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Show IN THE ODD CORNER. QUEER AND (CURIOUS THINGS AND ( EVENTS. A Newly Discovered Cave at Cole Camp, Missouri Iti Roof, Floor and Sides Lined with joarytes White- as Snow A Glass Dress. I I Thrt Clothes-Horse. This angular and ribby steed Is famed for neither grace nor speed; And yet its worth is recognized When once a! week 'tis exercised. For maidens then upon it place The trappings of the human race. rich silk, is quite comfortable to wear, strong and durable. It consists of threads of glass, which, when spun out to great fineness, lose their brittle-ness. brittle-ness. The dress, which is said to be the only one of its kind, was bought by a young concert singer, who now wears it at her public appearance. The glass from which the threads were originally made was perfectly clear, but the fabric when made up has a curious green tint in daylight. At night it has a strange irridescence, its colors change with every movement of the wearer and of the beholder's eye. The makers of the dress received $1,000 for it, and complained that the .price paid was barel remunerative. The gown contains millions of extremely ex-tremely fine and delicate strands of pure spun glass, made and woven into glass cloth by hand in Dresden, Germany. Ger-many. The cloth was brought 'to Paris by a prominent French dressmaker dress-maker and made into the dress, which required five months and two days to complete. The dress was cut in the latest Parisian fashion. It took over fourteen yards of extra wide glass cloth, 35 yards of spun glass braid and 25 yards of glass fringe, making in all 74 yards, to make up this garment gar-ment Many would suppose that this great quantity of cloth, braid and fringe would make it rather heavy; but it does not weigh any more, If aa much, as an , ordinary evening gown. Its minute strands are so artistically woven and interwoven that it is perfectly per-fectly flexible, as a silk dress would be, and can be worn like any other garment with perfect comfort and freedom. WONDERS OF THE ALPS. Myriads of British and American tourists are at this moment delighting themselves with the grandeurs of Alpine Al-pine travel. Nothing in the world's history is more impressive than the story of the Alps. Ten or twleve million mil-lion years ago, possibly far more, a long unseen line of weakness, a crack or fissure in the earth's crust stretched away from France eastward hundreds of miles. On this line followed fol-lowed huge volcanic outbursts. Next ensued a vast slow subsidence, which went on through geologic epochs, until un-til where Mont Blanc now rears its summit 15,780 feet was a sea fringing an old continent. Large rivers emptied into it. Deposits of mud, sand, gravel were laid one on another as the sinking sink-ing went on, until the layers became 50,000 feet, nearly ten miles, thick. Then at last commenced a great uplifting; up-lifting; the struggling subterranean forces raised a huge load. ' For ages this went on until the rocks, crumbled. The Fire-Dogs. Upon the hearth these faithful Dogs Guard zealously the blazing logs. They boast a lengthy pedigree Of ancient English ancestry. Their breed is growing very rare; I am in luck ,to own a pair. The Monkey-Wrench. Thou art, to womankind at least, A wily and unfriendly Beast, Elusive, slippery and wild, Although with man thou'rt tame and mild. Since thou to him art such a friend, Perhaps from monkeys men descend. The Sewing-Bee. This is, in truth, a busy Bee! It hums about the family tree. To string it oftentimes contrives. And on a dish of gossip thrives. Whene'er its baleful buzz I hear, ' If possible I disappear." Jeannie Betts Hartswick. A WONDERFUL CAVE. There is a cave near Cole Camp, lately brought to notice by the sinking of a shaft in a hunt for zinc ore, which I regard as one of the most beautiful works of nature in all cave formations. forma-tions. The cave is twenty feet high from roof to floor, circular in shape, with a diameter of twenty-eight feet The roof, floor and side3 are lined with a fine grade of baryte (tiff they call it in the country) white as snow, and on this white background iron pyrites have seemingly been sprinkled in small particles, as though put on with a pepper box. Continual contact with the water in the cave gives the pyrite the appearance of burnished gold. From the roof hangs great long calcite stalactites, with highly polished surfaces and colored to perfection. From the floor have grown stalagmites of the same character, color and "appearance, "ap-pearance, but with this wonderful difference dif-ference leacijrae-of-ths- stalagmites is tipped with a beautiful cube of lead, as clean and bright as if just made. This cube of lead, placed as it is, so bright and fresh to mind, is the strongest proof of the present growth of lead that I have ever seen, and I imagine it would be highly interesting