Alaska sentinel., 1905-03-09
IoytER S1oR'E5
~ONN~~~ON~

London paid S150,0O0,O 900 on June 24 to take over her waterworks from pri- yate corporations. The water is held in 122 reservoirs, and the filtration works cover 143 acres.
 The smallest island inhabited in the world is that on which the Eddystone lighthouse stands, for at low water lt Is only thirty feet in diameter. At high water the base of the lighthouse, which has a diameter of only little over twenty eight feet, is completely covered by water.
 Close to the shore of Eastern river In West Dresden, Me, there Is an ap- pie tree which has few equals. II stands thirty feet high, measures ten feet and three inches around and spreads fifty feet. Its owner, MT. Ham. has gathered in some years thir- ty bushels of apples from this tree, which is said to be more than one hundred years old.
 Snakes may almost be said to have glass eyes, inasmuch as their eyes never close. They are without lids, and each is covered with a transpar- ent scale, much resembling glass. When the reptile casts its outer skin, the eye scales come of with the rest of the transparent envelope out of which the snake slips. His glassy eye scale Is so tough that 1t efectually protects the true eye from the twigs. sharp grass and other obstructions which the snake encounters in its trav- els. yet 1t is transparent enough to all low the most perfect vision. Thus, If the snake has not glass eye, 1t may, at any rate, be said to wear eye glasses.
 A Havre fsherman's wife drying codfish caught by her husband on the coast of France noticed that one fish had a hard substance inside. On in- vestiga ton she found in the fish a golden bracelet How the ornament came into its strange receptacle Is, of course, not known; but 1t is conjec- tured that 1t must have slipped from the wrist of some fair passenger lean- ing over the bulwarks of a trans-At- lantic liner, and been seized by the cod on reaching the water. As the shoals of codHsh have only recently left the Newfoundland Banks, and are just beginning to make their appear. ance in French waters, 1t is probable that the bracelet has traversed the Atlantic in the fish's interior. Per haps its owner will come forward to claim 1t.
 F. V. Coville, in the National Geo. graphic Magazine, gives an interesting account of how the Indians of the desert obtain drinking water from the barrel cactus. It was among the des- ert hills west of Torres. Mexico. The Indian cut the top from a plant about five feet high, and with a blunt stake of palo verde pounded to a pulp the upper six or eight inches of white flesh in the standing trunk. From this, handful by handful, he squeezed the water into the bowl he had made in the top of the trunk. throwing the dis carded pulp on the ground. By this process he secured two or three quarts of clear water, slightly salty and slightly bitter to the taste, but of far better quality than some of the water desert traveller Is occasionally com pelled to use. The Papago. dipping this water up in his hands. drank 1t with evident pleasure and said that his people were accustomed. not only to secure their drinking water in this way in times of extreme drought. but that they used 1t also to mix their meal preparatory to cooking 1t into bread.