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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Advocate, 1888-3-8, Page 6THE CAPITAL OF THE CAU. CASA S,, Some Interesting lntorwatton on an Almost linkn.nin Part of the world. I arrived here last week, after a fifteen hours' ride lay train frons the seaport town of Batmen, having enjoyed frequent glimp- ses of very beeurrful and varied monutain scenery on the journey, Tiflis, the eepital of the Cau:asus, I a large town situated in a valley and surrounded by niountaius of varying heights, It possesses very wide, sanitary streets, bordered on each side by a row of trees, which confer grateful shade on the foot passengers in this tropical weather. Sortie of the buntline are also very fine, especially those eonueeted in any wey r, ith the Russian Government. The most inter- esting portion of the town is the Asiatic quarter, among the booths and bezears of which a stranger meets with all kinda of strange eights and sounds. Here are men of all nations. The Georgian, Russian, Per - ;den, Armenian, Greek, Jew, etc., who, rushing to and fro through the narrow streets, some on horseback, others riding in phaetons, create a medley only, to be seen And appreciated in an Bestern city. The shops, or rather booths, in tills quar- ter m e exceedingly iuterestin , containing all kinds of ancient relics, thine to delight the eye of the antiquary And curiesity ea/lector. Here are eitnered the famous hot sulphur battle, renovated fortheir curi ig properties for shits iiisea€es of all kions. The wawtere trf the,e baths tire'nimbiiterated, =amine direetly from the spring into the bath ready for use. Not the least quaint es the Geurgimt COS. tame which although uncouth mei wild is very picturesque. Itis composed of a long buffalo hide made into the shape of a very large cape, which benig E.uapended from the shoulders reaches to the heel% under this a long gown is worn, ornamented on each side of the brat with little can -like pea. kets, originally inteudel for cartridges, Reglad the waist a belt—sliver or gale— beautifully alebeautifully embetsed, serves to hold the numerous arms iu wkieh the real Georgian delights. These weapons, although worn exclusively for ornament. are very real, and cousiat of a "ltinjal" (long native knife) stuck alautwiee into the heft, a dagger the .heath of which ie also ei:tboseed, and last but not least, a revolver ready for imiaedi• ate nee Z ary good, sport eau be enjoyed here, einem and hares al`enuding iii eteicd,. i.0 Its the el blur= fares . 1 The eonunedities aro wonderfully cheap here, autos ; which Spence the xaotive (Ro celled " lebal atinaky ") wise The is sold in skins of venins eine, the usual attiail a iiin4coeteinit:g about eight quarts, vesting from two to four realm (four to Eight ehillluge.) Of course much common- er wino can bo obtained which is naturally cheaper. The real lehahatineker wino le rather ex- pensive, that being of the best quality gown in the Caucasus. It obtain its name irent the beautiful province wherein it la cultivated, vis; "Khairaty," which is attn. ated about eevcaty verge from TatLie, It is a matter of great surprise to me,. after having c xperiteted a ff w of the beau- ties of this comparatively tint:town part of the world,that it iii not both r known and ap- preciatedby our Caned icu,lsngliehand(Amer- lean tourists, who would flub abundance of mountain scenery, equal in point of beauty to any in the world. .N adly'a. The old Hindu capital stands at the junc- tion of its two upper head waters, about 65 miles above Calcutta. We reach the ancient city through a river chaos, emerg- ing at length upon a well -marked channel below the junction. It was from Nadiya that the last Hindu King of Bengal, on the approach of the Mohammedan invader in 1203, fled from his palace in the middle of dinner, as the story runs, with his sandals snatched up in his hand, It was at Nadiya that thejdeity was incarnated in the fifteenth senturyA, D., lathe great Hindu reform- er, the Luther of Bengal. At Nadiya the Sanskrit colleges, since the dawn of history, have taught their abstruse philosophy to colonies of students, who oalmly pursued the life of a learner from boyhood to white- haired old age. I landed with feelings of reverence at this ancient Oxford of India. A fat, benevolent abbot paused in fingering his beads to salute me from the veranda of a Hindu monastery. I asked him for the birthplace of the divine founder of his faith. The true site, he said, was now covered by the river. The Hoogly had first out the sacred pity in two, then