The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-01-27
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

ON the direct method of providing for a
slX-years course. For the first two
years the teaching is essentially oral.
Tor the next two more theoretical, and
In the final two composition and style
predominant. Word for word transla-
tons are not required. In grammar
the rule always follows the example.
In a recent lecture on Power
Transmission" Prof. H. B. Smith said:
1T Is possible to deliver at the facto-
ries on the coast, from the melting
SHOWS and glaciers of the Rockies,
power for machinery at a smaller cost
than that at which it is possible to
produce that power from steam, even
though the fuel were to be delivered at
the factory boiler house without cost"
Australia has the promise Of great
harvest. Far and wide, on hillside and
plain, CLEANS the gold of the following
wheat fields. 1t is calculated, says the
Australian Review of Reviews. that
there will be yield of over 100000
bushels of wheat, and this will give
nearly 1000, 900 tons of wheat for export
beyond what is needed for local use.
This is the largest contribution to the
food-stock. of the world Australia has
ever made. Incidentally it means that
between $30,000,O00 and $35,o0O,O00 will
flow from BUYERS in other lands into
the pockets of Australian farmers.
Consumption of earth as food is
said to be common, not only in China,
New Caledonia and New Guinea, but in
the Malay Archipelago as we'll. The
testimony of many travellers in the ORR
ent is that the yellow races are es-
pecially addicted to the practice. In
Java and Sumatra the clay used I'M
dergoes a preliminary preparation for
consumption, being mixed with water,
reduced to paste, and the sand and
other hard substances removed. The
clay is then formed into small cakes
or tablets about as thick as a lead PEN
ell and baked in an iron saucepan.
When the tablet energies from this
process 1t resembles a piece of dried
pork. The Japanese frequently eat
small figures, roughly modelled from
clay, which resemble the animals turn
ed out In pastry shops.
The manufacture of immortelle
wreaths in Paris occupies at least 1900
persons, says the Golden Penny. The
immortelles are gathered about the
beginning of October and come chief
ly from the arid hills in the middle and
South of France. They are brought
to the markets in their natural condi-
ton, and the yellow blossoms are dyed
green, red and white, and woven into
wreaths by special workmen in readi-
ness for All Saints and All Souls Days,
when all good Parisians visit their rel
atives graves. On these "fetes des
morris" the gates of the cemeteries are
beset with crowds of dealers in i'm
mortelle. wreaths, wire crosses and
bead crowns. At Pere la Chaise alone
more than 100000 persons are calcu-
lated to visit the cemetery, and the
10000 to $4,000.
"A list of the electrical equipment
OF modern ocean greyhound, If writ
ten out in full, would look like a cata-
logue of a supply house. One of the
novelties is an electric griddle cake
and waffle range. The automatic egg
boilers, like those on the Oceanic, are
designed to cook 200 eggs at once, a
clock arrangement causing the basket
containing the eggs to hop out of the
water at any half minute up to six
minutes. Another novelty is. a self
dumping oyster cooker for stews. At
the termination of a given time the
cooker pours its contents into soup
plate and automatically shuts off the
electricity One electric contrivance Is
intended to prevent collision. The
moment another ship enters the mag
netic field of the Baltic the needle of
the instrument points toward the YES
sci that is approaching or being over
taken. Even the rhythmic beats of an
unseen steamers screws are register
ed by means of the delicate apparatus.
When the public reads that 100, OO0,-
900 of yen have Professionally been set
apart by Japan for war purposes 1t
may perhaps, put an exaggerated esti-
mate on that amount. Although ia
pan has a gold standard, the yen is
silver currency, and fluctuates with
the price of silver, so that at the mo-
ment, says the London Chronicle, 100,-
10000 of them means scarcely more
than 100000 900. But even this is an
immense amount in country in which
the wages of a skillful artisan are Of
ten not more than three yen week.
The japanese currency system is deci-
NAL. Thus the yen, or dollar, is d.
Vided into 100 sen, or cents, the sen In
to ten rim, the rim into ten mo, the
mo into ten shu, and the shu, finally.
into ten kotsu. Government accounts
do not take notice of any value smaller
than a rim, but estimates by private
tradesmen often descend to mo and
shu, which are incredibly minute frac-
tions of farthing. No coins exist,
however, to represent these liliputian
sums.
A cable from Paris to the New
York World says: Each human being
has fluid double. This is the assertion
of Col. Albert Rochas, ex-administrator
of the Polytechnic School and a we'll
known physicist. He has just been maxi
ing some remarkable experiments with
hypnotixed subjects. In the hypnotic
state, Rochas says, this fluid equivalent
of the human body rises above the
latter and floats above his head at
tached by an impalpable cord, like
captive balloon. Several experiments
were made with individuals to prove
this. A person was put to sleep, and the
demonstration mounted in the room
above the sleeping subject and touched
the spot to which IL was thought the
double would probably rise. The result
was a piercing scream from the hypO-
tized individual below. Several hypno-
lists think that on account of the suf-
fering the subject undergoes from these
experiments 1t will be better to hypo-
tize animals for further Investigation.
as 1t is known that they, too, have
this fluid double.
A Paris cable in the Philadelphia
North American says: French engin-
GERS are at work on three different
projects for exploiting the Dead Sea
for Industrial purposes. The level of
the Dead Sea being more than 1900 feet