RUBBER trees are reported found growing in Manatee County, Fla.
JAPAN proposes to build up her commercial navy by giving
subsidies to ship builders on every ton above 1,000, and to ship
owners for ships of 1,000 tons that can make ten knots an hour, the
subsidy being increased for every 500 tons additional burden or every
knot additional speed.
ROSA BONHEUR began to work seriously at painting when she was
about fifteen, and donned male attire so that she could go about
without attracting attention. She wore it so naturally that no one
ever suspected her of being a girl, and found it so comfortable that
she has worn it ever since to work in. She and Mme. Dieulafoy, the
wife of the explorer, are the only two women in France who are legally
authorized to appear in public in men's clothes.
A DEVICE for permitting the unsophisticated guest to blow out
the gas in his bedroom at the city hotel without inconvenience to
himself or anybody else has been devised. The gas burner is made of a
metal having great expansive and contractive properties. The gas is
turned on in the regular way and a small screw is turned which admits
a small flow of gas through the burner. The gas is lighted, and the
heat expands the metal and automatically opens a valve permitting a
full flow of gas. The gas can be turned off in the ordinary way, but
if the gas is blown out the metal contracts, closing the valve, and
all the gas that escapes is the very small quantity admitted by the
screw valve.
A MOVEMENT is on foot in Europe having for its object the
securing of a complete census of the inhabitants of all the civilized
countries of the world. With this end in view the several governments
are to be approached with the request that they will endeavor to
decide upon a mutual date for counting the people under their various
jurisdictions. Heretofore the different countries have taken their
census on different dates, and it has been impossible to obtain
accurate statistics in regard to the world's population at any one
particular period. It is suggested that the last year of the present
century or the first year of the coming century would be the most
appropriate date for obtaining statistics.
OF THE 376 suicides who ended their lives in New York last
year, by far the greater number were divorced people, says the Medical
Review. From a table prepared for the year 1895, it is shown that
there were in Germany during that year 2,834 suicides of men either
divorced or separated from their wives and 948 suicides of widowers,
as against only 286 suicides of married men. It is also shown that 343
women separated from their husbands and 124 widows died by their own
hands, in contrast with 61 married women and 87 unmarried. In
Wurtemburg, to every million inhabitants, there are 1,540 lunatics
among divorcés or women separated from their husbands and 338 among
the widows, while there are only 224 among unmarried women. There are
1,484 lunatics among the men who are divorced or separated from their
wives, 338 among the widowers, and only 236 among the bachelors.
THE QUARTERLY list of American tin plate works, which was
published in the Metal Worker a short time ago, shows that on July 1
there were thirty-six complete tin plate plants rolling their own
black plates in actual operation in the United States and three in
course of construction. The active plants possessed an aggregate of
179 tin mills, having an estimated yearly capacity of about 5,500,000
boxes of tin plates. In addition to these establishments there were
thirty-one tin plate dipping works, without rolling mills, possessing
an aggregate of 169 tinning sets. At the end of June the production of
American tin plate is estimated to have been going on at the rate of
over 4,000,000 boxes yearly. During the last quarter the New Castle
Steel and Tin Plate Company, of New Castle, Pa., has completed large
extensions to its works, making it an eighteen-mill plant. This gives
the United States the largest and most complete tin plate works in the
world. Its annual capacity is three-quarters of a million boxes.
THE MONITEUR VINICOLE has recently published a statement
showing the wine production of the various countries of the world.
From this statement it appears the yield in France amounted in the
years 1895 and 1894 to 587,127,000 gallons and 859,162,000 gallons
respectively; in Algeria to 83,549,000 and 80,124,000 gallons; Tunis,
3,956,000 and 3,936,000: Italy, 469,555,000 and 539,000,000; Spain
379,500,000 and 528,000,000; Portugal, 43,890,000 and 33,000,000;
Azores, Canaries, and Madeira, 4,620,000 and 2,640,000; Austria,
66,000,000 and 88,000,000; Hungary, 63,030,000 and 46,103,000; and
Germany, 80,190,000 and 110,000,000 gallons. In Turkey and Cyprus the
production last year amounted to 52,800,000 gallons, and this compares
with an average yield of 40,000,000 gallons. In Bulgaria the yield was
26,400,000 gallons; Servia, 17,600,000; Greece, 35,200,000; Roumania,
68,640,000; Switzerland, 27,500,000; the United States, 89,700,000;
Mexico, 1,980,000; Argentine Republic, 29,700,000; Chile, 33,000,000,
Brazil, 7,700,000; Cape of Good Hope, 2,420,000; Persia, 594,000; and
Australia, 3,300,000 gallons.
THE Historical Museum of Hesse Cassel, in Germany, says the
Carpenter and Builder, contains a most remarkable collection of
curiosities. It is in the form of a wooden library, composed of five
hundred and forty volumes of folio and quarto sizes. The books are
made of the different specimens of trees found in the famous park of
Wilhelmshoehe. On the back of each of these singular books is pasted a
large shield of red morocco, which bears the popular and scientific
names of the tree and the family to which it belongs. Each label is
inlaid with some of the bark of the tree, the moss and lichen, and a
drop or two of the resin, if the tree produces it. The upper edge of
the book shows the tree in its youth, cut from a horizontal section,
with the sap in the center and the eccentric circles. The same method
prevails with the lower edge, showing the changes that have taken
place. The interior of the book, in the shape of a box, contains in
manuscript the history of the tree, with numerous hints as to its
treatment, capsules filled with seeds, buds, roots, leaves, and so on.
The inner sides show the diverse transformations which take place from
bloom to fruit.
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