twisted right round the town, Ieaving anything that remained of the original capital on the opposite bank. Whatever the water had gone over it had buried beneath its silt. I had with me the Sanskrit chronicle of the present line of Na- diya Rajahs. It begins with the arrival of their ancestor, one of the first five eponym- ous Brahman immigrants into Bengal, ac- cording to its chronology, in the eleventh century, A. D. It brings down their annals from father to son to the great Rajah of the eighteenth century, Clive's friend, who re- ceived 12 cannon as a trophy fram Plessey. So splendid were the oharities of this Indian scholar -prince that it became a proverb that any man of the priestly caste in Bengal who had not received a gift from him could be no true Brahman. The Rajahs long ago ceased to reside in a city which had become a inere prey to the river. Nadiya is now a collection of peasants' huts, grain . shops, mud colleges, and crumbling Hindu monas- teries, cut up by gullies and hollows. A few native magnates still have houses in the holy city. The only objects that struck me in its narrow lanes were the bands of yel- low -robed pilgrims on their way to bathe in the river ; two stately sacred bulls who pac- ed about in well-fed complacency, and the village idiot, swollen with monastic rice, listlessly flapping the files with a palm leaf as he lay in the sun. The Vintage in Cyprus. The first days of August open the general vintage although the grapes from the warmest spots are sold and eaten from the ended May onward—and its duration of some six weeks is due partly to the widely differing altitudes and aspects of the vine• yards, and partly to the custom of first gathering and pressing the inferior grapes, and leaving the best until the end of Oc- tober to overripen and grow sweet for the choicest wines. They are pounded with flat mallets on a eloping hard floor before pressing, andthe deep -red trust ferment ip immense inverted pear-shaped stoneware` jars, half sank in the ground, When the fare are at the end of some six weeks cov- ered over the wine has bootee lighter in col- or. The jars, which are baked so large as to holed from l:; to 20 barrels, have been made probably, from all antiquity at the vil- lages of Lipithos, Korno, and V aroshia. Tile custom of burying those holding the best wine in deep trenches has long furnish. ed the cunning Cypriot with a means of evading the ganger. Being porous, these jars are coated with pitch, or a compost of pitch, turpeutiee, vineashes, gaud, and goat's hair. This. applied beiling.peuetrates the sul'stanee of the ear, end never quits , it, and pertly amounts for the repulsive taste and smell of alumet a'I the coarser and. newer Cyprus wines. But the chief cause of this tar &laver is the transport of the wine skin, whi. !i era a' -so stanched with pitch within. The churning of the wine in these, under an Eestern sun during a tedfone juuruey, completes the ruin of the wine for s, European palate, and it takes it twelve or fifteeu years to recover. The local taste of course impreves, and it is nn or from a hygienic point of view than I -rke1eg's once famous =water, which is still upheld here and thereat the tablea•d'hote of the French. and Belgian bagmen. The only radical cure for it is to make roads practicable for carte into the wine districts, to that the mer. (aitante of the towns –.for Mohammed must go to the inaunt.iu--can scud up pure casks, sed bring down tate wine themselves, Some offer= have lately been made in this dirco tion near Limassa, and wine now in seine places comes down in wood on camels, in- stead of in akin on donkeys and mules, but the van majority: of the cemmuuicetio a aro all but impracticable mouutain paths and mule tracks, which drive the peasant to the use of the wiue•ekin. The more fastfdi- oua .emmenia of the Scalae have long been aseuetenaed to send up the large slaw demi. johns .Arable, odei:eoyan.a) cased in wicker- work int doukeydeaek, to bring clown their' household wine in closely fashion from the viateyarils, aid the wine keeps hotter iu a dame -Jeanne than in wood, hut then they are fragile. So lou as the wine was worth '. little or nothing; the pltdh did not leach matter—many a Spanish village was pies - =red with mortar made with wine, au being headier than water ; but now that France's dilfacultice have given Cyprus an opportu- nity, we ought no longer to have Cyprus wines offered in a positively repellantcon. ditto, as they were et the celebrated hers of the Colonial exhibition last year. It is carioca to find that, iso long as 120 years