interest-ing to scientific men. On the sides of this cave there are panels of lead that are eighteen inches square, inserted, as it were,. in the baryte. How thick or how far back the lead extends has not yet been determined. The calcite formations for-mations on the sides resemble in appearance ap-pearance the stalactite, with this difference, dif-ference, that they are pressed against the sides, very much after the manner man-ner one has of crossing the arms on the breast. The roof of the cave is thirty-six feet fromf the surface, and one of the most gorgeous sights I have ever seen under a bright light. The owners of the property are to pump the water out next week, and with some geologists that I have Invited, In-vited, will examine it during the fair week at Sedalia. For an attraction I know of nothing more beautiful, and could it be arranged to take the lining lin-ing of this cave out and reproduce it at the world's fair at St. Louis, I am sure it would be very attractive to all, Including the scientific and the lover of art In nature. World's Fair Bulletin. crushed, contorted, rose above the waters, and continued to rise, forming lines of mountain chains and making Switzerland a tableland. Every hour since then rain and snow, river, glacier gla-cier and avalanche have been sculpturing sculp-turing into peaks and carving into lakes and valleys that vast platform with its recent sedimentary covering and primeval granite core. The result re-sult is a land of unequal grandeur. Find you this in the guide book? Not a word of it. Yet Professor Judd in his charming "Volcanoes" (Kegan Paul) told the tale years ago In half a dozen pages. Would not the traveler travel-er look on the Matterhorn, the Jung-frau, Jung-frau, the stupendous Splugen, the massive mas-sive Gothard, the Mer der Glace, the deep Lake of Geneva, with quickened: interest had he this story before him? And it can be told so easily; but 'tis not there. London Telegraph. HIGHEST EUROPEAN RAILWAY. The highest railway in Europe H now being built to the summit of the Jungfrau, 13,670 feet above sea Ibvel. The track will run through a tunnel winding round the solid body of the Eiger mountain as far as Eiger station, sta-tion, about 10,587 feet above sea-level, which is to be laid open by galleries. It will continue in a straight line for some distance, falling then in the Hi rection of the Jungfraujoch, keeping 288 feet below the surface of the ridgej and finally curving round the uppermost upper-most solid block of the mountain, reaching its end point on a plateau 12,300 feet above sea-level. It is expected ex-pected that the first station, at Eiger-wand, Eiger-wand, 9,400 feet above sea-level, will be at Eismeer, at an altitude of 10,37(1 feet; this will be the highest railway station In Europe. The length of the line will be a little over seven miles. ABOUT OSTRICH FARMING. For the past fifteen years ostrich farming In Cape Colony has been a highly successful industry. In the past ten years ending in 1899, before the beginning of the war, the number of the birds increased from 115,000 to 261,000. Twenty-five years ago the statistics of Cape Colony said that there were only ten tame ostriches in the colony. The birds each yield about a pound and a half of feathers every year, the average value being $12 a pound. The finest feathers, of course, the the wing feathers of the male bird, which are long and white and bring from $50 to $70 a pound. It takes eighty of them to make a pound. The wing feathers of the female ostrich are much lower in value because they are. always gray. The supply was much smaller when it came wholly from wild birds and the best quality of feathers frequently brought as much $135 a pound. As each male bird yields only about twelve or fifteen of these feathers and as there is always a steady demand for them the price Is not likely to fall much until the ostrich farming industry betomes larger than it is now. A DRESS MADE OF GLASS. One of the most curious objects at the Paris exposition was a dress of glass. The fabric' closely resembles A Poisonous Tree. One of the most extraordinary trees in the world is found in Madagascar. It is known as the tangen tree, and) because it abounds in poison the nams tanghinia venenifeja has been given to it by botanists. In the criminal records rec-ords of Madagascar it has played a notable part until quite recently. Whenever an accused person was brought into court, fruft from the tree, about the size of an apple, was handed to him by an attendant. Thereupon the judge, who was surrounded by several witnesses, bade him eat the fruit, and assured him that if It produced pro-duced no ill effects ..he would be deemed innocent of the charge which had been made against him. On the other hand, if the poison in the fruit killed him, he would be considered guilty. Many unfortunate persons, it is said, lost their lives in this way. |