OLLA PODRIDA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 866, 5 October 1888, Page 6

OLLA PODRIDA.

A NEW GATLING GUN. A small Gatling gun, not larger than many children’s toys displayed in shop windows, has been brought out in the United States, which, however, is not to serve as such, but for a sterner purpose. This improved Gatling gun, consisting of five steel barrels, only 10 inches long, with the necessary number of wheels and cogs aDd ratchets, and terminating in a handle, the whole mounted on brass, has a total weight of only 751bs. It is said to be so easily handled that a child oan turn the crank and grind out bullets at the rate of 800 a minute. This small Gatling is intended for police and city use, and can be fired with equal facility and rapidity, from the cellar up or from the roof down. It can also be fired while advancing or retreating. The gun has been submitted to the military authorities of the United States, but it is not stated whether it meets with their approval.—Court Journal. HEREDITY. Is personality, is character independent of heredity ? The problem is important, since it involves the question whether the power of heredity has any assignable limit. It is plain that there are only two possible hypotheses ; we may either admit that at each birth a special aot of creation infuses inte each being the germ of character and personality, or we may admit that this germ is the product of earlier generations, and is inevitably deduced from the character of the parents and the circumstances under which the new life is originated. The first of these hypotheses iB so unscientific that it is not worth discussing. We are left to the second view. There we find ourselves brought abruptly back to the very heart of our Bubject. We thought that we were escaping from heredity, but now we find it in the very shape which forms the most intimate and personal element of our being. After having been shown by a long enumeration of facts that the sensitive and intelleotual faculties are transmitted, that one may inherit a given instinct, a given passion, a given type of imagination, just aB easily as a tendency to consumption, to rickets, to longevity, we hoped at least that a part of the psychic life lay outside determinism, that the character, the person, the self escaped the law of heredity; but no. Heredity, which is equivalent to determiuism, envelopes us on every side, without and within.— Ribot (‘Essais de Psjchologie Contemporaine ’).

A STORY FROM THE FRANCO-GER-MAN WAR.

A correspondent of the Times sends the following :—‘ Some interesting information with reference to a very curious incident which occurred during the Franco-German war has just come to hand. In 1870 three French visitors established themselves at an hotel in a well-known German town, where they remained several months. Being then in want of funds, and unable to pay their bill, they were compelled to leave a package • which they had brought from France in the bands of the landlord in satisfaction of his claim. This, upon examination, was found to oontain a sumptuously designed State chair. The name “ Napoleon ” was embroidered upon the silk covering of the back and seat, and on the occupant pressing his hands upon the finely carved gilt arms a musical air was played by an instrument concealed within the upholstery. The care of this remarkable piece of furniture seemed the only occupation of the strangers, who are supposed to have been awaiting the advance of the French army, and in the event of its proving victorious would doubtless have conveyed the chair to Berlin, where, it is presumed, it was to havo been used as a throne by the Emperor Napoleon. The chair remains in the possession of the widow of the Frenchmen’s host.’ A WOMAN TELLS HOW THE MORMONS MALTREATED HER AND MURDERED HER HUSBAND. Chicago, July 14. —Mrs Elizabeth Turnbull Rutter, an English woman, arrived from Ogden, Utah, this morning, asked a police officer how to find the British Consul, and fell fainting from hunger at his feet. Taken to the police station she told a startling tale of experience among the Mormons. Five years ago she lived in North Shields, England, with her husband, sou and daughter. Her son was induced by Mormon missionaries to join them and come over. Not long afterward he wrote telling of bad treatment and imprisonment by the Mormons, and the father started to release him. Ho reached Utah and got work, hoping to earn enough to take his son h >me. Finally he wrote to his wife he would be able to leave shortly. The loiter v.ai intercepted and another sent in place of it, enclosing money and telling the wife to come to Utah. She did so, enly tojfind it all a plot and the Mormons bent on preventing their departure. The husband and wife plotted to get away, “but were forced into the church. Mrs Ilutter says she absolutely refused to be endowed, as the ceremonies are frightfully indecent. I inally when about ready to take flight, the Mormons discovered their designs and next day Rutter was brought home dead, said to have been drowned, but there was a great ghastly wound in the back of his head. That night Mrs Rutter ran away to Ogden, working