ago, some winemaltere from Provence es- tabliehed themselves at Qmodes to medicate the pitchin practices, and found a good foreign market for their produce. A summer palace is being erected at Mery for the reception of the Czar of All the Russias. To recuperate his nerve he'll seek repose in Merv. This much -to -be -pitied man states that he does not intend taking over India just at present, but .will bide his time. By the way, the Great White Czar's unfortunate pep %musehave had considerable confidence in the stability of the British Empire, or he would not have placed £4,- 800;000 in the bands of London bankers. Railways in Danmark are blockaded ow- ing to Heavy snow storms. Berlin military experts estimate the Rus- sian troops on the frontier at 800,000 A Ship's pincer's Pluck. I once saw three young tigers, larger than Newfoundland dogs, loose ou the deck of a British India steamer crowded with several hundred Mecca pilgrims, Tho cage =which they were confined was large, and barred on each side,with a partition running along its middle which had a drop door.. The man who had charge of the animals would drive them over to one side of the cage, close the. partition and clean out tho other side at his lobs -tiro ; then, barring np the Olean side, be would open the partition and drive the tigers hack, while be went through the same per- formance on the other side. Ono morning ho neglected to put up the bars on the side he had finished, and so drove the tigers out of the opposite side of the open cage, The animals on obtaining their liberty, took different directions, and, orouohing in the nearest corners, lay snarling and exposing their teeth, showing unmistakable signs of a most dangerous fear. That side of the deck was deserted, and the crowd gazed in inter- est at a respectable distance. Mr. Flense, the third officer, the second officer and the keeper each placed himself before a tiger, barring their exit should they attempt to move away. Flense inquired if the tigers had been fed that day. They had not. They had always been fed on living fowls. Fleuse called for three chickens from the hen coop. Taking these he threw one in the face of each tiger. The chickens seemed simply motionless, glued to the spot, so in- stantaneous was the fixing of teeth and claws. Flense then went deliberately up to a tiger, coolly took the loose skin of the back of the neck with one hand and the root of the tati with the other, and, putting out his full strength, dragged the heavy brute along the deck to the cage and forced it through the open bars. The chicken diversion act- ed perfectly- The brute had no object but that of retainiog its prey. It growled fear- fully; its eyes blazed; its teeth crashed through the chicken ; its unsheathed claws clasped and pierced its quivering body. Red-hot irons would hardly have made it loosen its grip of the bird. Then the keep- ers and the others helped Flame in carrying the remaining tigers into the cage.—[From "ThreeYears of a Wanderer's Life." The Paradise of Pisciculturists. A Ring Advocate. The American railway interest has applied to Congress for aid ae+iust the competition of Cacadian railroads, The United States railway magnates sae that the Canadian rail. ways are already seriously interfering with their sovereignty over the citizens of the Republic in matters relating to the carrying trade of their country, and they have invok- ed the aid of the representatives of the peo- ple to prevent the foreigners from infringing upon what they have conte to regard as their prerogative. General Wilson did not, of course, sap in plain terns that American railway combinations have a right to rule over the American people with a rod of iron, and that any enoroachmeut on that right by Canadians is not to be tolerated. He was much toe shrewd to allow the people a glimpse of the motives by which he and those whom he represents are actuated. He appeared before the lnteretate -Committee of the Senate, as a patriot who had none but this =termite of the Government and the people of the United States at heart:. He dac'ared that the competition of Canadian railroads deprives the Upited States Government of " the power to proper- ly regulate interstate commerce." If he heel mid that Canadian competition will aid and very materially dial, the Government of, the United States in regulating inter- state commerce and preserve the people of the United States front the extortion of railway mouopoaes, he wontd have been emelt a tearer the truth. Congreee bas been obliged to interfere to protect the citizens of the Milted Staten