THE PASSING SHOW

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22249, 13 November 1937, Page 19

THE PASSING SHOW

Germs on Telephones You never can tell what scientists will dig up when they start digging, says a New York writer. A bunch of them round here spent 18 months studying telephonespublic and private. They admitted they were looking principally for germs on mouthpieces. Did they find them? Well, a few—and most j of them comparatively harmless, i The bad air in the booths, they fin- | ally recorded, constituted a graver menace: . i "Although they found pneumonia and deadly streptococcus bacteria present on the mouthpieces during the seasons when these diseases j were prevalent in the city, the scientists concluded, as a result of their experiments with glass lips, that it seemed possible that the stagnant air of closed booths might prove more dangerous than telephone transmitters in spreading these | germs." I & * *• * I Synthetic Sherry « j How an English experimental i chemist evolved a synthetic sherry and had it labelled the real thing by French wine tasters has been dis- j closed at Long Ashton, Somerset. | Experimenting with strawberries, raspberries, loganberries, and other English fruits, Vernon Charley evolved a wine that contained from 8 to 12 per cent, of alcohol. He sent a sample to France and was notified by the French tasters that it was a light brown sherry. Now a commercial enterprise has produced and sold 4000 gallons of the wine. Charley at present is experimenting with a plum wine, which if successful will aid the farmers to j dispose of surplus crops. i * * * j The Modem "Ice Age" ! Our present historical epoch belongs to a glacial or ice age, which, fortunately, is not at its peak just now, but on the decline. In ice ages there are great temperature differences between equatorial and polar regions. The normal climate of the earth is regarded as warm. By that is meant hardly any ice anywhere, with the temperature differences between the polar and equatorial regions relatively small. The warm periods are associated with a nearly j level earth, while the ice ages are a time of mountain building and continental uplift. Our mountains and continents are now being worn down by weather agencies. * » * An Ancient Stratagem According to a message received in Canada, the Chinese press reported that Japanese troops on the Lotien front were using the tactics of Hannibal by stampeding hordes of bulls against the Chinese lines. Chinese troops captured five bulls but the lines were unchanged. * * * The Smugglers' "Haul" The United States Treasury Department has reported the first case of a house being smuggled into the States. Two customs patrol officers seized the house, a log dwelling, near Pine Creek, Minnesota, for non-payment of duty. It had been torn down in Canada, and hauled across the border on a waggon and reconstructed on the American side. The customs officers seized the waggon and the horses as well. Pests on the Farm "The inspector visited 33 farmers and found 13 infested with noxious weeds." —Country paper. They had presumably been growing their own tobacco. ° * * * The Horse Survives Rarely does one see a picture of horse traffic in New York, yet 19,000 are daily at work with delivery vans and there are still 99 horse troughs in the city. * * * How to Live to 103 Don't talk to doctors if you want to live long, according to Tienmark's oldest man, An Johnson, who has died at the age of 103. He reached his century without ever having been ill. He was remarkable for the fact that from first to last he never conversed with a medical man "on principle."