Holbrook argus., 1903-12-19
RklnnSCietlce
 X \ sse7gglBiilrvemfltiofl Bir
~NN~N~N~N~%

Mountains, where an animal fair in held. At the fair for this year, high prices prevailed, largely due, 1t was said, to the whole world having adopt. ed the American fashion of wearing furs on the outside instead of for Things, thus requiring better qualities. The blue fox is getting scarce, and a single skin commands about $60. White fox skins bring $6. Undressed sable skins sell for from $15 to $200 each, and between 50 and 100 such skins are required to make jacket. Siberian furs include the skins of bears, gluttons lynxes, elks, reindeers, stags, musk deer, blue, silver and red foxes, sables, martens, minks, ermines, bobcats, squirrels, wolves and wild cats.
 The virtues of the species of basil (Ocymum viride) now known as the mosquito plant are attracting atten- ton in England. An army officer has recently given growing plant to the Botanical Gardens at Kew. He ob- tained 1t in Nigeria, where he says 1t is known to drive mosquitoes from its neighborhood and the natives use an infusion of its leaves as cure for ma larial levers. Its virtues are known fin India also, as border of 1t was planted round the Victoria Garden in Bombay because the worKmen were pestered by mosquitoes and suffered from malaria. As soon as the hedge was completed the mosquitoes left, and there was no more malaria among the workmen.
 It is averred that experts can read individual character in typewrlting very much as 1t can be read in hand writing In an English lawsuit ex- perts showed that one of the pages in long typewriter document had been substituted for another page. In the new page the spacing, the position in which para graphs began, the charac- ter of the punctuation, and the appear nnce of the letters, depending on the touch of the fingers, were all differ ent from the same features In the original pages. The experts alleged that the writer of the substituted sheet was a young woman, not strong nerv- ous, of only fair education, and be- glnner in typewrltlng. This diagnosis was afterward shown to be correct.
 Dirr,,tac tn ho icta in rope until quite modern times, al though the race is not known only in The central part of Africa. A German ethnologlst, G. Thilenius, finds that some skeletons exhumed near Rreslau in Silesla, show an average height of only four feet nine inches, and Swiss remains described by Kollman were but four feet six inches in average height Even smaller were the remains recorded by Gutman from lower AL sace, near Colmar, some specimens measuring not more than four feet These pigmies were well formed and fully developed, and it appears that those of Silesia must have lived as recently as 1000 A. D.
 In some countries walking sticks are manufactured from shark fins. FHom the skin of the animal is obtained a leather suitable for making sw ord grips and many fancy articles. Sharks abound on the coast of Nicaragua, and Mir Gottschalk, the United States con- sul at San Juan del Norte, suggests that the fins back-bones and skins might with advantage be imported into the United States for industrial pur- poses. The killing of snarks is epcour-. aged by the Nicaraguan fishery laws, and there appears to be no export duty on any industrial product derived from them.
 A curious phenomenon has been mo- ticed in the tropics that can never be