from the greed and in- justice of railway eombinetiee The op• preeseon of these inouupalies had become so galling that the people averoforeed to apply to the Legislature for relief. The Interstate Commerce law haat not proved a very ego. tire check to the tyranny of the American railways, What was needed to give the mere of American railroede the relief they so badly need watt not iso much the restraint of law as the healthy notion of free cora. petition. The connection of the Canadian rods with the railroad eystotu of the Uni- ted States supplied that competition ; and in a natural and perfectly legitimate way made the work of the .Legislature much more simple and easy, and, at the sense time, did -much to free the people from the yoke of the railway rings. It is hardly to be expected that Congress will; by acced- ing to General t 'ilsou's modest retreat, in create its difficulties and fns;en upon the people a bondage witieli they al- ready feel to be well uigh intolerable.: The true pokey of the representatives: of the A.tnerieaut people is certainly not to strengthen the bands of the railway monopolists by 'tahiug away almost the only check that :exists to the exercise by them of almost uulituited power. They should rather encourage railway competi- tion, no matter from what quarter it :nay come, and if they interfere with Canadian .endo at all it should be to prevent them entering into combinations with the roads ea the American side of the line. Canadian competition,' as long es it remains free, is a benefit to the American people. The dant ger to them lies in the liability of the Cana. dian lines entering into an alliance with the lines on the other side of the border and thus Milling a competition from which they al- ready derive many and great advantages, and which aro certain in the proarees of time to become more and greater. The allusion which General Wilson to the navigation laws of the United States is peculiarly unfortunate. Those laws ate not working for the benefit of the people of the United States. Under them their for- eign mercantile marine has almost entirely disappeared and their domestic trade is hampered and embarrassed. So injurious have these laws become to the trade and commerce of the United States that thought- ful and patriotic men are agitating -for their modification and repeal. It is amusing to see General Wilson's attempts to excite alarm among Americana at the growing importance of Canada. It is surely an insult to the American people sixty millions strong, to tell them that they have anything to fear from either trade competition orthemilitary prowess of a neighboring community num- bering barely five millions. This doughty general must regard his countrymen as the veriest poltroons when he tries to excite their fears by telling them that twenty-five years hence, when thepopulation of the i United States will, if t =erotises in the same ratio as the General calculates for Canada, be considerably more than two hundred millions, they will be in danger of an armed invasion from these terrible Cana- dians, who will, according to him, then number some twenty millions. The Ameri- cans will certainly not feel complimented when they are told that one Canadian is more than a match for ten American citi- zens. Surely General Wilson must greatly underrate the intelligence as well as the courage of his countrymen when he thinks that such an appeal to their timidity can have any other effect than to make himself ridiculous. The advocate of the railway rings had a weak case and he did not, in our judg- ment, manage it at all skilfully. We very much mistake if both the Congressional Committee and Amerciau public are not shrewd enough to see that the real objects of his attack are the rights and interests of the citizens of the United States and not the Canadian Government or the Canadian railways. "Rev." W. H. H. Murray was a guest of the Megantic Fish and Game Club, Boston, Mass., Feb. 14th, and he entertained the gentlemen with a most entertaining and instructive description of trapping and fish- ing in Northern Canada. He recently re- turned from an extended trip throughout the region north of Quebec, and he fired the hearts of his enthusiastic hearers by his des- oription of that paradise for sportsmen. He said that in a region 1,500 miles long and 1,000 wide there were no less then 200,000 small lakes abounding in fish, and streams that were the feeding grounds of n. yriads of ducks and geese. The region was practi tally a wilderness, unknown to civilization until within ten years. He said that the Canadian