The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-12-18
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


light Louis Benton of Paris has sue
ceeded in taking photographs 14O feet
below the surface of the ocean. With
improved apparatus he expects to be
| able to take pictures 300 feet below the
surface, or 100 feet deeper than divers
go.
There is an interesting conflict in
Germany between black-letter charac-
ters and the Roman alphabet. 1t is
costly to keep two distinct kinds of
type, hence the inferiority of German
Typography The strain of reading
Gothic" print also contributes to the
myopia prevalent in Germany. Yet,
though Roman is manifestly gaining
ground, a spirit of so-called patriotism,
long fostered by Bismarck, maintains
the archaic form.
Three or four languages strove for
mastery in ancient Gaul, which is now
France. German was spoken by the
900 Frank invaders. Popular Latin
was spoken by 5000, 900 Gallo Romans.
Literary Latin was the language of the
church and of literature. Low Latin
was afterward the language of the adj
ministration. German was the first to
Succumb. In four centuries it ceased
to be understood by the soldiers and in
seventy years more it had become an
object of ridicule. But it survives in
more than 900 words, expressing the
things of government, law and war,
and thus forms no insignificant part
of the French language.
One of the Iowa Indians, according
to an Oklahoma paper, is making a
good living by selling so-called love
powders. Little, peculiar shells found
in the creeks, and the root of a GER
tain kind of morning glories, furnish
the sole ingredients of the love COM
polling powder. The shells and roots
are dried and ground to powder; then,
after making a sort of paste of the
mixture, the lovesick swain or squaw
smears it over his or her face; then
the love powder painted person goes
close to the one whose affection is to
be captured. 1t is claimed that the
besmeared person is always Victori-
Gus.
The presence of the Boer prisoners
in St. Helena caused boom times on
the historic island. 1t is suffering Sc
verely from the reaction, so that the
local paper, the St. Helena Guardian,
one of the smallest sheets in the world,
is full of peSSimiSm. Now that the six
thousand Boer captives are all gone,
there is no longer a remuneratiVe mar
ket for St. Helena produce. and veg
etables are left to rot" To make mat
ters worse. the visits of ships-the
principal source of income to St. Hele-
ma before the construction of the Suez
canal-are getting more and more an
gelic in their infrequency. The editor
of the St. Helena Guardian declares
that everybody is getting dishearten-
ed, the island is very dull, there is very
little amusement beyond an occasional
cricket match"
Psychologists and scientists have
been making some curious experiments
with view to determine the relative
length and strength of right and left
limbs. Fifty and nine-tenths per cent.
of the men examined had the right arm
stronger than the left: 1914 per cent.
had the two arms of equal length and
strength and 32.7 per cent. had the
left arm stronger than the right. OF
women 46.9 per cent. had the right
arm stronger than the left; 24.5 per
cent. had the left stronger than the
right. In order to arrive at the aver
age length, of limbs fifty skeletons were
measured-twenty-fiv of each sex.
OF these twentythree had the right
arm and left leg longer, six the left
arm and right leg. while in seventeen
cases all the members were more or
less equal in length.
Words were first written vertically
or columnwise and children are still
taught to write as the Greeks, Hittites
and Egyptians wrote from 5000 to 10000
years ago. Test boy, and he will be
found to incline the column to the left
The deviation was regularized, and
writing became horizontal. When the
scribe got to the end of the line, in
stead of turning back to the right he
began in the space below at the side
where he left off. 1t is almost the
plowman's way and the Greeks named
it COX turning wise" Natural simple
and easy as the pillow mode seems, it
was abandoned in favor of a variant
on itself. One limb of the furroW was
kept. From right to left was stereo-
typed as the conventional direction in
the orient which never advanced be-
yond it; from left to right is the way
of the more businesslike occident.
"A religious ceremony has just been
performed in a remarkable church in
the heart of Milton Abbey Woods, Dor
set, England. The little church was
erected there in the year 93S by King
AthelStan and dedicated to st. Cath
crime, and until the Reformation was
regularly used by the monks of Mil
ton. Thereafter it fell into disuse, and
in process of time dissertation. In turn
it was utilized as a pigeon house, as
a laborers cottage, as a carpenters
shop and as a lumber store, and was
rapidly falling into decay when Ever
ard Hambro, the lord of the manor,
resolved to restore it. The restora-
ton was completed about a week ago,
but has been so reverently done that
most of the old Saxon, Norman and
Perpendicular work it contained re-
mains intact, and an incised "Indul-
gence" inscription on it's south door
has been perfectly preserved,
We all know how prone people are
to advise one who is ill, and to tell
what they did and how they obtained
relief under what they think were
exactly similar circumstances, says the
Philadelphia Ledger. According to
Herodotus, this habit held good many
centuries ago. He quoted the follow
ing as one of the Wisest Babylonian
institutions: "They have no physi-
clans, but when a man is ill they lay
him in the public square, and the
passersby come up to him, and if they
have ever had his disease themselves
or have known any one who has .suf-
fered from it, they give him advice,
recommending him to do whatever they
found good in their own case, or in
the case known to them. And no one
is allowed to pass the sick man in
silence without asking him what his