The Savannah morning news., 1904-04-30
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

The pulling strength of men and
animals was recently shown in an ex-
hibition of a circus at Madison Square
Garden. New York. For each pound
of its own weight, an elephant can
pull ~ of a pound camel, 10 ana
a horse lit of a pound. A man can
pull 80 of his own weight.
The receipts by national govern
ments from the traffic in alcoholi les last
year were: United States, $17S,OOO,O OO;
Great Britain, $13S, 900; France,
s1OO, 900, 900; Italy and Holland, each,
$40, 900, 900, and in Russia, where the
liquor business is a government
monopoly, the revenue was SS58,000,-
900.
institutions organized by employers
for the benefit of employees, such as
profit sharing, hospitals, clubrooms,
libraries, reading-rooms, gymnasiums,
burial funds and sick benefits, VIII be
exploited at the Worlds fair through
the efforts of Winton G. Garrison, chief
of the New Jersey Bureau of Labor
and Statistics.
DIR. Harrison, the medical officer
of health for Braintree, England, has
called attention to the large rats
which infest the town, and suggesting
the formation of a rat club. the MEM
bers to pledge themselves to catch
certain number of rats or be fined. he
says that he has done his best to keep
the rodents down, but has not been
supported. A local hunting woman has
also written about the great shortage
of foxes near Braintree. She says
that rats are favorite food of foxes
and that the scarcity of foxes ac-
ha abundance of
The immense success of. the shade
grown tobacco in Connecticut and else
where induced experiments to apply
the same principle to the growing of
garden vegetables in the hope of Sc
curing better results. In this, however,
they have been disappointed, as nu-
merouS test plants protected by
cheesecloth Enclosures failed to show
any advantage over similar truck
grown in the open. It is asserted that
practically the only benefit has been
in securing tenderer vegetables, though
the yield is not as great, and the in
dividual specimens do not attain as
large an average size.
The colorings of variegated foliage
plants can not be intensified by the
use of colored glass. A curious Bel
gian horticulturist, after a long series
Of experiments, concludes that brilliant
light favors high coloration of foliage.
Trees and shrubs with golden leaves,
when poorly illuminated-that is,
through either blue or red glass-be-
came green, or in some cases blanched
In no case did the colored glass have
a beneficial effect, most plants, after
a months exposure, putting forth
smaller leaves, less vivid in coloring.
In some cases a very apparent stunt
ing of the plants growth was observ-
able.
Directly at variance with the prac-
tice Of South and Central American
natives, who have destroyed enormous
forests of Para rubber trees by their
reckless methods, is the statement
made in the Journal of the Jamaica
/ Agricultural Society that it is posi-
BILE to tap Para rubber trees every
second day for six months in every
year without in the least hurting or
impairing the growth of the tree and
at the same time secure the greatest
amount of latex," or milk. Instead of
the huge herring-bone gashes usually
made, this discerning planter finds
that a series of missions not more
than 1h inches long and one-half inch
wide give the best results.
Another valuable antitoxin has
been discovered as the elimination of
a long series of experiments, EXTEND
ing over a number Of years. conduct
ed by the Department of Agriculture
The animal industries of this country
will probably be as greatly benefited
by the preventive incubation Of swine
for hog cholera as by any discovery in
this domain that has been made in re-
cent years. The basis of the immunity
experiments has been the use of at
tenuated and diSease-producing liquid
or dried blood, taken from infected an
imals, or the use of this blood mixed
with blood from immune animals, in
which the immunity has been increas-
ed by the injection of large doses of
disease-producing blood obtained from
hogs known to have the disease The
experiments have established the fact
that animals once thus inmunized
against this disease viii resist repeat
ed large doses of disease-producin
blood and also subsequent exposure to
diseased animals in the field.
The richest man in Mexico" says
Leslie's Weekly, is a miner, Pedro AL
varado, who owns a mine at Parral
in the state of Chihuahua. He Is
about fifty years old, and comes from
the peon, or lowest laboring class. For
years he was a mine laborer, working
for so cents fMexican silver a day; IL
iiterate, unthinking He was known
to be hard working, but he had no
more thrift or foresight than the other