Government had nearly completed a railroad from Quebec to Lake St. John, 250 miles distant. When the road was opened he said that the region would be ac• cessible to all sportsmen, and urged all who could t3 visit that country before it became civilized. He said that for the first time fishing lost its charm, because he 'vas always sure of getting fish, and big ones, too. CHUNKS OF I,YI$DOi , j • Bessemer's steel patentshave brought him $3:i,a`,00 ire royalties, An estimate380places the number of persons supported by all forms of employment fur- nished by electricity at 5,000,400. Dr. Stephen Mackenzie, lecturer on medi- sine at the Tondo Hospital, recommends Indian hemp in doses of one-half grain night and morning as a remedy for pereist,. ent headache. The luuninosity of phosphorus is iutpaixed by a dense and increased by a rarefied at- mosphere. At a pressure of sixty pounds to the square inch, or four atmospheres, phosphorus is non -luminous. ti.According to Munball's dictionary of ata- stlas the average age of all t,hs pompe liv- ing in Pranee is ` thirty-two years. two months and twelve days. In the United States the average is ouly twenty-four years, ten months and twenty-four days, Glass-blowing is an art nearly 4,000 years old, perhaps older ; yet there has never been any device diecavered to take the place of the human lungs in the blowing, Bottles, however, are blown with a mold Abd mechanical bellows, :Bulk-windews that are cased up from the main store may be kept free from steam and frost by a small door' or a pane of glass that will swing open near the top of the window, SO as to let hot air near the top escape, and the cold air from outdoors will go in and keep the glass elem. The eleotrio motor railway at Sea Diego, Cal,, was sec et.aly tried and worked stait- feetorily. The grade le Si per cent. The motor, crowded with people, sievedup the grade, stopping on the steepest portion and again starting with easy anal running all day' without a Bitch. The line is four miles long. A new organ, oiled an orgue eleetricque, has boon placed in the Church of Sainte Clotilde, in the Feat= Saint-Germain. It is the feet instrument of the Idled that has appeared in a Poria church. The aecumlila tern are placed behind the high altar, whence the wires are connected with the keyboards and the organ pipes. The value of condiments in the prepara- tion of food is being discussed. Authorities: that may be considered reliable alert that red pepper and salt are specially valuable as aids to appetite and digestion, V'arioue Herbs and spies are also good, whale all the condiments lased in salads promote digestion and the aesemilationof feed. Extended observations at Paris and et Munich indicate that the sanitary cotillion of a locality depends ou the amount of water contained in the ground. The years in which then has been a large quantity of ground- water preemie have invariably been time healthiest while these in whiplt there has been a smaller quantity have invariably been them:healthiest. Bette conveying power aro very apt to slip an pulleys, but a new pulley has been devised to 'tree -out this. The pulley Is covered with perforated taheot iron one six- teenth of au melt thick, width is riveted to the pulley. The tension on the belt cacaos it to alightly grip the holes, and thus elle- ping is aavoided, while at the same time time pulley is strcugthened. Tho apparent paradox that the most transparent water is at the attract time per. fectly opaque from a certain point of view i -n shown by a simple experiment. Partly fill a glass goblet with clear water and hold it a little above the level of the eye and dis- tant n foot or more. No object can bo seen when hold just over the surface of the water, but the water surface appears like a buruished mirror. When e saran piece of potassium, the size of half a grain of corn, is dropped into a tumblorful of water some of the oxygen of the water leaves its hydrogou, owing to the intense heat which the chemical action pro- duces, and combines with the metallic po- tassiuni, causing a violet, bluish flame. Whoa the potassium is placed on the wick of a coal•oil or alcohol -lamp the flame pro. duced by touching the potassium with a bit of snow, or ice or a drop of water will in- flame it, PRINTING -INS AND PAPER.