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“Gr,” ‘ .-“ .' inhumane Linn DEATH TO FLIES AND OTHER INSECTS. They Act as Scavengers in PhiliP' pine Houses â€" Become Very Tame. Throughout the Philippines the walls and ceilings of the spacious old Spanish houses are whiteWashed, making anything dark upon the surâ€" face conspicuous against the white background, writes Bradford K. Daniels. .‘Once I lived for several menths in one of these barnâ€"like structures, and my only company, besides a sul- ien native servant, were the house lizards that, as soon as darkness came and the lamp was lighted, crawled out of the loosely construct- ed brickwork to feed upon the num- erous insects that the light attractâ€"- ed through the open windows from the swamp beyond. ' At first, as they ran over the walls and ceilings, the lizards all looked alike to me; but as the days went by I came to know each one as he ap- peared in .his particular locality, from tw0 tiny baby lizards that liv- ed in a crack which an earthquake had opened in-the wall above my table, to a big brOWn one fully five inches long that occasionally rushed out from behind a window cap upâ€" on some unsuspecting moth, lashing his tail furiously if he missed his prey. . Each lizard had a portion of the wall or ceiling over which it work- ed, and seldom trespassed upon the territory‘ of its neighbor. Regularly after dinner a silvery gray lizard came out of a rathole under the window, and after looking about for a moment, uttered a loud “Chunk! Chunk!” From somewhere in the deep recess of the window came an answering “Chunk!r Chunk!” and soon a second lizard appeared and the two scampercd off together to the corner behind the kerosene stove,. where the blue-bottles had their lodgings. BATTLE BETWEEN LIZARDS. The lamp hung in the middle of the room, and one lizard discovered that within the circle.0f light which it cast upon the ceiling was always a cloud of moths. For some weeks it feasted unmolested; but one night a strange lizard found its way into the room and in the course of its advenâ€" tures came upon the chosen spot. The little fellow who had already taken possession was so busy eating a big moth that he was not aware of the stranger’s presence till he heard an ominous “Chunk! Chunk! Chunk!” just behind him. The sti‘miger not only had taken a fancy to the locality, but to the halfâ€"eaten moth, and was preparing to fight for what remained of it. The little lizâ€" ard ran for his life, but the intruder followed, and for several seconds there was a lively scene enacted upâ€" on the ceiling of the Old Spanish room. - Presently, I heard a deep-toned "Chunk! Chunk!” from over the window, and looking up, saw the tail of the big brOWn lizard lashing furiously. .The next moment he (lasted up the wall and across the ceiling, and when peace was once more restored the strange lizard was beating a hasty retreat, minus a tail. . The \‘lCtOl‘ lYelped himself to a moth as if in recompense for the services rendered the little lizard, and then went back to his territory over the window. I INTE {ESTING PETS. One night I Was eating my dinner very quietly, when two bright little eyes appeared over the edge of my plate, and gradually the head of a lizard emerged from the shadow, till the silky white throat, pulling outtat every breath, and the red forked tongue, flashing in the lamplight like a tiny sword, were plainly visible. The little fellow looked me squarely in the eyes, turned his head from side to side with a half curious, half doubting air, and then scamâ€" pered away. ~ The. next night my visitor returnâ€" ed and-ate a morsel of chicken that I had placed behind a pickle bottle. After that we always dined togethâ€" er, my guest playing liideâ€"and-scek among the disses until I had finishâ€" ed my meal. After dinner, when the servant was gone and the room was still, my little friend became bolder, someâ€" times catching an unwary fly withâ€" in an inch of my hand. As soon as lte spied a fly he would crouch and lush his tail, exactly as a cat. does when it sees a mouse. Inch by inch he would creep forward, crouching low and remaining perfectly still if the fly showed any signs 0f uneasiâ€" ness, and after a moment raising his head to see if it was wise to make another advance. When about with- in six inches of his prey he Would hurl himself upon it with a rapidity that the eye could not follow. Few, indeed, were the flies that escaped this deadly little hunter. One night my pet brough a pet with him. They came down the wall with many misgivings, scurrying back to their retreat at the slight- est disturbance. Evidently my regu- lar visitor was the male and the newcomer was his mate. many trips between the wall and the table before he could persuade his better-half to venture over, but in the end she came and ate her share of chicken. , After considerable practice the two lizards learned to come to me when- ever I chirped to them. If I held :33 hand perfectly still, the male would eat his chicken from my fin.