The Savannah morning news., 1903-07-21
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

tural College at Bozeman, Mont, has
returned from an investigation of the
grasshopper-ridden district about For
sythe. He says the insects have de-
voured everything in a strip seventy
miles long and fifty miles wide and
that, as a consequence of their raids,
range conditions are very serious. He
says the plains are dotted with cattle
that have starved to death as a result
of the grasshopper raids.
The juice of the green pineapple is
accredited in Java, the Philippines and
throughout the Far East generally with
being a blood poison of most deadly
nature. Health" mentions it as the
substance with which the Malays pois-
on their kreeses and daggers, ana
as the "fingernail' poison formerly in
use among aborigine Javanese women
almost universally These women cul-
tivated nail on each hand to long,
sharp point, and the least scratch
from one of these was certain death.
"A visit to Mr.. Maxim's laboratory
in Brooklyn is described in Public
Opinion in part as follows; Feeling
very much as though 1 had received
an invitation to an at home in the
cage of an African lion l recently Wis
tied Mr., Maxim's laboratory, and,
with bated breath and trembling
hands, poached eggs and prepared cof-
fee over smokeless powder, hammered
nails with nitrogelatin, made tea in
Mrs. Maxim's drawing room over
cake of yellow MaXimite, assisted my
host in hanging out guncotton to dry
and aided in the Gaping of fuses
that had been filed with illuminate of
mercury"
BY experiments of great accuracy
Prof. Babcock of the Wisconsin Uni
versity has shown that half a ton of
ice weighs more than the water OBJ
tanned from melting that quantity of
ice Therefore the weight of body
increases as its temperature falls.
This is a fact of first-rate importance
in our ideas of physics and chemistry.
In endeavoring to estimate its exact
bearing upon chemical theory Prof.
Babcock has advanced the view that
what he has shown to be true for wa
ter in solid and liquid states is gen
orally true for other substances, and
has built upon this generalization some
far-reaching theories.
"A French traveller has discovered a
new species of ant in Siam. The
creatures were small, of gray color,
and lived in damp places. M. M.
Meissen, the Frenchman who noticed
this popularity, was attracted to these
groups by discovering that each com
pany contained a large ant that
travelled more rapidly than the others.
Observing them more closely he noticed
that each large ant always carried a
small gray ant upon it's back, though
the remainder of the troops were on
foot. This mounted ant would ride
a
the column from head to rear and APP
parently overlook their manoeuvers.
This is the ant the sluggard has been
looking for so long.
People do odd things at critical
last week, T. B. Gill, a book dealer,
whose store was in danger, rushed out
doors carrying nothing but a box of
matches. Being asked what he meant
to do with them, he said he rescued
them to prevent them from becoming
ignited. 1t turned out that he had 100
boxes more in the store, which, in
his excitement, he had forgotten. A
few days ago a cyclone struck a farm
in Atchison county, Mo. The family
were aroused, and, thoroughly fright
ened, began grabbing whatever was
closest and most worth saving, and
excitement partly suosided it was dis
covered that one good old woman had
come down in her night dress carrying
in one hand an unlighted kerosene
lamp and in the other a cup of water
that she had beside her bed.
"A municipal Committee of Glas-
gov, Scotland, appointed to determine
the effect of alcoholic drinks on the
norIra i1,op -
that out of sos admissions to the Glas-
gov District Asylum and 213 admis-
sions to the poorhouse 80 per cent. were
traceable to alcoholic drinks as a
cause. In the United States 10 to IL
per cent. of insanity is from drink
The actinic or chemical rays of
the sun are the blue, violet and ultra
violet rays, and are the only ones
used in the cure of diseases, the other
rays having no physiological action on
animal life. The value of these rays
in destroying the bacteria of disease
was first shown by Finson of Denmark,
who applied them very successfully to
the treatment of lupus, a tuberculosis
or the skin. It's use has not been made
effective in cancer, because the rays
do not penetrate deeply enough
Another refractory gas, fuorine.
has been solidified by extreme cold,
says the London Telegraph. Profs.
Moissan and Dewar report this result
to the French Academy of Sciences
By means of liquid hydrogen they
cooled the forine down TO 20 degrees
cenugrade abSolute-which means to
less than Il degrees above the zero
or mo heat" limit-or, in popular Ian
guage, to a point corresponding to 460
degrees fahrenheit of frost. In the
process yellow liquid first appeared
and then yellow solid. The investiga-
tors tried the experiment of allowing
liquid hydrogen and solid f1uorine to
come in contact at the exceeding low
temperature of -252 degrees cent?
grade. The result was "a violent ex-
plosion, sufficient heat being set free
to raise the material to incandescence
and to set fire to the hydrogen" One
gas alone row defies the physicist to
render il solid-helium.
Rutherford and Soddy have DEM
onstrated that it is possible to con-
dense the so-called emanations from
thorlum and radium, and that they
behave just like Vapors. The emana-
tons are passed through an apparatus
consisting of a double copper spiral.
immersed in a glass cylinder filed with
liquifed ethylene, which in it's turn
is immersed in copper vessel filled
with liquid air. If the emanation
from either of the above elements is
conveyed by means of a slow current
OF hydrogen, oxygen or air through