—Printing-ink appears blacker and colder on white paper than on tinted paper ; while on yellow or tinted paper it appears pale and without density. For taking printing -ink most per- fectly a paper shoald be chosen that is free from wood in its composition and that is not too strongly glazed. Wood paper is said to injare the ink through the nature of its composition. Its materials are very absorbent of light and air' and its ingredients go badly with colour. Pale glazed or en- amelled paper, on the other hand, brings out colour brilliantly. In order to get as much information as possible out of the movements of an isolated barometer, its indications should be watched in conjunction with the readings of a ther- mometerin the shade, and very careful at. tension should also be given to the direction of the wind and its changes. There is a couplet which conveys an important rule with respect to the ohenge of wind -direction, and the :truth` of which is well known to every sailor. "When the wind shifts against the sun, Trust it not, for back it will run." The wind in the northern hemisphere usual- ly shifts with watch -hands, and a change in this direction is called veering, . A change in the opposite way is called backing, and indicates that a storm is approaching. Captu,ing a Schoohna"an .. " Yes," said the young man as he threw himself at the feet of the pretty school-teaoh- er, " I love you and would go to the world's end for you., 4 Yon could not go to the end of the world for mo. James. The world, or the earth, as it is called," is round like a ball. slightly flattened at the poles. One of the first les- sons in elementary geography is devoted to the shape of the globe. You n'ust have studied it when yon were a boy." " 01 course I die, but—" " And it is no longer a theory. Circum. navigators have estbalished the fact." " i know, but what I meant was that I would do anything to please you. Ah 1 Minerva, if you knew the aching void—" " There is no such thing as a void, James. Nature abhors a vacuum ; but admitting that there could be such a thing, how could the void you speak of be a void if there was an ache in it 1" " I meant to say that my life will be lone- ly without you; that you are my daily thought and my nightly dream. I would go ` any- where to be with you. If you ware in Australia or at the North Pole I would fly to you. I—" " Fly 1 It will be another century before men can fly. Even when the laws of gravi- tation are successfully overcome there will still remain, says a late scientific authority, the difficulty of maintaining a balance--" " Web, at all events," exclaimed the youth, " I've got a pretty fair balance in the savings bank and I want you to be my wife. There 1" " Well, James, since you put it in that light, I—" ° Let the curtain fall. .:Whiter Beoreations, are genera Lees. Dedscated by the Brothers' club to the Neta York Thistles. The curlers are the lads foe me They're aye the foremost round the tee ; Just gie them lee and stones and brooms, And watchtthe callants snap their thoomba;; They're no the lads will run a.ea Though winter's wildest atone may bla ; Just tell them where they'll meet the foe Then aoop them up and awn they ga. Chorous. Hurrah for every culla' chief That cam this day to our bonspiel, When roun the tree they meet the foe Just soop them up and awa they go ! 0' wha eau watch our mein' ranks For burly breists and sturdy shanks 1 Or wha can bide the whiter's callld Like hemmed knights baith young and mild A thousand o' yon feckless loons Who, play' at billiards in our tone Wad flee awa if ance they saw A score o' curlers in a raw,, Tho Thistles cam across the line \; i' polished atane s and handles fine ; They meant tae show the Britershow The Yanks could lay a pat lid goo, lik wife and wean 'a i' anxious heart, Although. the eoutldna tisk a pairs, Is welting for the victor's cheer, And neo a std lament they'll hear ,':hen Isaxe again they pug free here. At MOSS I'erk, when each shot wad tell,. The pair wee—greetio' fell, And salted for just a chance again, In worts wad melt a heart o ante ► And that's the WAIT we let them Imo A sample o' oar ord'neirplay ; For bed we played our hear, ye ken, It wad hoe killed the honest mets I+Too, every retitled callaent chid That likes the roevin' Sarna sae wi:el Just tell us stories o' Lee days When ye were couquerors in the frays 1 Freers brag awa wi' Web= and trails, Altho' ye o'er should brag again ; And gin we're frightened et the blew e ll only riao, and slip awa. Britain and Russia in India* liritieli atntesman of all siwdee of pclitiea drew a sigh of relief at the concluaiesi and acceptance of the work of the Afghanistan Boundary C'oenmiesion. Yet these who are accuetomed to suspect the Ituesiau, even when inaliinfi treaties,—and they are many will scarcely hope that this delimitation ensures anything more than a temporary