A new lead for deep sea sounding carries a cartridge which explodes on touching the bottom. A submerged microphone receives the sound and the depth is estimated from the time occupied by the lead in sinking to the bottom.

When leeches were kept in every chemist’s shop and often in private houses their behavior was subject to constant observation, and it was generally noticed that in still weather, dry or wet, they remained at the bottom, but rose, often as much as twenty-four hours in advance, before a change, and in case of a thunderstorm rose very quickly to the surface, descending when it was past.

Spiders are met with in the forests of Java whose webs are so strong that it requires a knife to cut through them. A spider weighing four pounds, which has taken up his residence in a cathedral at Munich, regales herself with a large supply of lamp oil. A Texas spider weaves a balloon four feet long and two feet wide, which she fastens to a tree by a single thread, then marches on board with her half dozen little ones, cuts the thread and away goes the airship to some far distant point on the prairie.

We have it on the authority of the Brooklyn Eagle that smoke never does issue from a volcano. Nor does fire. The red light seen above the crater is no flame. It is the glow of molten lava reflected on the under side of the clouts of dust and the clouds of dust are never mixed with smoke. There are bursts of steam sometimes, but rocks do no burn as wood does, and give off the finely-divided carbon dust that we know as smoke. The pictures of eruptions in the geographies of our youth are wrong, and so are reports from Prescott, Ariz., that smoke is issuing from one of the peaks of the Harque Hala range, thus indicating “that an active volcano is developing.”

A very curious phenomenon has been much commented upon in the German press, says the Philadelphia Record. Prof. K. G. Fiedler, who has been investigating the appearance of so-called fulgurites for many years, has recently received two specimens, which are the largest he has ever seen. Their origin is due to lightning striking a bank of sand. This actin of lightning is explained in the following way: The heat of the electric discharge melts the quartz to a fluid mass, which becomes solid after cooling off. The shape is very odd, branching and forking out, tapering toward the ends. These fulgurites are hollow their entire length, the forked ends pointing downward where found. They are from seven to nine feet long, and their ends reached into very wet sand, where all traces of lightning ceased.

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

A post-mortem examination on the body of James Ellis, aged 65, who died in Leavenworth, Kan., showed death to have been caused by a pin, swallowed perhaps in childhood.

Among the products of the country around Pare, in Brazil, are vampire bats, which are so dangerous that the natives are obliged to guard carefully against their intrusion into their dwellings. A letter says that a party of Americans recently had an unpleasant experience with them. They were on an excursion up the Amazon, and at night one of them was bled so badly by a vampire as to awake, in a state of exhaustion, with a face like a corpse. The foot of his hammock and the floor beneath it was saturated with blood, the flow of which was checked with much difficulty. It is this difficulty of staunching the blood which makes the vampire so dreaded–the quantity which the creature requires to satisfy its appetite being comparatively trifling. Some persons seem to be especially liable to their attacks, while others can sleep in a room infested by them nightly with impunity. They only make their attacks in darkness, and a light kept burning in a sleeping-room is an effectual safeguard.

A curious case of swindling has just been tried before the Correctional Tribunal of Paris, with the result that an adventuress, who passed herself off as the Princess of Reuss, has, in spite of the able advocacy of M. Lachaud, been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. A few weeks ago, a “lady of distinguished appearance, very elegantly attired,” fell down, apparently in a fainting fit, at the St. Lazare Railway Terminus, and among the persons who hurried to her assistance was a retired servant, who had already been struck by the grace of her demeanor. When she came to, he asked permission to assist her to a hotel in the neighborhood, and sent for a doctor, being assured, in return, that he would have no reason to regret his kindness; “for,” added the lady, “I am the Princess of Reuss and shall not forget your goodness.” The Princess went on to explain that she had immense possessions in Germany, which, unfortunately, had been seized by Prince Bismarck, and that the worry to which she was subjected by the suit going on for their recovery, had so affected her that she was often overtaken by fainting-fits. “But,” she added, with touching condescension, “can I regret all this, since it has procured me the opportunity of meeting with such disinterested attention?” The retired servant was so completely won by this last phrase, that he begged the Princess to accept the loan of any money which she might require for temporary purposes; and it was not very long before the £400 which he had saved during long years of service, had been borrowed from him. After these had gone, and when the Princess still failed to receive the remittances she was expecting, he awoke to the possibility of his having been defrauded; and the inquiries which were instituted by the Police showed that the Princess of Reuss and a well-known swindler by the name of Perin were one and the same person. Justice has been satisfied by the sentence of two years’ imprisonment; but the retired servant will not, it is to be apprehended, recover his £400.–Pall Mall Gazette.

