A well-known artist of Syracuse, N. Y., is amusing a very few of his friends with an experience he had some days ago that has a tinge of the uncanny. It seems, says the Star, that the artist has a friend who is an undertaker and who at that time was badly in need of assistance. It seems that the undertaker had accidentally spilled a fluid upon the face of a body he was preparing for burial, and on account of his carelessness the fluid had acted upon the skin and turned it black in many places. The undertaker realized that something must be done, and that very soon. It would be out of the question for the family to learn of the accident. For a moment he was nonplussed, but his mind shortly turned to his artist friend, and he thought that he could relieve him. “It was at night when he called,” said the artist, in narrating the story, “and I had retired. At first it seemed impossible for me to attempt such a job as he laid before me, but his sad plight touched me, and I finally consented to do the best in my power. I went to the house with my box of paints. The undertaker entered the front door, but he feared that suspicion would be aroused if I was seen. According to arrangements I waited outside until he had reached the death chamber. Then he silently raised the window, and I crawled stealthily in. For more than an hour I labored silently upon the spotted face, carefully painting over the black places, and finishing the whole with that effect which betokens death. It was a ghastly job, and I never want another like it. After it was all over the body looked as lifelike as possible, and no one ever know that the face was entirely made up.”

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]

The blow gun is one of the most remarkable savage devices in which compressed air is used as a motive force. The blow gun is a simple tube of cane, smoothly cleared of the joint partitions, through which light darts, feathered with a tuft of down or pieces of pith, are propelled by the breath. The blow gun is used for killing birds and small animals. Frequently the arrows are poisoned, rendering the light dart effective on larger game. The chief merit of the blow gun is its accuracy and the silence with which it may be employed. The penetration of the blow gun dart is greater than would be imagined. At the distance of fifty feet I have driven a blunt dart one-quarter of an inch into a pine plank. It is stated that the range of the blow gun among some tribes is from eighty to 100 yards. The blow gun is a tropical device and may be looked for in regions where bamboo or cane grows. Nevertheless, these tubes are often made of hard wood, single or of two pieces hollowed out and joined together. Frequently one tube is thrust inside of another to secure rigidity. The examination of many of these blow guns [inspires?] a great respect for the ingenuity and mechanical skill of the workers. The North American specimens are from the Chetimachas of Louisiana, who frequently combine the tubes in series, forming a compound blow gun, and the Cherokees of the Carolinas. From Central America, the Indians of Honduras and Costa Rica; from South America, several Amazon tribes from Ecuador east and from British Guiana employ the blow gun.

For a week a reign of terror has existed here, owing to the invasion of the town by an army of rattlesnakes, says a Tavarez (Fla.) dispatch to the St. Louis Globe Democrat. The reptiles are of all ages and sizes and have practically taken possession of the town. No woman or child dares venture out of doors, and when the men go out their legs are incased in stout leather leggings which reach to the thighs and are armed with clubs with which to dispatch the serpents. The advance guard of this army of rattlers appeared just a week ago, and since then the snakes have come in such numbers that it is estimated that there are now 1,000 within the corporate limits of the town. Last Sunday as Mayor Yorke and his family were going to church they met the advance guard. It consisted of two old rattlers about five feet long, each with twelve rattles and a button, and a dozen smaller reptiles. The mayor an his family beat a retreat, and the city’s magistrate called for neighbors to assist him in dispatching the reptiles. This brood was killed, but before it was done shouts from different quarters of the town announced the approach of more snakes. Since then the men have been busy killing the reptiles. It is said that 400 snakes have been killed and still the town is full of them. Their warning rattle is heard at all hours and on all sides. The dogs made a gallant fight against the reptilian army, but nearly all have been bitten and are dead. Several horses have also died of snake bites. So far no person has been bitten, though there have been several narrow escapes. Mrs. Sallie Jacobs had the most remarkable escape. While washing linen in the yard she put her 2-year-old baby in a dry-goods box near by. Soon Mrs. Jacobs heard the baby laughing and looking around was horrified to see an immense rattler coiled behind the box. The mother rushed for the baby and the snake struck at her, fastening its fangs in her clothing. Her screams brought her husband, who killed the rattler. The snakes came from a hammock at the foot of St. Clair Abrams avenue. The council has voted an appropriation, and the hammock will be cleared and the home of the snakes destroyed.

The weazel is a dainty and luxurious liver, in his way, says the Houston Post. He steals the freshest eggs, selects the tenderest chickens of the brood, and will sometimes kill several for a single meal, sucking the warm blood and eating only a small portion of the flesh. He is not only sly and cunning, but remarkably courageous. He will often attack an enemy much larger and stronger than himself, and he does not lose his wits even in imminent peril. This heroic quality is sometimes strikingly evinced. Two farmers in Titus County, Texas, were eating their midday meal, when they noticed a large hawk circling in the sky overhead. He was gradually narrowing his circles while approaching the ground, and it was apparent that he would soon drop upon his victim. The men looked about cautiously, without movement or noise, and presently discovered a weasel stretched out upon the warm side of a log, not far away, probably sunning himself after a long morning’s sleep, for the weasel does his sleeping in the daytime and his work at night. But the weasel quietly blinked at the sun, either unconscious of the danger or indifferent to it. The farmers had just made this discovery when the hawk came gliding down, swift as an arrow, seized the weazel in his powerful talons and rose again almost perpendicularly. All seemed at an end for that weasel. Soon, however, the movements of the great bird became strange and unnatural. His wings worked rapidly and convulsively, as if making a great effort to sustain flight, then he began to sink, slowly till finally he fell straight like a plummet to the ground–dead! From under the outstretched wings crept the weasel, apparently unharmed. What had happened? The weasel had quickly stretched his long supple neck under the hawk’s wing, stuck his teeth into a vital part and sucked out the life blood. The muscles of the hawk relaxed as the blood was rapidly drained. There was a last desperate effort at flight; the wings flapped uselessly in the air, and the heaviness of death brought him swiftly to the ground, very near the spot where the weasel had been basking in the sun.

