The Savannah morning news., 1902-08-29
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

The Prince of Wales, though he
was educated for the navy, has high
er rank in the military service. He is
thoroughly devoted to the sea, how
ever. and it is not probable that he
Will interfere in military matters to
any extent. being content with the
honorary rank he holds.
king Edward of England is insured
for about ESQ, 900, while the Prince
of Wales is content with G500,000 The
most heavily insured monarch was the
late King Humbert, whose life was val
ued by himself at Ell, 100000, so that
the many insurance companies among
whom the risks were divided were very
hard hit by his assassination. The
Germans Emperor's insurance runs
into six figures.
Lord Salisbury's father was an &C.
centric character who had a writ
ing mania, among others. Abraham
Hayward records that the elder mar
quis used to 'tsecrete a good deal of
poetical matter" His method of Sc
curing a circulation was certainly orig
inal. This was by slipping printed
copies of his verses into the greatcoat
pockets of the visitors at Hatfield and
by himself throwing them into all the
market carts"
The tea seller is a very common
sight in the streets of most Persian
towns. He holds in his hands two
large brass teapots. The larger is full
of tea. The teacups are arranged in a
narrow tray, which has the look of a
wide, deep double belt. This tea is
prepared with odorous herbs and has
a very pleasant fragrance The seller
ID Ii fos, I1xKS u.
a singing voice in the streets: "Hot
tea, sweet tea tea of crimson color!"
---Abner Dunton, who claims the
championship in athletics at Lincoln
vile, Mass, although 95 years old, Of
fers to run a race, walk or wrestle
with any man of his age for money.
He is lively as cricket in spite of his
great age, and can cover mile as
fast as most men. Another hale and
hearty yankee is Eli B. Bean, who has
served as justice of the peace in
Brownfield, oxford county, Me-, for
f1fty-four years. Mr. Bean is 81 years
cid. He served in the Civil War as
captain and assistant quartermaster
and was breveted major.
When Lord Curzon, now ~viceroy
of India, was at Oxford he wrote an
abominable hand. One day he penned
two letters, one of them to a relative
and one to cnum with whom he al =
ways discussed the faults of their re-
spective relations, and accidentally put
these letters into the wrong envelopes.
He was about to write a profound
apology to his relative when he re-
ceived the following note from him:
Cant read a word of your four pages
but guess you want some money, you
young rascal" Enclosed was a Bank
of England note for good amount.
An elephant hunt on the Muar river
Singapore. The beast turned hunter,
and the man, fleeing, caught his foot
in rattan creeper and fell. He dis
charged his rifle, however, and that
fortunately frightened the animal
away. The Times continues: at is not
every man who has the good luck,
when pursued by an elephant, to be
crossing a swamp so that when the
animal has carefully kneaded his pros
trate foe and passed along thinking
him completely pulverized the said man
should dome up smiling behind the ele-
plant none the worse for his massage
treatment"
Lightning is striking Chicago at
the rate of eleven times a day this
summer, SAYS the Electrical World
Since June l over 500 buildings have
been struck by lightning This is be-
lieved to break all records. The storm
which began July struck sixty-eight
buildings and there were 1877 strokes
reported from the storm of July II .
That these figures, large as they are,
do not nearly represent all of the
strokes is beyond question, as they
comprise only those reported to the
fire insurance patrol. Up to July 81, AS
lightning losses had been reported,
with an aggregate loss to the compa-
MES of $31.7S2.
The meteors that flash across our
vision at certain yearly periods usually
burn themselves out in the upper air
but occasionally meteoric mass lasts
long enough to reach the earth. One
of these 'stones from the sky" was
recently analysed and found to consist
of such minerals as Divine, augite, tri-
olite, nickel-iron and graphite carbon.
The dark color of the stone is stated
| to be due to the presence in fair
amount of the last-named substance.
The interest attaching to meteorites,
of course, centers around the fact that
they enable US to obtain glimpses of
| the composition of other worlds. AS
| chemical composition which marks the
orbs and even the simple fact that 1t
is hydrogen gas which blaZeS in the
sun and gives us our light and heat is
a testimony to this fact Meteoric iron
and carbon, similarly display links be-
tween these erratic bodies and our own
earth
I'm speaking on the interference of
sound recently before the Royal In
stitution of London. Lord Rayleigh de-
scribed some of his experiments with
fog horns made for Trinity House.
Fog-horns with elliptic cones instead
of circular cones were tried, the ma
jor axis being about four times longer
than the minor. The experiments
showed that the sound was best spread
in horizontal direction when the long
axis was exactly vertical. 1t appears
to be doubtful whether the phenome-
non of the silent area is really due to
interference between waves of sound
reaching the spot directly and those
reflected from the sea. If the effect
were due mainly to interference In
this way it ought to be possible to
recover the sound by the listeners
/ changing his altitude above the sea
surface. but Lord Rayleigh has on sew
eral occasions tried this on board the
Irene" and has not recovered the
sound.
The Union Traction Company of
Chicago has issued a book of instruc-
tons to its conductors which ought to
have a circulation beyond the limited
sphere for which it was compiled. The