MISCELLANEOUS.

Lake County Press, Issue 2528, 7 May 1914, Page 7

MISCELLANEOUS.

I Articles to the value of nearly £250,1)00 aro pawned in London every week. Telephone operators in Egypt aro required to speak English, French, Italian, Greek, and Arabic. Cyclists in Denmark are forbidden bylaw to ride fast or than the ordinary speed of a cab through any town. Japanese soldiers aro nearly all gymnasts, and every barrack has a gymnasium. So well trained aro they that in loss than half a minute they can scale a wall 14ft. high by simply leaping on each other's shoulders, one man sustaining- two or three others. Tlio world's kissing records were broken recently at Salem (Ohio) by six girls, who collected £2,000 by selling kisses at 4s. each in aid of the endowment fund of the Salem Hospital. The "kissing bee" lasted two hours. There was a half-mile line of men, aged eighteen to eighty, waiting their turn. Some men took their kiss and went back along tho line several times until seized by tho ears and marched home by their indignant wives. A rather curious rule that concerns the serving of wines which are not decanted is observed at tho King's dinner table. The name of the grower or shipper of the wine is always removed from the bottle before it is taken into the Royal dining-room. The reason of this is to avoid giving the grower or shipper the big advertisement of his wines appearing on the King's dinner table. It dates from the reign of George 111. "FIREDAMP WHISTLE." """"" A Boon to Miners. Tho German Emperor, when inaugurating the now Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Exper mental Therapy at Dahlem, was shown an ingenious device for testing the composition of air in mines oy means of various tones of a whistle. Air (down through a whistle pipe ii pure produces a continuous ordinary whistle tone, but if it contains 1 per cont. of dangerous explosive gas a broken and uneven note results. This is caused by the greater frequency of vibrations in tho pipe, and tho effect increases in proportion to the amount of gas until tho clanger point of 5 per cont. is reached, when a succession of rapid throbbing notes aro produced, which warn tho miner of his danger. Tho device is the invention of Professor Haber, who has christened it the "firedamp whistle.'" WINDOW FLY-KILLER. Flies in a room seek tho windows and crawl over the glass. Linking this trait with an idea for destroying them electrically, an inventor places two parallel wires across and close to the pane and connects these to a strong induction coil. Crawling over the barrier causes the fly to touch both wires, closing the electric circuit upon itself. Instant destruction is tho result. MONOPLANES AND BIPLANES. For aeroplanes of equal span, crosssection, aspect-ratio and angle of inclination, the monoplane has about 15 per cent, moro lift than the biplane for equal speeds, according- to F. Handley Pago the English designer. A monopiano has a smaller resistance than the corresponding biplane, but the difference is not great. What is gained in the monoplane by having no plane struts is lost, however, by the increased size of tho under-carriage members for a given sizo of i>ropeller. For machines having an area of 250 to 275 square feet, tho monoplane is conceded to bo tho moro economical type, but beyond this point the biplane is superior. AUTOMOBILE SEARCHLIGHTS. During the recent manoeuvres of tho French Army in the south-west, a searchlight automobile was used; that is, an automobile with a powerful searchlight suitably mounted at the rear of the body. The swivel standard of the searchlight is clamped to a plate which, is yieldingly supported between coil springs carried on bolts. This prevents jars from being communicated to tho searchlight when the machine is in motion. To steady tho searchlight while in transit, it is held bv four guy cables, the two forward ones being attached to coil springs so as to absorb shocks. Tho searchlight, will project a powerful beam to a distance of three kilometres (1.86 miles). Tho automobile carries a tripod on which tho standard of the searchlight may be clamped at a moment's notice when desired.

DUST FOUND AT SEA. The Harmattan is a dry north to east wind that blows in winter on the upper Guinea coast in Africa. While it prevails the air is idled with fino dust. The characteristics of this wind are most easily explained on tho supposition that it comes from tho Sahara Desert, and is analogous to tho "gibli" of Tripoli. However, tho extensive burning of grass which goes on at the harmattan season might account for tho remarkable dustiness of tho wind. In order to help to elucidate the origin of this wind. Captain von Seefried, stationed in Togo, has recently collected specimens of harmattan dust with tho aid of aspirators and filtertubes. These were examined in Berlin and found to consist mainly of siliceous fragments of diatoms, indicating a desert origin. Vegetable ash was present, but evidently tho burning grass merely intensities tho initial dustiness of tho harmattan. ANCIENT TREASURE. Spoils from Athens. News has been received of an archeologieal find of tho greatest interest. At Madhia, on the Tunisian coast, five or six years ago, somo Greek sponge, fishers noticed a strange mass of wreckage lying at a depth of 130 feet to the north of Madhia lighthouse. Amid a jumble of timbers law splendid marble columns, bronze statuettes,

a superb lifo-sized boy's figure, and other treasures which they succeeded in bringing to the surface It has now been ascertained that the sunked ship was a vessel of about 400 ions, LOO feet long, and 25 feet broad. She was laden with an extraordinary heterogeneous cargo, not only blocks ot marble, but bases and capitals for columns, efligies, statues, furniture, tiles, leaden piping, lamps, amphorae, etc. Among tho fragments wore found figures of a demigod and a maiden and faun which correspond almost exactly with those upon what is known as the Borghese vase dug up in Homo and now in tho Louvre. The lxjttoin of theThold contains about GO columns of bluish white marble 13 ft. high, which wore probably oho of the causes of the wreck of an evidently too heavily freighted ship. All the inscriptions deciphered relate to Attica and personages of the middle fourth century 8.C., and it might have been thought that tho vessel dated from that period, but for the Boethos statue and a lamp of a pattern only introduced into Attica at the end of the second century B.C. Some writing on lead ignots is in the Latin of that epoch, and experts have concluded so far that tho vessel was loaded in Attica for Rome, and probably tho cargo was the spoil after tho taking of Athens by Sulla in 86 B.C.