- vmuus-ur-.._.....,.......m-.asynanw-gupwmvp N . . He made I gers, but I never could persuade his While he was nibbling the cnicken she would wag her tail slowly, spread her four wife to be so indiscreet. little bird-like feet in readiness for flight, and watch closely. for show of treachery on my part. One morning two empty egg shells, each about the, size of a hummingâ€" bird’s egg, dropped upon the table. They were a bluish white, and would have passed for birds’ eggs, had they not been joined together. That night two baby lizards, so tiny and pale that they were scarceL ly visible, eVen upon the white wall, came out of the crack with my two friends, and I knew that the family had increased to four. The parents came regularly to dine with me as before, but the babies never ventur- ed so far from home. ‘. THROUGH THE TELESCOPE. An Incident 'of the Siege of Lady-- smith. When the Boers besieged Ladysmith they permitted a "camp of refuge” and a field hospital to be establishâ€" ed at Intombi, a few miles distant. Here the nonâ€"combatants were gathered. And to the hospital, writes George Lynch in the London Daily Express, came every morning, the train from Ladysmith, bearing its burden of sick and wounded. To the dwellers at Intombi the daily bulletin written in and disease. Women who had hus- bands and brothers and sons in Ladysmith crowded round it always to see what news it brought, and went away with a sigh of respitc blood and relief when it carried nothing for them. And yet, after a fashion, these women at Intombi were more for- tunate than the men in Ladysmith, since they could learn from the new arrivals how their loved ones fared. But men were not allowed -to go backward and forward to lntombi ; those who went had to nemain, and somehow or other little or no news seemed to reach the garrison. 1n the dearth of news one man in Ladysmith had arranged that twice a week, ‘when he could get off duty, his wife at Intombi should go at twelve o’clock and stand in front of a big marquee where he could so her through the ship’s telescope a1 the 4.7 battery. She went there regularly with he child, and straining her eyes towart' that sandbagged point above Con- vent I-lill, sometimes fondly imagii: ed that she could see him. And as the months passed her child, lilu the others in the camp, grew morr sickly, thin and pale, till it seems as if the Erl King spirit of tl miasmic fog had wrapped it round and entered it, and made it 1 Changeling of his own. But delicate as the child was, tlu mother was the first to fall. sick. and the news of her illness reached her husband by his seeing one tiny figure standing alone at the ap- pointed place, Waving a'handkerâ€" chief. And there came a day when it, too, was no longer to be seen He could not go to them. but had to stay and fight on with bitterness in his heart. _.._.__._ ,+_.__ HAIR FAIRS. In a short time will be held in various towns of the Haute Vienne and the Correze, the two departâ€" ments in France forming the old Limousin province, the Hair Fairs, or “Foires aux Cheveux.” Jountry girls will be invited to sell their tresses, or to barter them in exâ€" change for cheap finery and trinkâ€" ets. The fairs are usually held in such places as Tulle, La Roche, Can- illac, and Laplcau. When the girls have selected the goods they desire, or received money, they kneel down before their exccutioners and become transformed into apparently beard- less boys in pctticoats. The operâ€" ators hang up their spoils before their booths as an inducement to other girls to part with their black or brown trcsses for a trifle. , After the fairs are over the spoils are bought up by an agent, who supplies dealâ€" ers in Paris and elsewhere. It is aflirincd that a good deal of the hair from the heads of the Limousin girls is sent to London. §.