The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-06-11
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

StSdully purSueS It's century-lOnS pol
icy, and we are mot sure that we can
admire-or suspect-sufficiently the
profundity of English diplomacy which
mas so we'll foreseen the present war
and is using it for British advantage
IN Tibet" All the reasons alleged Dy
the Indian viceroy are regarded by this
writer as mere pteteXts. 1t means CO.
lonial expansion pure and simple TO
him, and he prophesies that the echoes
OF Col. Younghusband's rifles viii be
heard for long time in LaSsa, IN Pe-
Kin and in st. Petersburg.
When completed, the Simplon tun-
mel in the Alps will be 1919 miles long.
1t was begun in 1898 and eleven miles
of it are now completed. 1t was esti-
mated that it would take five years to
dig it and that it would cost Sl5, OOO,OOO.
But recent advices indicate that UNI
foreseen difficulties have arisen on ac-
count of the immense amount of wa
ter entering the tunnel. A new plant
of pumping machinery had to be in
stalled, and, as a result, the contrac-
tors have asked for an indemnity from
the Swiss and Italian governments.
The opening of the tunnel will directly
connect the English channel and the
Adriatic sea, and it will be the only
route to compete with the ST. Gothard
luIl1lCl 1t VIII SlNG lilC OAlOIlCot AlllC
between England, Milan and Brindisi,
and, naturally, the English mail for
India will travel by this route.
When the South sea bubble in Eng
land collapsed one of the spectators
went to Smyrna to repair his fortune,
says an exchange. He was a friend of
Alexander Pope and sent him box OF
figs In which had been placed a twig of
d. ia . EzrySrr n
grounds on the shore of the Thames,
not knowing of what tree it was. 1t
grew and was a weeping willow. In
1875, when the tree was over fifty years
cid, one of the young British officers
who came to Boston with the British
amy brought a twig from the tree,
which he intended to plant on his lands
after the rebellion had been crushed.
John Parke Gusts, son of Mrs. WASH
ington, going on errands to the British
camp under a flag of truce, became ac-
ouainted with the owner of the willow
twig, which was wrapped in oiled SILK,
and obtained it from him, which he
planted near his home at Abingdon
Va, where it became the pregenitor or
all the weeping willows in America.
1t may be safely said that England
is about to adopt the metrical system
of weights and measures. In this, she
will but follow the example already
adopted by all the principal European
countries, with the exception of Rus
STA. Very soon Russia will be the SOL
itary great Power in Europe that still
clingS to a superannuated system of
weights and measures. A bill pro-
NOTED by Lord Bellhaven and Stenton,
members of a select committee of the
House of Lords, proposes that from
and after the first of April, 1909, the
kilogramme and the meter shall be the
unit standard of weights and meas
ures throughout the British empire.
The bill also provides for the compul-
sorry employment of the metrical sys-
tenn between individuals, and renders
illegal any contracts made after a GER
tain date where it has not been fol-
lowed, but legalizing all contracts
made under the old system before that
date. This bill has passed its third
reading in the House of Lords, and to
become law will now have to be voted
on favorably in the House of Com
mons, of which there is not the least
doubt. Thus the terms pound, ounce,
mile, yard, foot, rood and many others
will become obsolete within the next
generation throughout the entire Brit
ish empire.
One of the photographers who has
been wandering about the st. Louis
Fair grounds and recording his i'm
pressions has reached a conclusion
which ought to interest criminologists
the world over, says the New York
Post. The local police department has
put on exhibition its "rogues' gallery"
for the years between 1843 and 1867.
The discovery is that, while the faces
on Bertillon-system cards to-day al
most invariably betray their villany
in their looks, these daguerreotypes of
fifty years ago convey no hint of GRIM
inality. 1T is too much of a stretch
of sentiment" says the commentator
ito make us believe that these faces
with their hair brushed straight up in
front and down over each ear making
lump on each side of the head, some
wearing stocks about the neck, can
have been 'rouges. Why, they look
just like the old pictures of jurists,
generals, and other men of standing in
the community in 1S43 to 1867" Nor
is this merely superficial When YOU
come to study the faces you see they
really don't look as truculent and sin
lister as the modern photographs of
modern criminals" But, apart from
the cast of features. there must, in
fact, have been some fundamental diff
ference between the ante-bellum GRIM
inal temperament and that of the
present. Look through the Mulberry
street cabinet and you find that many
of the face, 'snap-shotted" though
they are, have been so distorted by
grimaces as to be almost unrecogniza-
BILE. Yet these criminals of the for
ties, anxious though. they must have
been to escape detection after release
actually sat for their aguerreotypes
at the police station. They must have
been more docile lot than the hero
tales OF a certain class would imply.
Our paragraph on sheep and the
eyes thereof, says the New York
Times, has been clipped and sent back
with red and angry underscoring of
the phrase 'loathsome beasts" and a
red line leading therefrom to a big red
''Why?" The question is undoubtedlv
asked by somebody whose knowledpe
of sheep is derived from the verses of
poets who write pastorals in a citv
park--when it isn't in fifth-foor far
miles and miles from anything greener
than Belgian paving block or more
innocent than a corner grocer. OF
course the sheep is all right in her
way, or even in his, and to call them
'loathsome" was not, perhaps. to
manifest a careful delicacy in the
choice of epithets, but let those whom
II surprised or offended visit the farms
where sheep are kept, not as orna
ments for the landscape, but as sources
OF profit, and where the daily associa
ton with them is close and intimate
Then Will 1t be discovered from the
farmer, and even more easily from the