rest. A writer in the Landon ifaa? poiots out the two -aided nature of theproblem which now confronts the British in India, in their relations to the great Northern Power. Formerly the rivalry was for the friendship of the feeble trio of Afghaus whose territories lis between the lkitish and Russian possession in the West. Tho con- quest of Burmah has now interposed the great C:hineso nation between the came two great rivals in the least, and the contest bids fair to be equally keen between theist for the friendship or alliance of the Mondial]. The inducement to Russia to continuo to push southward toward the open nes is still even greater at the Eastern than at the Wcetvrn arid of the great mountain range which has hitherto barred her way south. ward. She has already scoured in Vladivo- stok a port which is open for niue menthe of the year, but the Lorean peniusula is in- vitingly studded with harbours open the whole year round, In this light the rather unusual course of England in ceding to China the strong post of Port Hamilton in the Corea becomes explicable. To have ro- taieed this stronghold would have material- ly weakened China's power, and possibly her disposition to resist the Russiandesire for a harbour on the Northern Conan coast. The Sultan's jubilee gift to the Pope was an anneau of gold profusely studded with precious stones, whioh is valued at £1.0,000. It was presented by the Armenian Patriarch. The President of the French Republic sent two magnificent vases of Sevres, along with a cordial letter of congratulation ; and his Holiness has received £20,000 from the monks of the Chartreuse ; a diamond rose, valued at £25,000, from Ecuador ; and a huge golden staff, filled with gold dollars, from San Francisco. The sulphur in the yelk ofeggs, it may not be generally known, acts chemically on silver spoons, turning them black, and forming a sulphide of silver that cannot be removed without taking off the surface of silver, thus rapidly wearing away the spoon. The Experience of aVeetarian« Dr. G. B. Walter, in a paper reoently read before the Sooloby of Cyclists in Lon- don, Eng., strongly advocated a vegetable diet. Those animals, he contended, who did the hard work of the world, the horse, for instance, lived purely upon vegetable food ; and he instanced a number of cases of cyclists who hadperfortned remarkable feats of endurance, and who were strict vegetar- ians. He admitted that he found some dif- ficulty in getting vegetable food at the ordin- ary houses of accommodation. His oatmeal was not always very skillfully prepared, and in more than one bill it figured as gruel. In the course of a recent journey of over 900 miles, however, he had managed to subsist quite comfortably without animal food of any kind, and to do a very fair average of work, amounting to about 55 miles a day, without the slightest feeling of fatigue. His diet consisted of oatmeal porridge, eggs, whole meal bread, cheese, macaroni, fruit, . tea, coffee, cocoa, milk and sodawater. The Railroad Frog. A workingman writes to the Mail to call attention to the necessity that exists for - legislation on the subject of railroad "frogs." He quotes the statement made by the railroad commissioner of Iowa in a recent report that in the United States not less than 450 brakesmen are killed an- nually, while over 4,000 are crippled for life, and nearly 13,800 painfully injured by having bones broken or parts of their hands or feet taken off. In other words, about 18,250 brakesmen are killed or wounded every year in the United States alone, the list of casualties 'among them being greater than that of any of the im- portant battles in the Civil War. Two or • three hundred more might be added for the Dominion of Canada, The chief causes of all this loss of life and injury to limbs, we are told, are the old coupler and the rail- road frog: During the early days of rail- roading the companies had some excuse for allowing such man -traps to be in use on their lines, but in this age of inventions they have none. There are people who suppose that the superiority of the Dutch cocoa -powder is to he attributed to a peculiar mode of manu- facture different from the methods followed in other countries. The idea of extracting the fat from the roasted cocoa -beans and selling the powder is said to have originated in the brain of a Dutch chocolate -maker about 1839. It is now generally practised in France and England. Dutch butterine holds from fifty to sixty - pper cent. of oleomargarine ; the rest is milk,,., butter, cotton -seed -oil, palm-oil, colouring matter, and salt.