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Show BITS OF INFORMATION. South America had newspaper as long ago as 1594. The city death rate is generally greater great-er in winter than in summer. Australia has more unemployed area in proportion to the population than any other country. All employes in The Netherlands who are boarding with their employers are entitled to medical treatment for at least six weeks. Rhode Island received its name from what was supposed to be a resemblance in contour to the Island of Uhod;?s in the Mediterranean. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman will start next November a magazine called the Forerunner, of which she will write the whole contents each month. The only ostrich farm in Europe is at Nice. It is said to be profitable. Incubators Incu-bators have to be used to hatch the eggs, the sun in the Riviera not being hot enough to do this work, as it does in Africa. rMs. Isabelle McCosh, wife of the late president of Princeton university, has just celebrated her ninety-second birthday. birth-day. J. W. Alexander has just finished a portrait of Mrs. McCosh, which he has given to the university. Among the 6,000,000 working women in this country there are nearly 1,000,000 widows and nearly 800,000 married women wo-men whose husbands have failed to provide pro-vide for them. Nearly 100,000 divorced women are cn.ong the wage-earners. Mrs. Sarah Piatt Decker and the newly new-ly formed public service league of women wo-men have made a successful fight against the ordinance which had been "sneaked through" the Denver board of aldermen to permit the feeding of brewery swill to milch cows. Mrs. Chapman Catt predicted in St. James' hall on Monday that a woman's suffrage would come "as surely as the sun would rise on the morrow." It is only fair to explain that Mrs. Chapman Catt is from the United States, and has had no experience of our English sunrises. sun-rises. London Globe. The Prussian government is to issue a loan, the proceeds of which are to be, used for the construction and equipment of new branch line railroads. One line of road is to have electric traction, for which $476,000 is set aside. The total amount to be expended under this loan bill is $55,753,000. Beans, bean cake and bean oil are the principal products of Manchuria. The prices of these during the last season have been higher than ever before, but how much of this is due to the ability of Japan, a gold standard country, to pay more in silver, because silver has been cheap, cannot be positively stated. The Korean grass used in the manufacture manu-facture of grass cloth is grown very thickly and Is usually cut the second or third year after planting the roots. The grass reaches a height of four to five feet, and with a proper start and under favorable conditions yields, it is roughly estimated, about 3,000 pounds to an area corresponding to an acre. Hitherto skulls of prehistoric men have been said to resemble those of great apes, but now comes a distinguished distin-guished French anthropologist and declares de-clares that one which has recently been discovered Is almost an exact replica of that of Bismarck. Does this mean that prehistoric men had superb cranial development, or it Is a Gallic fling at "M. le Bismarck?" New York Tribune. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrlni, superior su-perior general of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, has just returned to this country from Brazil, where she recently opened a college for the higher education of women. This is the fifty-eighth fifty-eighth institution established by the order or-der in twenty-seven years. The institutions institu-tions Include colleges, schools, hospitals and orphan asylums. An electrically wired table cloth, upon which ornamental electric light fixtures diffuse Illumination the moment they are set down, is one of the latest and most interesting illuminating devices designed In England, says Popular Mechanics. To the uninitiated the ability abil-ity to get light by simply placing a fixture fix-ture on the table is nothing less than extraordinary, but the explanation is simple. ( Recent exploration of the Athabasca-Mackenzie Athabasca-Mackenzie region shows that it contains con-tains many valuable fur bearing animals, ani-mals, and it appears also to be the home of the last wild remnant of the American Ameri-can bison family. The herds of bison are not numerous, and they are being rapidly exterminated by wolves. The Canadian musk ox also inhabits this region, and In the spring, when the rivers riv-ers and springs escape from the frost great flocks of birds, including most of the migratory game birds of America, resort thither to breed. ' What might be called a tabloid watch has just been made by a watchmaker of Locle, Switzerland, says the London Globe. The thickness Is said to be only three millimeters, so. a meter beine- vinlv thirty-nine incres. one can estimate the thickness oC the watch. Taking the case and the glass it is found the works occupy oc-cupy a space 1.9 millimeters. The spring is half a millimeter. What makes this achievement of the Locle watchmaker more extraordinary is that it is asserted that the watch keeps time, varying only five seconds in twenty-four hours. The Philadelphia Press has won the first round in its fight to abolish toll roads and toll gates in Pennsylvania. A legislative commission has been appointed ap-pointed to investigate the whole subject sub-ject and report to the next legislature on the best means of getting rid of what the Press calls a nuisance and a check on the commercial progress of the state. "There is much information to be gathered in. regard to these roads, for though they have existed since the early days of our history they have not been the subject of official reports and great ignorance prevails in regard to them," says the Press. The recent death of Fredericr von Holstein, long in the service of the German Ger-man foreign office, was barely mentioned men-tioned in the cable dispatches to this country, but in Germany, as well as in France and England, the significant of his career was understood. He was one of the men who greatly serve the state without public recognition. The Frankfurter Zeitung goes so far as to say that Herr von Holstein, after Bis-marks' Bis-marks' retirement, was really "the directed di-rected (Leiter) of our foreign policy." Yet he was not even an under secretary. His place was. by preference, in the background. Personally he was the most retiring and publicity hating of mortals. New York Evening Post. With the appreciation of the fine arts and the place of the drama in life which English-speaking folk have yet to attain, at-tain, Mexico includes in her national' outgo support of the theatre, and the new budget, just announced calls for $3,000,000 for a new national theatre building. Another indication of culture in the budget is an appropriation of $1,000,000 for a monument to commemorate commemo-rate the 100th anniversary of national indepedence. There are other generous Items, for education, for extensive irrigation irri-gation projects and far raising the economic eco-nomic conditions of the people. But there seems to be singular indifference to invasion from Europe or Asia. Neither the army nor navy is calling for huge sums. How benighted! Boston Bos-ton Herald. Prince Buelow once invited Herr von Holstein to dinner, telling him that it Was to meet the emperor. "But," replied re-plied Holstein, "I don't believe that I have a dress coat at present. I will try, however, to get one made in time, and if I can't, perhaps the emperor will take me as I am. This, the Times says, was reported to his majesty, who said that Herr von Holstein was to appear In any garb he pleased. When the meeting took place Holstein was in his usual frock coat, and the emperor laughingly tapped him on the shoulder and said: "I see the dress coat wasn't ready. It doesn't matter." London Evening Standard. The Deutsche Theater-Zeitung of Berlin Ber-lin relates that at a recent dress rehearsal re-hearsal in that city the bell had sounded sound-ed for an important scene, when the leading lady called excitedly, "Not yet! Not yet! Wait." Inquiry on the part of the stage manager revealed the fact that the doorway through which she was to enter was not bread enough for her hat. "Change the hat," commanded the stage manager. "Widen the door." answered the actress. Both insisted on having their way until the director cast his vote in favor of the actress and the stage carpenter fas instructed to change the setting to admit "without danger to it or the wearer" the monster headdress. |