. If the old-time OBJ
servers in the region are to be trusted
from three to five times as large re-
turns would have been had from to-
bacco in the last year, for part of the
peanut district in Prince Georpa Chas.
terrified. Dunwiddie, and SUISSE, ouIrr-
ties is Wen adapted to raising the much
sought-for bright leaf
"A remarkable plan is propounded
in the Figaro for the utilization of the
rainfall of the Pyrenees to regenerate
the waning manufacturing industries
of France. The proposal SAYS the
Westminster Gazette. is to dam the
valleys all along the chain, hold up all
the mountain torrents in a series of
artificial lakes. regulate the overflow
run it through turbines, and so gem
crate electric power. This is pretty
much what is now done, on a small
scale, in Switzerland, and notably at
Geneva, but it is calculated that enter
prlsng and comprehensive engineering
might unlock no less than ten million
horse power-or about the horsepower
employed in all the factories of Europe
from the Pyrenean range, and supply
1t at about one-sixth the cost of the
power produced by steam. The sue
cessful adoption of the scheme would
OF course, make the plain at the foot
of the Pyrenees one of the greatest
Industrial centers of the world. and il
VIII be interesting to see whether prac-
tical men take it up. The recent
trouble with the miners should GER
talnly tempt them to consider it,
-Naturalists have long been familiar
with a newt-like creature breathing
by gills and lungs both. and inhabit-
American waters, says the London
Chronicle. This is the Axolotl. 1t was
also discovered that in certain localities
this creature, which, by the way.
breeds freely in Mexico sheds it's skin,
casts off it's gills and it's tail fin. de-
velops another color of body and leaves
the water to become land newt. I'm
der this latter guise it is known as the
Amblystoma. Naturally, the explana-
ton of this curious transformation
rests on the fact that the Axolotl is
really the young or tadpole stage of
the Ambystoma form, but the pecu-
liarity here is that in it's first stage it
should breed and multiply, and con-
tinue to reproduce Axolotis, as if it
were a perfectly mature animal. The
occurrence of such cases can he
evolved, for, had we not been acquaint-
ed with the relationship of these forms,
nobody would have hesitated to de-
scribe them as two essentially distinct
animals. Lately it has been shown
that, while in Colorado and Dakota the
transformation is complete, in Mexico
the AXolotl stage is apparently perma-
nent. Here, probably. the influence of
environment on living being is typi-
cally illustrated.
"A point in favor of the diamond
is that it's imitation is more or less
easy of detection, says the Gentlemans
Magazine. A real diamond cannot be
touched with a file, and a false one,
though IL can be made TO scratch glass,
will not cut quartz. Its brilliancy also
fades, while the real diamond is alb
solutely permanent. 1t reflects all the