HERE AND THERE

Otago Witness, Issue 2894, 1 September 1909, Page 81

HERE AND THERE

— Snake Collector's Eecape. — A correspondent, signing himself "Traveller," sends to the Saturday Review the following experience, which occurred to a naturalist in Northern Brazil:— "My friend was making a ,"collection of the poisonous snakes of tiio neighbourhood, and, as everyone round us was aware of the fact, manj gifts of the kind were offered to hdm. One evening he was writing at a table in our hut wher a local person brought him a small Jiving specimen of one of the meet deadly poisoiKnis snakes of the neighbourhood. 1/Lj- friend, who was very busy, asked him to put it in a glass jar on the table, which vras accordingly done. Unfortunately, the hot night- and other soporific influenoeu, proved too much for my friend' Sv waking powers. He went to sleep, with his head on the table, and slept peacefulli till awakened by a fearful crash He had knocked the taWe over, with' tlie lamp on it. The lamp had naturally been put out $ and, as his serges slowly returned, the awakened sleeper remembered thai the glass jar also bad fallen on to the floor, and the snake must now be loose. Obviously, tlie best thing to do was to jump on the bed and shout for help and light. Bui ihe hut was empty, and> no help came.- One could not impend the night standing on a bed roaring for help, so, a« tlhere was only a .space of about Bft between him and the , tloor, the snake-collector jumped down from the bed, resolved . to make a rush for it. He had taken bis boots off at an early part of the evening, and, as he jumped, he felt a sharp, vicious nip in the heel of his right foot. My friend was a person with plenty of cool presence oi mind. A servant entered the hut a>t the moment. He summoned him, told him curtly that he had 'not five minutes to live, and \wQceedbd to dictate a will and various directions to his travelling companion a<nd one or two other persons. But death tarried >an unaccountably long time, and presently the reason of this became apparent. The snake was curledl up in a far corner of the room, swaying a.nd hissing angrily, and my friend bad jumped off the bed on to a niece of the broken glass with which the floor oi his room was liberally strewn." —The Bread of Siberia.— . What is probably the most curious bread in the -world is described by ilr L. Lodian, who lias ben travelling in Siberia, in the Scientific American. "Of all the hard-tack breads of the universe," he writes, *' 1 have found by actnal experience the smaH ringed bread of Siberia, the most substantial. When the Russian engineering parties were constructing the Siberian railroad this white ringed bread (with- the ooarsf rye bread) was their main staff of life. It is made without salt or yeast, and is first steamed, then lightly baked to expel the moisture. Some curious uses were made of these breads by the engineers. When soaked ir>" hot pure tallow for a few moments till they sank they were used in soups or soaked in and eaten with tea during the severe winteT months. This tallow bread was considered the most heat-producdng article in the dietary. It should be utilised by our Arctic explorers. v Another curious uee to which it is puit is as an extempore candle or coffee pot boiler. A nail is used to make about eight hol-es iv the tallow ring bread; wax vestas are placed in these and ignited. It will burn slowly for about an hour, emitting a strong heat sufficient to warm and light . a small tent and boil the tea or coffee water There is a rather sfrong odor of toasting bread, but that is tolerated in preference to smoke. While sojourning with the engineers in Siberia I have also seen them use the largei ' sizes of ringed bread as make-shift .quoits for Sunday afternoon sport in their tents, and the bread would stand the knocking about pretty well, and would eventually appear in the soap at the evening meal. Small Siberian storekeepers also tee the ringed bread) as an abacus or primitive counting apparatus for calculating small sums in roubles and kopeks, and simple figuring. Three strings are suspended a'oove the counter ; 10 breads are strung on each ; I the top line represents the roubles (their j money transactions rarely going above 10), and the two lower strings stand for