her way by stages to Chicago. She had not eaten for four days when she fell fainting on the street. She was taken to the hospital to recuperate. INGENIOUS SWINDLE. This is put down as the latest trick in connection _with a sharper The farmer objects to giving his note and having it discounted for cash. The sharper says : ‘ Oh, we’ll keep the note,’ and writes across tho face, • Not transferable,’ In a Bhort time it is found in the hands of another party with an ‘e’ added to the * Not,’ which makes it read : * Note transferable.’— Doylestown Intelligencer. A NEW NICKLE TRAP. A brand new invention for gathering in nickles is on exhibition in Boston. Yon drop a 5-cent piece into the Blot and the machine bets 500dols. that yon will live twenty-four hours longer, and a smaller sum that you will not be injured by aooident during that time. ' In other words, the machine presents you with an accident policy of 500 dols. good for twenty-four hours. It ought to prove a boon for base-ball umpireß. Springfield Union. THE BIGGEST LOCOMOTIVES. To the Editor of the Transcript :—I see in your issue of this evening that the-heavi-est locomotive in the world is on the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and that it weighs 160,000 pounds, or eighty tons. Please allow me to correct you on this subject, as the heaviest locomotive in the world is one of six, just alike—five in posession of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and the other in Brazil. The weight of these locomotives is 250,000 pounds, or 125 tons apiece, thus outweighing your locomotive by forty-five tons, or 90,000 pounds. These monsters were built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works at Philadelphia, and are known as ‘Decapods.’—Boston Transcript. ' THE GRAIN IN RAZORS. The following curious paragraph, Bays the English Mechanic, is ‘ going the rounds,’ and it would be interesting to trace it to its origin : —‘ The finest grades of razors are so delicate that even the famous Damascus blades cannot equal them in texture. It is not generally knowD that the grain of a Swedishrazor is so sensitive that its general direction is changed after a short service. When you buy a fine razor the grain runs from the upper end of the outer point in a diagonal direction toward tho handle. Constant stropping will twist the steel until the grain appears to set straight up :and down. Subsequent uso will drag the grain outward from the edge, so that after steady use for several months the fibre of the steel ocoupies a position exactly the re verse of that which appeared on the day of purchase. The process also affects the temper of the blade, and when the grain sets from the lower outer end toward the back you have a tool which cannot be kept in condition by the moßt conscientious barber. But here’s another freak of nature. Leave the razor alone for a month, and when you take it up you will find the grain has resumed its first position. This operation can be repeated until the steel is worn through tothebaek.’ As Mr Crummies used to say. ‘ Who is it sends such paragraphs to the papers V SOME RUSSIAN STATISTICS. An official report, drawn up by M. Troinitsky, on the general condition of Russia in 1884-85, gives the following interesting statistics :—The population of the Empire at that date amounted to 109 millions, the male sex slightly exceeding the female. The density of population was as follows : —l9‘3 per verst for the fifty governorships of European Russia ; 71*4 for Poland ;17‘9 for the Caucasus ; 0 4 for Siberia ; I*B for Central Asia ; and 7*6 for Finland. There were 1,300 towns and 524,000 other inhabited localities. Four towns contained a population exceeding 200,000, nine more than 100,000, and twentythree over 60,000, The annual total of births averages 3,400,000, of which 2’6 per cent, are illegitimate. The death total is 2,500,000. In 1885, there were 867 hospitals m towns, with 47,000 beds, and 800 country hospitals, with 11,000 beds. Lunatic asylums, of which there ‘.are seventy-seven, with 15,000 inmates, are not included in this total. The rate of mortality in the latter is about 11 percent. r ARE TEA AND COFFEE FOODS ? Tea and coffee are not foods in the sense in which we use the word. They contain, it is true, very small quantities of materials' similar to tho nutriments of ordinary food, but so few of these get into the deeoetions which we drink that they are not worth taking into account. The aroma of the tea and coffee is mainly, and the taste largely, due to minute quantities of oily substances—essential oils, as they are called. The effect of tea and coffee upon the nerves and brain seemß to be chiefly due to a substance called oaffein when it comes from coffee, and them when it comes from tea. It is the same chemical compound in both, and belongs to the class called alkaloids. Like the extractives of meat, it has, in moderate quantities, an invigorating effect, and may at times aid digestion. The expression whioh long usage has applied to tea and coffee, ‘ The cups that cheer bnt not inebriate,’ is a true statement of fact. Tea contains tannic acid, or tannin, the substance which, in the bark of trees, like oak and hemlock, is used to tan leather. The skiua of animals contain gelatinoid subatancos with which the tannin unites, giving it the properties of leather. Tannin may likewise unite with albuminoid substances, such as ooour iu meats, fißh, milk, eggs and so on, The natural inference is that if we take tea with albuminous foods tho tannin will unite with them and form indigestible compounds. The newspaper statements we sometimes see about tea making leather in the stomach are grossly exaggerated. But experiments imply that it may sometimes interfere with the digestion of some albuminous foods. It is said, however, not to interfere at all with the digestion of dry meats, such as ham and tongue. One objection to steeping tea for a

long time is that the longer it is infused the more _ tannio acid is extracted. Coffee contains tannic acid, bnt less than tea.— Century.

