OLLA PODRIDA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 896, 3 May 1889, Page 6

OLLA PODRIDA.

LIFE IN NEW YORK.

Among the dangers peculiar to life In New York are the injuries to person and property resulting from the carelessness of employes connected with the elevated street railways, of which some forty miles are now in operation within the city. The railway people think nothing of piliug up the ooal on their locomotives in such a way that more or less of it rolls down into the street, twenty feet below, to the danger of the crowds ot people ; while showers of hot water, oil and live coals are not uncommon. It is only now and then that the companies are called to account for the injuries thus occasioned, as few people are willing to go to the expense and trouble of fighting such rich corporations. Here is a case, however, in which justice appears to have been done, in part at least : Pierce S. Marx recently obtained a verdict of $6,000 as damages against the Manhattan Railway Company before Judge Barrett and a jury in the Supreme Court. On October 17, 1883, ivhile Marx was standing on the corner of the Bowery and Doyer Street, a large piece of coal dropped from the locomotive of a passing train, and, striking the sidewalk, broke into pieoes. A small particle of the coal struok Me Marx in the right eye, and he lost the sight of it. He sued the railroad company to recover $25,000 damages. The case was on trial for several days, during which time a great deal of testimony was taken as to the condition of Mr Marx’s eye. The Company endeavoured to prove that the injury was npt caused by the ooal at all. Scientific American. INGENIOUS WAY TO COOL A JOURNALQuite an ingenious way of cooliug a jonrnal that cannot be stopped, says a meohanieal paper, is to hang a short endless belt on the shaft next to the box, and let the lower part of it run in oold water. Tho turning of the shaft carries the belt slowly around, bringing fresh cold water continually in contact with the heated shaft, and without Bpilling or spattering a drop of the water. TURNING PIG-IHON INTO STEEL IN EIGHT MINUTESA, new process in the manufacture of steel, which, if successful, will practically revolutionize the manufacture, it is said, is now being perfected by Ron. John W Bookwaiter of Ohio. In eight to nine minutes, it is claimed, pig-iron oan be converted into steal at a cost less than by any other known process. The neyv process, it is further ‘olaimed, is particularly wel] adapted to the rqanufacture of castings. AN ELECTRICAL FIRE ENGINE. An electrical fire engine, whioh can be tapped for service whenever wanted, is the latest invention. The advantages claimed are that it can be started at full speed ; that it is much lighter than a steam lire engine of equal power ; that it costs ouotliird less ; that it is noiseless in its operation ; makes no smoke, sparks nor ashes ; that it is safer and easier to control and is economical, SHOCKING SNAKES WITH ELECTRICITY. A German paper reports that a novel use of electricity has been made in India for the prevention of the intrusion of snakes into dwellings. Before all the doors and around

the house two wires are laid, which are isolated from each other and connected with an induction apparatus. Should a snake attempt to crawl over the wires he receives a shock of electricity which either kills or frightens him into a hasty retreat. AGE AND VITALITY. In a meeting of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Joseph Korosi read a paper on < The Influence of Parents’ Ages on the Vitality of Children.' Mr Korosi has collected about 30,000 data, and has come to the following conclusions : Mothers under twenty years of age and fathers under twenty-foar have children more weakly than parents of riper age. Their children aie more subject to pulmonary diseases. Tho healthiest children are those whose fathers are from twsatyfive to forty years of age, and whose mothers are from twenty to thirty years old. Mr Korosi says that the best marriages are those in which the husband is senior to the wife, but a woman from thirty to thirty-five years old will have healthier children if her husband be somewhat younger than herself. A man from thirty to forty years old ought to take a wife from twenty to thirty. If the mother be five years older than the father the vitality of tho children becomes impaired.

ATHLETIC LADIES. The Ladies’ Athletic Association of New York has 100 members and expects to have fully five hundred when it gets into the new gymnasium now building next to the Berkeley Lyceum. It is to be completed in the early spring. In the meantime the association u6es the Berkeley Lyceum. The new building, exclusively for women, is to be four stories highj; and in the basement there are to be three bowling alleys ; the entire rear of the basement will be floored and wainscoted with marble and devoted to a swimming bath. Rooms for games, chess, reading-rooms, a reception-room and a library take up the first floor : more baths, including a great plunge with the necessary dressing-rooms, occupy the second floor ; the entire upper hall of the building is given over to a gymnasium hall, 100 feet by 25. Some of the best-known women in New York are connected with this attempt to secure physical culture for women. Mrs Joseph Choate, Mrs Frederick Billings, Mrs Anson Pbelpa Stokes, Mrs Robert Hoe Jr., Mis 3 Camilla Moss, Mrs Alexander Mitchell, Mrs John B. Townsend and Mrs John S. White being the founders. The consulting physicians are Dr Mary T. Bissel sister of the President of Vassar, and Dr Watson L. Savage—the onlv man connected with the organization. Dr Bissel says young women are turning to the gymnasium instead of to the powder-box for their complexions, and that the work is going to make healthy, handsome women to take the place of the pale, languid invalids. ODD BITS ABOUT JEWS.

