A California vine-grower, in a region where once in a
great while the temperature fell a few degrees below the
freezing-point, thus endangering his crop, rigged up an
electric-alarm system which signalled to him when the
temperature out in the fields had fallen low enough to require
the lighting of fires to prevent frost. A neighbor, more fond of
his ease, immediately improved on this apparatus. He fixt his
brushwood ready for firing, and then arranged his electrical
apparatus so that when the temperature fell to thirty-two
degrees a current should be sent through a platinum wire in some
fine combustibles and light the fires, instead of signaling him
to do the work himself. The apparatus is cheap and more reliable
than hired men, so that it is likely to be adopted in the parts
of the state exposed to inopportune frosts.--Philadelphia
_Ledger_.
(2463)
* * * * *
Justice Willes about 1780 sentenced a boy at Lancaster to be
hanged, with the hope of reforming him by frightening him, and
he ordered him for execution next morning. The judge awoke in
the middle of the night, and was so affected by the notion that
he might himself die in the course of the night, and the boy
be hanged, tho he did mean that he should suffer, that he got
out of his bed and went to the lodgings of the high sheriff,
and left a reprieve for the boy, or what was to be considered
equivalent to it, and then, returning to his bed, spent the
rest of the night comfortably. (Text.)--CROAKE JAMES,
“Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
(2464)