SMOKERS' VERTIGO. Dr Decaisne is reported in. the New York Medical Record as having recently investigated a number of cases of vertigo in smokera. Out of sixty-three patients, forty-nine were between fifty and sixty-six years of age. More than half of them suffered, in addition, from digestive troubles, with constipation alternating with diarrhoea, insomnia, palpitations, dyspncee, and diuresis. In a third of the number there was marked inter* mittence of the pulse, 'and granular pharyngitis, while others suffered from aphthm, amblyopia, efco. Thirty-seven were persons who smoked habitually on an empty stomach, and these suffered from vertigo, principally in the morning. The vertigo generally coincided with suppression of perspiration and diminished excretion of urine. The treatment consisted mainly in regulating or suppressing the cause, but thirty-three out of thirty-seven patients oeased to suffer on merely refraining from smoking on an empty stomaah. A FAST WAR-SHIP. One of the fastest war-ships of the world is undoubtedly the topedo aviso Greif, of the German navy, which on her recent voyage from Kiel to VVilhelmshaven attained a speed of 23 knots an hour. The Greif was launched in 1886, and was built of steel, at the Germania yard at Kiel, from designs by the German Admiralty. Her displacement iB 2,000 tons, and her engines have an indicated horse-power of 5,400. From these figures and her exceedingly fine lines, which give to the vessel the appearance of a torpedo-boat of immense size, it will bo seen that speed was the chief object aimed at in her construction. The Greif, consequently, may be looked upon as one of the fastest, if not the fastest, vessel of any maritime power, if we except the Ouragan, of the French navy, and some foreign topedo-boats built in English yards, and which beat her record The Berlin Post, from which we have taken the above particulars, questions the authenticity of the data supplied with regard to the speeds of some English torpedo-boats, but, from personal observation, we may assure our contemporary that they are perfectly trustworthy, and that there is no need on this side to exaggerate results actually obtained. The entire space of the Greif—of which vessel the Germans may well be proud—with the exception of the space piovided for orew and stores, is taken up by boilers, engines, and coal bunkers. Tie vessel is of the class called torpedo-boat hunters, and, to aid her in that service, she is provided with two powerful'electrio search lights, two light guns of great range, and a large number of those bugbears of torpedo boats, revolver guns. The Greif has three smoke-stacks, and carries no sails, there being only two short lookout masts.—lron.

‘FAST'CRUISERS. We learn that instructions have been received at Sheerness Dockyard for preparations to be made for building a fast war cruiser of a new type, designed for the Royal Navy. The proposed vessel is to be named the Barracouta, and she will be built of Bteel, with a length of 233 feet and a breadth of 35 feet. She will have a displacement of 1,580 tons, and is to be fitted with tripleexpansion engines, estimated to develop 3.000 horse-power undet forced draught with a speed of 16 "5 knots. Her armament is to consist of six 36-pounder quick-firing gunß, four 3-pounders, and four Whitehead torpedo tubes. She is also to be provided with Nordenfelt machine-guns. Six cruisers of the Barracouta type are to be built for the Royal Navy during the present financial year. In reading this announcement it strikes us as anomalous that cruisers, in whioh speed is to be a feature, should continue to be designed for such a comparatively low speed as 16J knots, and under forced draught too, when no * fast ’ cruiser should have less than 20 knots, and certainly a great deal more. It will be seen from bur ‘ Note ’ headed * A Fast War-ship ’ that Germany possesses a torpedo cruiser of 23 knots. To this information we may add that France has torpedo cruisers of 22 and 25 knots; Italy, of 20 and 23 knots ; Russia, of 20 knots ; Spain, of 20 and 23 knots ; and Turkey, of 20 and 23 knots. England is now building five armoured deck cruisers of 20 knots speed, but not one of the English torpedo cruisets launched exceeds 18 knots. When will it come home to those responsible that they continue designing absolutely obsolete vessels ? It seems strange, too, that this great point of speed was almost entirely lost sight of by the various speakers at the meeting held on Monday under the auspices of the Loudon Jhamber of Commerce, and at which the efficiency of our navy was so thoroughly discussed. What is the use of adding 200 or even 300 cruisers to the navy when this indispensable condition of a modern warship is neglected ? England’s war navy of the future must not only be the most powerful, but also the swiftest, if it is to fulfil its purpose—that of protecting our immense commerce.—lron.

Earthquakes seem to be everywhere this year. Never was the record of shocks so numerous and wide-spread. The State of Maine in America, has had its oscillation. On August 4th one of the most severe earthquake shocks ever felt in this vicinity occurred at 8 .20.p.m. The report Was like heavy cannon, continuing thirty seconds, and shook the earth violently, swaying buildings and rattling dishes and furniture. A second shock, felt about midnight, was somewhat lighter but about the same duration.