Scotland reckons only 1,500 Jews ; Ireland only 1,000. . . In France there are 70,000 Jews, of whom 40,000 are iu Paris. In the British colonies there are something less than 20,000 J ewe. The total number of Jews throughout the world is between eight and ten millions. Jews are found in Large numbere along the northern coasts of Africa, as well as in AbysIn America there are 500,000 Jews and Jews are dwelliug in Mexico and in almost every state of South Anerica. There are supposed to be from 40,000 to 50,000 Jews in Persia, 10,000 to 15,000 in the Khanates and a like number in India. Abont forty thousand Jewe were transferred upon the annexation of the provinces of the German Empire, among whose 50,000,000 of inhabitants 600,000 belong to this remarkable race. In the United Kingdom there are about one hundred thousand Jews of whom seventenths are in London, the greater part of the remainder being in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham. Thinkers.—The average human brain weighs forty-nine ounces in the male, and about forty-five ounces in the female. Cuvier’s brain weighed sixty-four ounces, hut Gambetta’s brain weighed less than the average woman’s byain, which is peculiar because of his great intellectuality. Great brain weight is not always associated with intellectual vigour, as is shownm the fact that an idiot is known to have had a brain of over sixty ounces in weight. THE TEXAN TARANTULA AND ITS FOEDr Horn, Philadelphia, says In the not tpo fertile parts of the region from Texas to California lives a largo spider known to. the inhabitants as the tarantula and to naturalists as Mygale Hentzii. Its body is two inches or more in length, clothed with rusty brown hair, the legs long, and when extended covering an oval of four to bye inches. As may be imagined the mygale is not a handsome insect, and while it is looked upon with terror by most people, no one cares to handls it unless quite certain it is dead. While the mygale is a dread to most forms of insect life, there is one of which it in turn, stands in mortal terror, Abundant in the same region is a wasp with bluis hgreen body and golden red wings. The body is about three inches long, the spread ot nearly an inch greater. These wasps (Pepais Formosa) fly uneasily about in search of food for themselves until they discover a < tarantula, ’ when a more definite course oi action is assumed. The flight of the wasp is now in circles around its prey, gradually approaching it, the mygale meanwhile, in terror, showing fight, standing semi-erect on the two hinder pair of logs. A favourable opportunity presenting, the wasp stings the spider and renews the oirole flight, repeating the sting until the spider becomes completely paralysed. When the wasp is assured of the helplessness of the spider, it seizes him and drags him te a previously prepared nest. The eg"B of the wasp are then deposited and the spider covered up. The eggs soon hatch, the spider is gradually eaten, and a new wasp appears to repeat the actions of its parent, ‘By the sting of the wasp the spider

