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Wairarapa Standard, Issue 2067, 13 May 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

Cannon Made of Silk —These ingenious hut incredulous and obstinate people, the t 'hincßO cannot be induced to believe that we make car wheels and other things requiring the tenacity and durability of steel out of paper. But they ask os to believe that they have made cannon out of silk and that il is efficient artillery, of which a single camel can carry a dozen batteries. Thackeray’s spinster, who thought there were few things which could not be done with cut flowers, would hardly have deemed them suitable projectiles; yet such a claim would hardly seem more surprising than that advanced by the inventive pigtails concerning their artillery.

The Lapp and His Reindeer- — The mountain Lapps of Norway have learned to drink coffee and wear stout Norwegian cloth, but they sot as much store by rein deer as ever. A pot,r family will have tifiy and upwards in a (iock, the middle classes throe hundred to seven hundred, and tin; richest one thousand or more. The reindeer is as much beloved by tlie Lapp as b,s pig by the Irishman, and the reindeer often sleep in Ids hut in much the same fashion. The Lapp will whisper to Ids reindeer when harnessing him to his sleigh, and will tell him where ho is to go, and declares in understands him. The reindeer is much like a stag, only smaller; all the people, animals and trees in Lapland arc very diminutive, the men are mostly under five feet high, and the women under four feet nine inches, so great aie the rigors of the climate in this as in all eoinitiics under the arctic circle, and the cows, sheep and goats are small in proportion. In summer the reindeer feeds upon grass, and gives excellent milk : in Winter they feed upon moss which they scratch up under great depths of snow with marvellous instinel. When winter draws m.ar great numbers are killed, and the flesh is dried and smoked to provide food when the ground is covered with snow, and but a few lords like partridgi s, ptarmigan and capereailizie, are. met with. The llesh is very nutritious, and after a course of grass feeding it is suipriamg how soon the reindeer becomes fat and plump. The skin makes their dresses and boots, the sinews their thread and fishing lines, and the horns their spoons and domestic utensils.

An Extinct Race of People —Near Albuquerque, N.M., a rancher recently commenced digging for a welt on the site of an old ruined pueblo. At eight feet be etruck a huge boulder. Underneath thia wae found masonry, and when thia was pieroed a cavity was discovered. Upon examination it wae found that the workmen bad penetrated through an arch of atone, supported by heavy pillars of masonry and large pine timber. When the ih bn* was cleared away a volume of pure water was disclosed sufficient to supply a great number of cattle. Among the discoveries made in the vault were stone axes and hammers, flint-knives, amw heads and quantities of pottery in fragments. Human remains were also brought to the surface, including two skulls in an excellent state of preservation. The building is supposed to have belonged to an extinct raw of people, as the relies found evidently antedate anything hitherto diicoversd ia this territory.