the kopeks. Of course, the strings of bread can be increased to mount into thousands and up if desired." — Replacing the Lens of the Eye - By Glass.— The following description, of tfce wonderful operation which restored the sight to the miner B. Cahl, who was totally blind for over a year as, the result of a mine explosion, has. been given by one of the surgeons af the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital: — " When the' patient first came to the hospital the right eye was totally destroyed, .while the left one was intensely inflamed, and the cornea, or projecting front part, was dotted . with fragments of quartz blown into it at the time of the sxplosion. The capsule of the lens had been torn by other jagged particles of rocks, and the whole lens had. been absorbed. Only the capsule remained to separate the fluid in, the baU oi the eye from the iris, or coloured screen which surrounds the pupil. The first treatment insisted of picking out the quartz particlesj some of which were embedded even c *n the muscles which i-otate the eye. Thei the irritation was reduced by lotions. The greater part of the cornea was'^bpaque, on account of old scar tissue, the result of the early inflammation, but a fairly transparent jjart was selected, and a portion of the iris, or screer behind this, was then out awav> so as to let the light fall on the sensitive "retina, or lining of the back part of the eye. As the man's natural lens within the eye had already been destroyed, he now Ha<3 to weair a glass lens before the eye to make the entering rays of light focus correctly on his retina. His range of vision is limited, but he can read the finest type easily, and instead of ending his days in an institute for the blind he should be able to earn his own living at some employment which does not make too great a demand on the eyesight." —England Saved by Women.— Recalling the circumstances of the many invasions of Great Britain by foreign troops which history has to show,, the Hon. Charles Russell says, in the August number of the Wind^oi Magazine : —"On one occasion, England may lia.ve been said to have been saved by women. Tlie first of the expeditions in tbs preparation of which Wolfe Tone took a part was the invasion of the 'Black Legion.* The! ( 'Black Legion' was a regiment composed ! of the worst blackguards that could be \ brought together by -ea.rching the prisons . and galleys of France— 'felons, thieves, and ; tniwderers who were granted their lives on I condition that they joined the Legion. As \ j an outward sign of character the French i ] Government appropriated - assigned them i a black uniform. The idea was to cast t.Ji-?<^e scoundrels loose on the coasts of England, not with the object of legitimate fighting, but with the view of house destruction a.nd outrage. The hope was that they might bairn BriVfol. and oiberwards Live rrjool. Wolfe Tone wa* not particu- j larly proud of this pa>rt of the invasion ' srrheine. and h,id qualms ot conscience which he argues down in his diary in ' thp.=e words : 'For the truth I hate the ! very name of England. . . . Tlie Brit- \ >sh burned without mercy in America, they ' endeavoured to starve 25.000.000 eouls in ' France, and. above all. they are keeping at this moment my country in slavery, my friends in prison, myself in exile. It is , these consideration* which steel me against horroivj which f fhould otherwise shudder to think of.' Had he then known the , cruelties with which his enemies sup- | pres\<«d the lii«=h rebellion wli-en once it T d ; d break out lie would have had more ' Mibstantial 'considerations.' This exr^di- : : tion of black blackguards landed at Fi*h- ' j guard, in Pembrokeshire, on February 22. ' 1797. They warp under tlie command of an American soldier of fortune, named Tate, serving in the French army. In all . 1400 men landed and began to* plunder. The militia under I»rd Cawdor was quickly sailed out, but the desperadoes ! showed no fight or courage : they at once ' began negotiations, and .surrendered to Lord Cawdor. whose force was considerj ably inferior both in numbers and equip- ' ment. It is said that Tate was deceived about the numbers opposed to him by seeing in all directions red coats, which he took for regular troops, moving about the hills. The red coats, however, were merely j the red cloaks worn by the Welsh country- i j women as part of their rational dress." j

•—Savage Lynching Case.-r ] A savage and revolting case of lynching in Russia is recorded by the St. Petersburg correspondent^'of the Pafcrie as occurring on a recent Sunday in the village of Voleckhi. A young and beautiful woman living in the village bat? succeeded in incurring the hatred of the other women of the village by her flirtations with the men of the neighbourhood, both married and> single, the women's haiteed for the girl reaching a climax when it became known that on her account one of the young men. of the village had broken his promise to marry another girl. On coming out of church on Sunday the women, both old and young, threw themselves upon the flirt, and, in spite of her cries for mercy, tore her ■clothes off. Then tfoey dragged hei through the village by the hair of her { head, beating and stoning her mercilessly. ' At first the men laughed, but when they saw how savagely the girl was being mal- j treated they attempted to rescue her. The infuriated women, however, drove them off, and then dragged, their unhappy victimj v Vsho was by now a moss of wounds, to * large tree just outside the .village, where they hanged* her ie one ■of the branches, and then lighted a fire of brushwood under her. When -the -police arrived on $ne scene they found the victim of the women's fury lying dead under the tree, blackened to a cinder. — ' 'Manufacture of ' Coffee. ' ' — Horrible disclosures axe. made of methods in common use for the "manufacture of> coffee" (writes the, Paris, correspondent of the Daily Telegraph). It«eems,ihatof factories for that purpose existing in France' there are 106, which turn out 24,000 tons annually,, while there are, s6B Buch establishments in Austria-Hungary, including 412 for the manufacture of coffee from figs, and in Germany nearly 15,000 hands are employed in the trade, and the annual output is 100,000 -tons. It follows that a large quantity of "coffee" which we drink has not an atom of the real berry in- 'A. The list of substances,. out of which it is manufactured ijtckudes cereals soaked in. beer, brandy, or rum, chestnuts and horae-oliestouts, haricot beans and | broad beans, carrots., dates, and, finally, '• the hard roe of ood. The annual output of what is iharmingly called " fanciful J coffee" for Europe is estimated at over 257,000 toi^. I