News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 27, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

—The recently published report of the Poor Law Commission, England, shows that the number of persons receiving charity aid in that country during the last year was 1,709,436, or forty-eight to every thousand of the population.

—The skull of a fossil horse, known as hipparion gracile, which geologists say was ancestor to the modern horse, was unearthed by workmen excavating for the Brooklyn, N. Y., subway loop. The bones were found at sea-level, twenty-two feet down. The discovery is regarded unusual in this northern region.

—A tornado, accompanied by rain, hail, and lightning, swept over western Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma on April 12. Whiting, Kan., was practically wiped out. Sixty buildings were blown down, and thirty persons injured. The greatest toll of death was levied at Big Heart, Okla., where eight persons were killed outright, and ten injured; almost every building in the town was wrecked. So far as known, the casualties amount to twenty-three killed and nearly one hundred injured, with much loss of property.

—“Save the corn-cobs,” is the admonition of John T. Schaffer, the noted specialist, who has amassed millions with his various devices for the elimination of waste. He is now perfecting a process for converting corn-cobs into wood blocks in many forms, the most valuable of which are lumber, railroad ties, and the basis of many kinds of furniture. He estimates that this year’s corn crop, of approximately 3,000,000,000 bushels, would produce 1,650,000,000 bushels of cobs, and these properly reduced to pulp and pressed into boards, would yield 19,300,000,000 feet of lumber. They would make 412,000,000 railroad ties, or a sufficient supply for 13,733 miles of railroad.

—In the Mexican imbroglio there have been many attacks and counter-attacks between the federal troops and the insurrectos during the last few days, with more or less loss of life on both sides. The capture of Agua Prieta, a small customs town near the border of the United States, by the insurrectos, resulted in the killing of several citizens of this country. In consequence, considerable diplomatic correspondence was entailed between Washington and Mexico City. It is proposed that a neutral zone ten miles wide along the United States border be observed by the contending parties. Later, Agua Prieta was recaptured by the federal troops. Peace negotiations have continued; but the demands of the insurrectos, in requiring the resignation of President Diaz, are considered by the Mexican government as most unreasonable. It is hoped, however, that early terms of peace will be arranged. In the United States Senate some have urged that full authority be given the President to the point of intervening in Mexican affairs if necessary; by others this procedure has been heartily opposed on the ground that such action would mean war with Mexico.

—The following historical documents were destroyed in the recent Albany capitol fire: The first charter of the Colony of New York, in manuscript, from Charles I to the duke of York; the papers which were found on Major André; the first charter of Trinity Church, New York City, from the British Crown; and the great collection of Clinton papers, the most personal documents of the Revolutionary governor, containing many hundreds of letters from Washington.

—One of the latest of the many devices which have been tried for preventing the rolling of ships at sea is Frahm’s antirolling tank, which has been tested at Hamburg, and, it is said, is to be installed on a new 55,000-ton transatlantic liner. It has also been tried on a war-ship. It consists of a U-shaped water-reservoir placed crosswise inside the hull, and so adjusted that the movement of the water, which can be controlled when necessary by a valve, counteracts the oscillations of the ship produced by the waves. The apparatus acts on the principle of resonance of vibration. Applied to two trading-vessels which were “notorious rollers,” the tanks are said to have practically cured the defect.

—Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, in making investigations into the longevity of the animal kingdom, asserts that only mankind, whales, elephants, eagles, and parrots live to be 100 years old. In a recent lecture he presented a schedule of the average prospects of life of the lower orders of birds and animals. A number of his tabulations are given here: Elephants, whales, eagles, parrots, may attain the age of 100 years; owls, 80 years; the orang-outang, chimpanzee, and gorilla, 70 years; rhinoceros, crow, and raven, 60 years; lions, tigers, bears, 50 years; horses and deer, 40 years; geese and ducks, 30 years; the squirrel, canary, and cat, 20 years. In the main the more highly organized animals live the longest. This the doctor shows by comparing the chimpanzee, with 70 years, to man, with 100 years, and to the lower order of apes, with their average of 25 years.

—A. E. Shipley, a distinguished zoologist, read a paper before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in which he quoted from Guenther, who about ten years ago made a careful comparison of the numbers of species of the various groups of animals known in 1830, or thereabout, with the numbers known in 1881. The total number in 1840 was 73,588. In 1881 the number had increased to 311,653. The known species of the order of mammals, to which man belongs, had increased in fifty years in number from 1,200 to 2,300; birds, from 3,600 to 11,000; reptiles, from 543 to 3,400; fishes, from 3,500 to 11,000; and worms, from 372 to 6,070. The average number of new species discovered each year since 1881 may be estimated at about 12,000. In 1895 Sharpe, a zoologist of fame, estimated that the number of known species of insects is not less than a quarter of a million, and he expressed the conviction that ten times as many insect species yet await discovery. But the conclusion of the zoologists is that in the case of large animals, and especially of mammals, a majority of the living species is already known.