The Savannah morning news., 1902-11-30
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Sclences winch IS Waglng vigorous
war against malaria, has decided to
/ send out number of fresh expeditions
to the Gold Coast, Egypt and the Con-
| go. Maj. Ronald Ross, of the School
| of Tropical Medicine, formerly in the
Indian Medical Service. leader OF the
! expedition which found malaria bear
| ing mosquitoes in West Africa in 1899,
Is soon to leave for the United States
in response TO an invitation to investi-
| gate malaria. Maj Ross is well known
| throughout the medical world as the
discoverer of the connection between
malaria and mosquitoes.
"A great step in the advance of Siam;
says the British consul at Bangkok,
will have been made when the govern
ment succeeds in substituting some 9TH
er source of revenue for the income it
at present derives from the gambling
houses. Most of the gambling monopo-
lies in the country are held by Chinese,
and the large profits that they make
| mostly go to China, thus forming a
constant drain on the wealth of the
| country. Incidentally, the public rec
| ignition and encouragement given to
| gambling of all sorts among a people
only too inclined to it by nature fos-
tiers improvidence and crime of every
description. 1t is hoped that in the near
future the reorganization of the taxes
| may enable the government to raise
| the necessary revenue directly from the
land instead of by the way of gambling
farmers.
1t IL not generally known that the
| present exclusive policy of the Tibetans
is largely due to Chinese influence. Be-
| fore 1921, when Tibet came completely
| under the suZerainty of China, there
| was little or no opposition shown to
any European who cared to cross the
| difficult borderlands which divide Tibet
| from China. or the mountain passes
| which cut it off from India. Many
| French and Italian priests came and
went, having established a mission at
Lassa, and even as late as 1911 Lambs
| friend Thomas Manning passed several
months in the sacred city without dis
| guise or concealment. In 1874 an at
tempt was made by the clever Able
| Hue and his companion CADET to re-
establish a Christian mission in Lassa,
but they were politely sent away by
the Chinese officials, although they had
established most friendly relations with
the Tibetans themselves.
Rolf Boldewood has been writing
on "Droughts in Australia" inspired
| thereto by the fearful devastation
wrought in a large section of the coun-
| try. He is an authority on the sub
Ject, for it was a long drought in the
COS that reduced him from affiuence to
perjury, changed him from the wealthy
owner of many f1ocks and herds into a
lstipendiary magistrate and coroner and
| led to storytelling as a supplement
| tary source of income. His recollections
| cover seventy years. He remembers
when flour was $500 ton in Sydney,
| in the 30s, in consequence of a
drought. The Sydney boarding schools,
at one of which he was being educated,
sent their pupils home, being no longer
able to bear the cost of feeding them.
After a review of the droughts of sew
en- decades he reaches the conclusion
that "all droughts and records of dry
years fail in comparison with this one
of 1902"
Scarcity of fish in the North Sea is
causing alarm in Europe. Several va
rieties of fish are said to be leaving
the overfished zone near the land, and
fishermen are obliged to look for them
elsewhere. So serious a phase has the
matter assumed that government in
vestigation has already been started,
and the Royal Biological Institute in
Helgoland has set itself to discover
where the fish have gone. A number
Vi uSH nave De6n Caught ana
with the sign III OF" on small alumni
mum disks. which are fastened to a
ring passed through the back, above the
tail fin. The fish have been returned
to the sea. and the institute has asked
| all fishing stations of the North Sea
to let it know when and where fish so
marked have been caught. A reward
will be given for information. Plaice
and sole are the two species of fish most
81
extinction.
"A curious fact has been ascertained
during a recent survey of India-name-
ly, that the northerly DETECTION of the
| plumb-line, ascribed to attraction by
the great mass of the Himalaya and
the Tibetan upland, is reversed along
a comparatively narrow belt between
! % degrees and "a degrees north latitude
| crossing India from east to west for
| 1000 miles. Here the detection is
southerly, while the northerly deflec-
| ton reasserts itself farther south and
| is continued so far as Is degrees north
| latitude. The zone so strangely ex-
| empted from what has been supposed to
| be a general law runs across Central
India from the delta of the Ganges to
that of the Indus. These facts are
! discussed by Maj. Burrow in a paper
read before the Royal Astronomical So
ciety. His theory is that the phenom-
| enon follows the axis of what he calls
a subterranean chain of mountains,
causing the greater density of the
earth's crust in this particular tract.
-Henceforward you must not Judge a
man by his hat or his coat or the way
| in which he carries his handkerchief,
| but by his necktie. This is the dictum
of ladies' paper. 1t works rather GU
| riously. A well-tied tie, it seems, ar
| cues an absence of intellect. Mr.. Glad
stones ties might have been quoted in
support of this proposition or of its
| converse. They were always abomi-
nably tied and never stayed in their
| proper place. But this new authority
! goes outside the sphere of geniuses.
The average man, with an ordinary
share of intellect" she says, seldom
knows how to tie a tie as it can be
tied, and is tied, by men with no in
| tellect at all. l defy a man of real
| brains to keep his tie at the exact an
| gle for any considerable time. Directly
you see really beautifully tied tie
which never moves out of place YOU
may be fairly certain you are not
| face to face with an undiscovered
| shakespeare or an embryonic Goethe"
An auction sale in Shanghai of
some spoils from the imperial palace
at Picking shows that there is no
mania for eurios in the Celestial EN-
pire. The account is from the North