The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-07-31
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

| the market under the name of con
| greves,'' in compliment to Sir William
Congreve, the inventor of the Wal
rocket.
"A quaint feature of Samoan life
is kava drinking. This beverage is
made from the root of the angona
shrub which being pounded and mix
ed with water ferments and forms a
mild intoxicant. 1t tastes like soar
suds and ginger ale mixed and the
relish for it has TO be acquired.
The local telephone company at St
Johns, Mich, which handles an ex-
tensive rural service, is seeking to
make it's service Indispensable by fur
nishing subscribers with the govern
ment daily weather reports and other
important news of the day. Signals
are rung each morning on all farm
lines, and all who desire may get this
report.
An English inventor has replaced
the ordinary growing of a rifle bar
rel with lines of small ball bearings.
along which the hard steel projectile
slips. The inventor claims that he
gets 40 per cent. greater average We
loc1ty, penetration and range than can
be obtained with the same weight of
pro1ectlle and charge guns made on
the old system.
The word vaudeville" which now
means play in which songs are intro
duced, is a corruption of Vaux de
Wire, the names of two valleys in Nor
mandy. A fuller in Wire, in the fir
teenth century, composed some hunor-
Gus and satirical drinking songs which
were very popular throughout France,
under the name of their native place,
Vaux de Wire" The terms seem to
have beeen corrupted into voix de
vile.
-Greenleaf Davis, the hermit of
Mount Katahdin, tells of a blue laws
nest that contained the shells of more
than $50 eggs, which the Jays had
stolen from the nests of song birds
ana taken home for their young to
iced on. Hidden in one side of the
nest was a gold watch which a hun
Yer from worcester had lost the pre-
NlouS autumn and had accused his
guide of stealing. The watch mad
been hung on the limb of a lean-to-
camp at night, and when the hunter
woke in the morning the timepiece
was missing.
Nearly eighty years ago. when tba
presidential struggle between CLAW and
jackson was at its hight, it is related
tndt pand OF emigrants from Ken
lucky and the then other Western
states commenced to settle on the
north side of the Missouri river and
calIed thelr county Clay and the coun-
" seat Liberty. At the same time
says the Oak Grove (Mo1 Banner
another lot of emigrants from Virginia
ana other Southern states pitched
their tent on the south side of the
Big Muddy and called their county
JACKSON ana the capital independence.
Snakes may almost be said to have
glass eyes, inasmuch as their eyes
never close, says an exchange, Thew
are without lids, and each is cover
cd with a transparent skin, much
resembling glass. When the reptiIe
casts its outer skin, the eye scales
come off with the rest of the trans
parent envelope out of which the snake
slips. This CLASSY eye scale is so
tough that it effectually protects the
true eye from the twigs, sharp grass
and other distractions which the
snake encounters in its travels, yet it
is transparent enough to allow the
most perfect vision. Thus, if the snake
mas not glass eye, it may, at any
rate be said to wear eyeglasses.
M CASTOR Cadoux, a writer in the
Revue des Deux Mondes, has drawn 4
fancy picture of that happy time when
London, Paris and Berlin will be light
ed and warmed by electric energy de-
rived from the sea. In those economic
days sea mills will skirt the shore:
they will convert the rise and fall Of
the tides into electricity, which wires
VIII conduct to the capital cities to do
work, to illuminate and to warm, No
more miners, we may suppose. pur-
suing their dangerous vocations under
ground, no more gas lights polluting
the air we breathe. and smoke den
London fogs will have ceased forever
AS the moon does in a single tide on
but a short stretch of coast line more
work than all our steam engines, here
is a limitless supply of energy. The
IDEA is charming, not the least delight
full part of it being the satisfaction of
yoking the old satellite to our machin
cry and making her run our trains and
drive our factories.
"A gentleman living in the city who
occasionally goes into the country for
day or two came back from a recent
trip with brand new mosquito rem
edy, says the Galveston News lyon
can talk about your screens on the els
terms and buy the best bars for your
bed, but / am here to tell you that
there is nothing like new mown ha.y TO
Keep the little pests from you. l have
just been up in the country, where the
mosquitoes are as thick as ffeas on a
common cur, and after vainly trying to
sleep in the house, / got up and went
out onto pile of new hay and silent
soundly the rest of the night. l was in
the open without any bar or covering
OF any kind and not one MOSQUITO came
near me. How do l account for that?
Well, at first l did not know lust the
reason, but after trying the experiment
several times l came to the conclusion
that the mosquitoes do not like the
smell of new mown hay, or any hav for
that matter. No, l would not advise
the citizens of Galveston to buy a bale
of hay apiece and spread it out on their
bedroom floors for place to sleep.
but II any of them have occasion to 20
into the country and are driven out of
the house by the pests, let them make
their bed in the hay and I'll guarantees
that they will get refreshing nights
Sleep"
1t is estimated that the total world
production of diamonds up to date ap-
proximates s5.OOO,00O karats. saws the
Baltimore American. AS we are NOT
in the habit of weighing our diamonds
by the ton, we are in some doubt con-
corning the proper system of compu-
tation, whether Troy or avoirdupois
long ton or short ton. According To
the system used by those who do weigh