Yellow and white. Botanists are agreed that the earliest petals were yellow, and that, originally, all flowers were of that color. The order of development of color in flowers appears to be yellow, pink, red, purple, lilac, up to deep blue–probably the highest level–while white may occur in an normally colored flower, just as albinos are found among animals. As flowers become more specialized they become more dependent upon the visits of special insects, purple and blue flowers, for instance, benefitting most from and being most preferred by bees and butterflies. A French authority states that about 4,200 species of plants are utilized for various purposes in Europe. Of these only about one-tenth have an agreeable perfume, the other being either inodorous or having an unpleasant smell. White flowers are the most numerous. One thousand one hundred and twenty-four species out of 4,200 are white, and 187 of these have a scent; 931 (77 perfumed) are yellow; next in order comes red, with 823, of which 84 give forth perfume; then blue, 594 (34 scented), and violet, 308, only 13 of which have any perfume. The remaining 400 kinds are of various shades of color, and only 28 of them have a pleasant smell.–Boston Standard.

Beneath the peninsula of Lower Michigan there are brines and sheets of mineral water lying in basin form, and very rich in salt, bromides, etc., and of great medical and commercial value. They have been reached by numerous wells which run down to about 3,000 feet near the center of the basin, as at Alma and Bay City. The water comes up from the bottom of these wells hot (over 90 degrees), showing a decidedly more rapid increase in temperature than in the copper mines. But the famous Comstock lode, where fabulous wealth lured the miners on, showed perhaps the most rapid increase in temperature that man has ever dared to face. It was, however, doubtless due to the action of hot waters rising from still greater depths–probably the same waters that deposited the silver ores, still at work. In the mines of this region the miners, naked as savages, reeking with perspiration, drinking pailful after pailful of ice water (twenty tons of ice, or, in another case, ninety-five pounds per man, were used each day), could labor but ten minutes at the drift (in imminent danger of being scalded by striking a stream of hot water) before being overcome by heat and reeling to a cooler place. Fainting, delirium, even death have been the effect of the reaction on coming to the surface. Verily the Cuban proverb, that a Yankee would be found to go after a sack of coffee though it were at the gates of hell, was not far from the literal truth.

However, the rate of increase of temperature may vary, all indications thus agree that less than ten miles below us a red heat is attained and within twenty a white heat. Think of it! Ten miles below us it is red hot. Ten miles above we have the pitiless cold, far below zero, of interplanetary space. To what a narrow zone of delicately balanced temperature is life confined!

Henry Cresswell of Hudsonville, Mich., while fishing at the Ottawa Beach resorts pulled up on his hook a solid silver purse containing a diamond ring, a pair of diamond eardrops, and some Spanish gold doubloons. The purse had evidently been in the water a long time. No clew to the owner was found about it. Of course Cresswell is looking for an owner.

A dramatic illustration of hypnotism accompanied by many grewsome features has been given in London by Prof. Morritt, who seems to possess extraordinary powers of a mysterious nature, says the New York World. He put a man to sleep in a coffin-shaped glass case and kept him there nearly a week and a the end of that time awakened him in the presence of a large number of witnesses. The victim of this achievement, one Alfred Wootton, is a stained glass-worker, 35 years of age. During the whole of the time he was asleep or in a trance he was exhibited in a public hall. When the experiment was ready to begin on Monday he had readily climbed into the coffin-shaped case, and many people watched the hypnotizer as he proceeded to exercise his mysterious power. Holding Wootton by the forehead and chin, the hypnotizer gazed steadily into his eyes. He then made a few downward passes from above the eyes along the side of the face, from time to time examining the pupils of the eyes. The man, it was found, had by this time become rigid. One minute after the experiment began the hypnotizer asked Dr. Forbes to examine the man. He was found to be thoroughly unconscious. His puls was 96, the exact number of beats it registered before he became unconscious. His respiration was about 116, the breathing chiefly abdominal. Temperature was 98.2, or normal. The pupils of the eyes were contracted almost to disappearance. During the following days the respiration, temperature and pulse changed slightly, but the man remained in a trance condition. His beard continued to grow. When he was awakened by Prof. Morritt the following Saturday evening, he could not be convinced that he had been in a hypnotic trance for nearly a week until he felt the thick growth of beard on his face. He said it seemed to him that he had only been asleep for a few minutes. It did not take longer than a minute to wake him up. The professor made a few passes of his hand across the man’s face and lifted his head and shoulders from the coffin-shaped case. Wootton then opened his eyes and instantly recognized friends in the crowd about him, with whom he began to converse. The only notable sensation he experienced up waking, he said, was that of hunger. A short time after being awakened he put on his coat an walked out of the building with his friends. He had been constantly watched during the whole time in the trance and evinced much interest in the records of the doctors. Prof. Morritt had previously tried a similar experiment with one Henry Nolan, but the doctors who were watching his case expressed the opinion that Nolan was not physically strong enough to undergo the ordeal.