The two most critical times in a woman’s life are the times which makes the girl a woman, and the woman a mother. At these times, Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescription is of incalculable value. It strengthens and invigorates the organs distinctly feminine, promotes regularity of the functions, allays irritation and inflammation, checks unnatural, exhausting drains, and puts the whole delicate organism into perfect condition. Almost all the ills of womankind are traceable to some form of what is known as “female complaint.” There are not three cases in a hundred of woman’s peculiar diseases that Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescription will not cure.

A correspondent of the New York Evening Post, writing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, describes an old manuscript written in 1618 by one of the mutineers who sent Hendrick Hudson and eight of his crew adrift in an open boat. They were never heard of more, and for more than 200 years there has been much speculation as to their fate. The manuscript, written in a large, firm hand, consisted of ten slips of paper, apparently torn from a book and tied together for better preservation. It has been forwarded, together with other relics, to the office of the Hudson’s Bay Company in London. The writer, Louis Marin, thus tells the story of the mutiny:

“One night, when we were in great misery, stars fell from Heaven in countless numbers and we rejoiced to think for a time that the end of the word [sic] had come. Our Captain was gloomy all the time, and the men often cursed him in his hearing for bringing them to such a pass. Spring was very tardy in coming, but when the ice field broke up we thrush Hudson and the five blind sailors into the pinnace and told them to go ashore. We headed the ship out that night, and in the morning the pinnace had disappeared. I became afraid of the crew and of the ship, for every night at midnight the ghosts of the Captain and the five blind sailors came aboard and troubled us sorely. While I was at my prayers one night one of the ghosts told me to leave the ship, and when we touched the coast for water I ran away from it.”

Two German scientists who observed the recent solar eclipse from Monte Rosa, in the Pennine Alps, state that at the culminating point of the obscuration the glaciers and snow fields became suffused with a wonderful azure light, while the shadows of the mountains produced most weird effects.

On October 8, 2004, the international community of [Distributed Proofreaders][] enriched the online public domain with the largest single contribution in the project’s four year history. Through the organized collective efforts of volunteers throughout the world, Distributed Proofreaders made available 50 diverse and significant written works consisting of over 13,000 pages. Entrusted into the care of the Project Gutenberg Archive, these legacy works are now accessible free of charge to Internet users around the globe.

The inspiration for this coordinated effort was the nearing completion of Distributed Proofreaders’ 5,000th distinct work. Within the span of a mere four years DP–as the project is called by members–succeeded in transforming 5,000 unique published works into formats that can be viewed by a variety of electronic devices. The secret to this prolific output is the innovative production process of DP which employs several thousand volunteers all working towards a single objective, expanding the availability of written works in the public domain. Once completed, these machine readable texts are placed within Project Gutenberg where they remain available without cost.

As a demonstration of the varied strengths of the Distributed Proofreaders production model, the 50 titles of this commemorative collection were selected from amongst its most challenging and complex projects. The accomplishment of this milestone is a source of great pride to the diversified and dedicated membership of DP. The intent of the 5,000 Collection was to produce for the world a gift of immense value that would dramatically exemplify the best of which Distributed Proofreaders is now capable. A mere cursory reading of this wealth of titles stirs up a sense of excitement and wonder at what is possible when enough like-minded people join together in creative endeavor.

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