MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1760, 22 June 1886, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS

The terrible cyclonic storms which frequently carry death and destruction through the Western States of America seem to be as fatal as earthquakes. A recenb telegram to the * Chicago Tribune' and referring to one of the visitations says :_ -Dr Ames of Minneapolis, on duty at St. Cloud (a small township) says that at least thirty deaths wUI result from the visitation there. Captain Folley, an old settler of Sauk Rapids, weighing2Bo pounds, was blown 400 feet in the air .and bruised by flying debris. He says the water in his sixty-five-foofc well was all sucked out, leaving only sand at the bottom. The force of the storm was such as to wrench off the door of the safe in the post-office and carry it some distance from the building. The church bell, weighing 1560 pounds, was found among the debris 400 feet away from .any building. The remains of the dead are almost unrecognisable, being completely crushed and blackened, and many of tbe survivors will be disabled for life. School had been ' dismissed or "otherwise the fatality among the children would have been appalling, the school building being razed to the feundation. The Eev. Dr Dallinger, P.RS, president of the Microscopical Society, delivered a lecture at Firth College, Sheffield, describing the result of three years* close study of the minutest forms of life. Dr Dallinger stated that he was now possessed of microscopic lenses so constructed as to realise results which only five years ago were declared by mathematicians to be impossible of accomplishment. Taking a single specimen of living organism from a drop of water, ho showed it upon a screen, and said by the aid of very powerful lenses, which had come into his possession only within the last few months, he had discovered'this, which was the minutest organism known. He had measured the flagellum or motor fibre of this organism, and found it to be the two hundred and four million seven hundred thousandth of an English inch. Thoreau says somewhere that you must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else, and goes on to say that he has tried it, and it does not agree with his constitution. The subject of giving away money has been occupying newspaper correspondents a good deal lately, and many of them ara of the same opinion as Thoreau when he says : "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the mo3t by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve." M. de Lesseps says the building of the Pyramids, which occupied 30,000 men ten years, was boys' play to building the Panama Canal. He estimates the power of the machines employed as equal to the labor of 500,000 men. The British flag still proudly flies supreme as regards the traffic through the Suez Canal. The total of British tonnage for the past year was 4,861,048, while that of France, the nearest competitor, was only 573,645. Holland is third on the list, with 272,145. The following story is, I am assured (says a writer in ' Vanity Fair,' of April 10), strictly true :— " A few nights ago a member of Parliament, wishing to go home, went into the cloak-room to get his overcoat. Now the general collection of overcoats is arranged in the cloak -room under the initial letters of the members 1 names, and this member, whose name begins with the letter P, went to that letter, took his coat from the hook, and put it on. He was surprised, however, to feel something heavy in the pockets. Putting his hand into one pocket, he found there a revolver; putting his other hand into the other pocket, he found there another revolver. Entirely unaware of having had an armoury about him, he then began to look at the coat itself, and found that, though it was very like bis own, it was, in fact, not his at all, but somebody else's. Further examination and inquiry and comparison of hooks showed at last that it was no other than Mr Parnell's. This seems to show that even the life of an Uncrowned King is not always an entirely happy one, or completely devoid of care for the evening." A woman named Sarah E. Edmonds, prompted solely by patriotism, served for two years as a soldier in the A merican Federal Army. At the outbreak of the war she was living at Flint Michigan. She assumed male attire, became & private in Company F of the Second Michigan Infantry, went to the front, was at tbe battle of Bull Run, served all through the Peninsular campaign, then under General Pope, then wiih Burnside at Frederick sburg, and thence went west with the regiment to Kentucky. There the young soldier was prostrated with chills and fever contracted on the Peninsula ; a leave of absence was refused, and fearful that her sex would be discovered, she left the army, and, returning to Oberlin, Ohio, resumed her woman's garb. Though participating in over 40 battles, large and small, she was never wounded. Opposite the name she bore, the word " deserter " was written on the army records. She now seeks to have this removed. A bill before the House Committee on military affairs proposes to give her a clean record, with back pay and bounty. A very interesting story is being told

amongst shipping men in London just now. It appears that a sailing ship, the Mermerus, started from Melbourne on November 30, last year. It had a very long voyage, in the course of which it exchanged signals with a foreign vessel. The latter appears to have misunderstood the signals of the Mermerus, and to have misread one of them as " Captain washed overboard." It proceeded on its way, and, on touching the nearest port, informed Lloyd's agent of the conversation it had had with the Mermerus. Lloyd's agent telegraphed the news to London, and the owners of the Mermerus were at once communicated with. They immediately informed the captain's wife of what they ! were told had befallen her husband, and she naturally went into mourning. •Meantime the Mermerus was proceeding steadily, though slowly, on her way, and in due time sighted England. In passing Lizard Point the captain i managed to signal his arrival and state that all was right on board. This was immediately telegraphed up to London, and the owners at once informed the captain's wife that her husband had not been drowned as was feared. She barely had time to cioff her widow's weeds and remove all traces of mourning from the house when her husband walked in, having been. 112 days " out " in bis voyage, This little story would make a very good incident for a novel.