The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-09-18

Cows have worn spectacles in Russia
 for some time past and now in America
 roosters and chickens are also begin
 ming to wear eyeglasses The new
 adornment which is not yet worn by
 very many of the hen family, although
 the number of spectacled cows in the
 world is said to exceed 4O,00o, as mat
 ter of utility rather than ephemeral fash-
 ion. Chickens will fight; fighting en-
 dangers eyesight. and tho plan has now
 been proposed by an ingenious poultry
 raiser to equip the birds with protective goggles. The shape of these protectors
 is such that by sprnging them apart
 and putting them over the birds head
 they hold themselves in position and the spectacled chick views the world through
 disk of glass or mica. As Tor the
 cows. their spectacles are to protect their eyes from being dazzled by the sun as
 its rays fall on snow covered Russian steppes where they find pasturage. Snow shoers often wear blue glasses for the same purpose. The spectacles worn by l the cows are smoke colored and snow |
 flesh of the spectacled bovine is no | longer heir to.
 Who will not be delighted to know that | there is a movement on foot to abolish | the use of Roman numerals? To the aV- | craze citizen these same Roman numerals | are certainly the most thoroughly oe- I funct portion of dead language, and | if is safe to assume that, standing be- | fore a public edihce classically decorated
 with what looks like sample alphapet,
 nine men out of ten will never take the
 trouble to puzzle a meaning out or them. | Life Is too short for Roman numerals. | AS a Harvard authority recently re- marked. .It not only takes three and one-third times as long to write the Roman numerals from one to 100 as to
 write the Arabic, but there is twenty one times as much opportunity to make
 a mistake in doing 1t. And when you have done 1t 1t takes three times as long
 for another fellow to read the result, and there are eight times as many chaces that he won't do 1t correctly.
 Has perpetual motion been finally dis- covered? Theoretically, at least, this centuries-old question seems to be very nearly answered Tn the dHirmhtlVe, TOT a modern inventor has made radium
 clock that (barring accidents) ought to
 keep going indefinitely. The clock re-
 uuires, first of all, small quantity of
 radum neatly shut up in a glass tube.
 wherein there Is also an electroscope with two blades of silver. The radum induces a negative current in the silver
 blades and up they go until they touch the sides of the glass tuDe. Then their contact with the glass discharges them | and down they go again only to be re- | charged and again elevated by the ra- dium. This movement is in turn com | nunicated to pendulum, and the in- ventor believes 1t will continue indefin-
 itely-or at any rate for at least 5000 | years. which would certainly seem near
 enough for al practical purposes-unless disturbed by an earthquake or some un- | foreseen accident. The convenience of a clock that would require winding. or rather a new supply of radIum, once ey- cry 300 centuries goes without saying. | No family should be without one.
 | If ia interesting to note that at least
 one Englishman has been recently in | America and returned home deeply im- pressed with something less stereotyped than either our manufacturing abilities | or the "beauty of the American women. | This curious visitor was perhaps duly im- pressed by these obvious characteristics but he makes no mention of them What | he does mention is the American teie- I phone service, and he apparently spent