is not killed, simply paralysed, so that during the time it is being fed upon it retains vitality, furnishing living food to the newly hatched larvte, which, by a curious instinct, feed first on those parts of the spider not essential to the maintaining of the little vitality remaining. EXECUTION BY ELECTRICITY. The Committee of the American MedicoLegal Society, appointed to consider the best method of executing the death penalty by electricity, in concluding a supplementary report giving the results of the recent experiments made with the electric current upon animals, say :—lf any doubt should exist in the minds of some that electricity would not necessarily be fatal to man because it has been successfully applied to lower animals, we have bat to call attention to the fact that since 1883 some 200 persons have been killed, as we are credibly informed, by the handling of eleetrio-lighting wires. As most of these people were killed probably by contact of the hand with the wires, it shows tbat in man at least death is rapid in this manner. Hence the suggestions made to the committee as to the use of wristlet electrodes have their value ; and it is possible that this method, with the prisoner fastened in a chair, may ultimately prove the most desirable, as doing away with a complication of appliances and lending greater simplicity to the procedure. THE ORGAN OF HEARINGAt a recent meeting of the Western Microscopical Club, Professor Stewart gave an exposition of the organ of hearing as found in some of the lower animulß. The gradual change by which all sense organs have been modified from the simple cell filled with protoplasm and furnished with a' hair-like expansion was rapidly sketched out. Whilst in the large animals we naturally expect to find the ears upon the head, we look in vain for the same arrangement in the lower invertebrate creatures. Many of these, like the scallop, have no head ; others, like crabs and lobsters, have their ears placed on their h rns or antennse ; others, like the green grasshopper, have the ear on the fore-leg ; others, like the fresh-water shrimp, have it it on the tail. In fact, it would seem that in these forms of life, whose origin was long anterior to the evolution of man, nature was feeling her way and making experiments as to th» future position of the sense organs. During long ages she was practising and rehearsing on the lower forms before arriviug at the fixity of type which marks tho structure and position of the ear of man. Prof. Stewart did not enter into these topics, which are now in the commonplace of evolution, but he gave in his own admirable way a careful and original description of the very rudimentary structures in question, espeoi. ally of the ears of the grasshopper, whioh, as shown under the microscope, are situate on the fore-legs. THE SEASONS IN MARS. The planet’s equator is inclined to its orbit at an angle of nearly 28deg., and, as a consequence Mars ought to have seasons much like those of the earth. • One very beautiful phenomenon seems bo show that this is actually the case. In the neighbourhood of the planet’s poles there are brillian'.. spots evidently composed of some substance which reflects light very abuudantly; t.nd it is natural to think of ice or snow, because, as Sir VY. Herschel observed a century ago, each spot grows larger when it is turned away from the sun, and dwindles in the summer, just as a polar ice cap would. It is worth noting that this snow cap, if such it really is, never comes down to middle lati tudes, as does the wintry envelope of our terrestrial snow. In January ‘the man in the moon ’ would see pretty mach all that portion qf the earth's northern hemisphere which lies above 45deg. of latitude as one gleaming white expanse, unbroken except where the Atlantic aDd Pacific Oceans interrupt its continuity. Although Mars is so much further from tho sun than the earth is, and receives less than half a 3 much heat to each square mile of surface, it presents no such prevalence of ice in either hemisphere. —Professor C. A. Young. MURDERS IN AMERICA. The New York Sun of the 6th February publishes the following special despatch from Managua, Nicaragua, dated January 24 : •Either ‘‘ Jack the Ripper" of Whitechapel has emigrated from the scene of his ghastly murders pr he has found one or more imitators in this part of Central America. The people have been greatly aroused by six of tha most atrocious murders ever committed within the limits of this city. The murderer or murderers have vanished as quickly as “Jack the Ripper,” and no traces have been left for identification.. All of the victims were women, and of the character of those who met their fate at the hands of the London murderer. L.ike those women of Whitechapel, they were women who had sunk to the lowest degradations of their calling. They have been found murdered just as mysteriously, and the evidences point to almost identical-methods. Two were found butchered out of all recognition. Even their faces were moat horribly slashed, and in the cases of all the others their persons were frightfully disfigured. There is no doubt that a sharp instrument violently but dexterously used was the weapon that sent the poor creatures out of the world. Like “Jack the Rippers” viotims, they have been found in out-of-the-way places, three of them in the suburbs of the town and the others in dark alleys and cornois. Two of the victims were fouud with gaudy jewellery, and from this it is urged that the mysterious murderer has not committed the orimes for robbery. In the cases of the other four a few coins were found on the persons, representing no doubt the prospective consideration for the murderer or murderers. All of the victims were in the last stages of shabbiness and besottedness. In fact in almost every detail the crimes and the characteristics are identical with the Whitechapel horrors. All of the murders occurred in less than ten days, and as yet the perpetrator or perpetrators have not been apprehended. Every effort is being made to bring him or them to

justice. The authorities have been stimulated in their efforts by the statement, which seems to be generally accepted, that “Jack the Ripper ” must have emigrated to Central America and seleoted this city for bis temporary abode.’

THE EVOLUTION OF TALL MEN. In a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution by Professor Flower on ‘ The Pygmy Races of Men,’ he referred to the curious fact that the ‘ tallest and shortest races in Europe are respectively the Norwegians and the Lapps, living in almost the same region. In Africa, also, the diminutive Bushmen and the tallest race of the country, the Kaffirs, are close neighbours.’ These facts indicate that climate, soil, and other physical conditions have but small influence on human stature, and suggest the question whether it is due to social or moral agenoy. The comparative history of the Lapps and Norwegians indicates that it may be so. The Vikings were always a fighting race ; the Lapps certainly ate, and, so. far as we know, always ihave been, an exceptionally peaceful people, and the Esquimaux, with whom they are so nearly connected, are the same. The Lapps live on the snowfjelds of Norway, and the Esquimaux on the bitterest parts of the Arctic regions, just the places to which the weakest would be driven by conquerors who have appropriated the more fertile regions. The consequent hardship and semi-starvation would probably stunt the growth of the weaker people, while, on the other hand, the conquering warlike race, in the days of hand-to-hand fighting with outsiders, and struggling for chieftainship among themselves, would be' continually killing off the feeble and short-armed, and multiplying the big men by the ‘ survival of the fittest ’ for such conditions of mutual murder-striving.— Gentleman’s Magazine.