The Savannah morning news., 1904-01-06
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

roahs will interest those whose heads
Time has ravaged. A French Egyptol-
ogist has recently unearthed a papy-
rus giving recipe for what must in
those times have been a royal remedy
against badness, since it was concoct-
ed for no less a parsonage than King
Chanta, the second sovereign of the
first dynasty, about 1000 B c. The
remedy was employed by the Kings
mother. 1t consisted of a salve of
dogs paws, dates and asses hoofs,
pounded up then boiled in oil With
this salve the royal head was anoint-
ed. AS to the result the papyrus is
regrettably silent.
In lecture on longevity delivered
before the Royal College of Physicians
Sir Hermann Weber, himself an octo-
genarian, gave official support to the
doctrine that brain work does not kill,
but rather the reverse. A few of his
instances are Sophocles, Plato, Galen,
Cicero, Moltke, Bismarck, Mommsen
and Gladstone, to whom we might add
Hobbies, Carlyle, Spencer and Telvin.
The facts are the brain work increases
the supply of blood to the nerve cells
and promotes their nutrition and
health. MossO, an Italian, laid a man
on a delicately balanced table and
showed that the head end sank when
ever the subject did a mental sum or
any other brain work. The increased
weight of his head was due to the life
giving blood.
Japan has entered upon an eco
nomical experiment which is novel and
interesting. The government owns the
railways and is going to take the pub
lie into n9FtnArGhin The dana c
of Finance and Communications have
at last decided on the plan of con-
Verting the government railways into a
joint stock undertaking. All the exist
ing government railways and the
properties attached to them will be as
sessed, and the government will hold
the shares representing them, while
the public will be invited to subscribe
the cost required for repairs to ex-
listing lines and for the construction
of new ones, sum estimated at about
e7,0O0,000 out of a capital of some
G2S,000, 900. 1t will be observed that
the government remains the majority
holder, so state ownership is contin-
ued.
We have now amor-piercing pro-
jectiles, deck-piercing projectiles, semi
piercing projectiles, cast-iron
projectiles, shrapnel, and so on, in
endless variety, says the Scientific
American. AS the work of the gun,
whether ashore or afloat, will have to
do can be pretty clearly predicted, it
would appear as though one, or at
most two, kinds of projectiles were
enough. These two would naturally
have, the one a high penetrative pow
er when the shell is burst. No one who
has not examined carefully the effect
of bursting a shell in a closed space
can have an idea of its destructiveness.
A small 6-pounder shell, of about 2A-
inch diameter, containing or 4
ounces of powder. burst in an ordinary
room and breaking into twenty or
thirty fragments, would probably de-
stroy everything in the room.
"A most striking recent development
in guns-and in speaking of guns we
usually include the gun-carriage or
gunmount-is the effort now universal
to throw the accurate and quick con-
troll of the gun into the hands of the
people firing it, says the Scientific
American. 1t may we'll be wondered
that this has not always been a con-
trolling idea in laying out guns and
their mounts, but at the present time
it is in this direction that the greatest
effort is being made. The proof of this
is to be seen by comparison of the
guns and mounts made ten or fifteen
years ago with those now being made,
The latter are arranged much more
conveniently, and consequently their
rate of fire is much faster. Modern g.
inch guns are being fired from ships
eight or ten times in a minute at tar
gets about the size of ship and a mile
distant, and hitting the target at each
shot. OF course, doing this from a sta
Bile platform on shore would be COM
paratiVely easy. The projectile of these
guns weighs 100 pounds, the powder
charge about forty to fifty pounds, and
the weight of the gun, including all the
turning parts, is about $4,000 pounds.
This weight must be moved, to keep the
sights on the target, by one man, and
it will be seen that it is of the greatest
Importance to lay out all the shafting
and gearing with a minimum of friction
and lost motion.
Thinkers as a rule live long: or IN
put the proposition into more general
terms, exercise of the mind tends to
longevity, says the London Telegraph.
Herbert Spencer has died in his
eighty-fourth year, Darwin reached
his seventy-third. Sir George Stokes
his eighty-fourth. Carlyle his eighty
oned at seventy three, but might have
lived several years longer; Huxley
was seventy when he died, Gladstone
in his eightyninth year, Disraeli in
his seventy-seventh. Newton lived to
be eighty-f1ve, and Lord Kelvin is still
vigorous in research in his eightieth.
To great extent the brain is the CEN
ter and seat of life, what Sir William
Gull called the central battery, and it's
stimulation undoubtedly strengthens
the forces that make for vitality.
Healthy exercise of either mind or
body of course favors length of DAYS.
but the strivings of the thinker and
writer are seldom quite of the healthy
order. Darwin, Carlyle, and Spencer
were victims of nearly lifelong dyspep-
STA, and yet exceeded three-score and
ten. Pleasant exertion without pleas
ure; a priori, one would not expect the
abstract thinker to live so happily as
the man of experimental research, and
experience seems to confirm the expec-
tation. No one will question Sir
James Paget's dictum that undue ia
tigue is common cause of disease,
but so also is Incidence. What part
of the human economy, mental or
physical, is not made for activity?
The American Motor League has
taken up the defense of a very inter-
esting law suit in behalf of one of it's
members, 'Mr. Hugh Miller of Attica,
N. Y, upon facts which seem to show
rank abuse of the law requiring the
carrying of license numbers by regis
tered automobiles. The suit is
brought by Mrs. Holmes of Queens