-â€"â€"~._â€"_ WI-lAT BOYS AND GIRLS SEE. An interesting series of experiâ€" ments has been tried by the school authorities in South Germany to test the faculty of observation as it is exercised by boys: and girls. A man dressed as an ordinary workâ€" man and with ordinary features. was placed in a room by himself. Classes of girls of different ages were sent through the room. teacher told them was that they were to go into the room through one door and out through another. When they returned to their class rooms they were asked to describe the man in the room. Nearly 380 per cent. of the girls confined their attention to the man’s clothes; the others described both clothes and features. The same experiments when tried with boys revealed the fact that nearly 70 per cent. of them confined their attention to the man’s features, the remainder to both fea- tures and clothes. PRECIOUS BULLETS . Bullets made of precious stones are rarities in warfare. But durâ€" ing the fighting on the Kashmir frontier, when theliritish tl'Ool'JS deâ€" feated the rebellious I-Tunzas, the naâ€" tives used bullets of garnets encased in lead. The- British' preserved many as curiosities. ‘ rim-Maui: any that train brought the history of the siege All that. the- WHEN YOU ARE MISTAKEIl APPEARANCES ARE VERY OF- TEN DECEPTIVE. The Sea Is Not So ,Green as It Looks â€" No One Has Ever Seen Steam. We make a number of unaccountaâ€" ble blunders every day, and when on a. sunny afternoon we say that the sea around certain parts of the coast . is green, we are sadly led astray by appearances. As. a matter of fact the sea is not so green as it looks, for, whatever the weather may be, it has absolutely no color atall. The reason it appears green is beâ€" cause the rays cast by the sun are blue, and these piercing the water mingle with the yellow of the sand below. Hence in shallow water the blue and yellow blending make the waves look green. Similarly, too, when the sea appears blue you may know that it is too deep to permit the yellow sand to taint the sun’s blue light71~cflected by the water. We believe we see steam emanating from a kettle or a steam engine, but we see nothing of the sort, for no one has ever seen steam. Steam is really water made into two invis‘ablc gases, oxygen and hydrogen, by the heat, and the clouds seen rising from the kettle are nothing more than minute drops of water which were once steam, but which have been re- converted into water by the low temperature of the atmosphere. Put a piece of iron in the fire and it appears "to grow redâ€"hot, but this _is only another instance of the de- ception of appearances. When the iron is heated great ether waves are given off, followed by millions of smaller waves traveling at enormous velocity, which on reaching the eye MAKE THE IRON APPEAR RED. Neither does the iron become whiteâ€" hot, for the greater heat throws out millions of waves or every conceivâ€" able color, which confuse the eye in the same way as do the sun’s rays and cause the object to appear white. When Longfellow wrote “A voice fell like a falling star," he had eviâ€" dently forgotten his. astronomy, for no star ever falls or shoots, or, in- deed, moves from its allotted place in the hemisphere. What we call a shooting star is not a star, but a meteor weighing less than a pound, which in passing through the air at the rate of thousands of miles a secâ€" ond is caused to burn up with all the brightness of a star, and ultim- ately reaches the earth in the form of fine dust. ' The expression “as strong as a horse” is a very common one, be- cause we believe the horse to be the strongest animal we employ in this country, whereas it really is the weakest. A single cat, if it attain- ed the same size, could do the work of three horses, and a caterpillar would be equal to a stable of ten. in addition to being the weakest animal proportionally, the horse suffers from complaints and diseases more numerous than those of a huâ€" man being. But we are often led astray by apâ€" pearances in the case of animals. For instance, whales are erroneously beâ€" lieved to spout water, but their nos- trils are so constructed that water cannot be drawn into them. What they do on rising to the surface is to BREATHE OUT THE AIR. in their lungs which has become heated during their immersion under W ._.____, __ “w __ " *' Neither can a camel go for days without water, as it is supposed to be able to do, but at the end of for- ty~cight hours it is completely ex- hausted if thirst. unable to quench its In this respect the horse can - hold out longer than the camel. We put camphor in our clothes to keep the moth from eating them, but the moth does not relish a meal off clothing and will eatnothing. lt lays a tiny egg, however, which is in time hatched into a. tiny insect and eats the holes we attribute to the moth. We also say that the house- beetle is black; but it is not so black as it looks, being in reality a luxurious brown. - “As blind as a bat” is another ignorant phrase, for the bat has the keenest vision of any animal and can see perfectly in black dark- ness, what we attribute to blindâ€" ness being merely drowsiness caused by the brightness of the sun. Neither does a snake sting, but only bites, despite the‘ugly appearance of its forked tongue. Nor can any snake coil round a tree as the picture books would have us believe; it goes straight up a. tree, its stomach pressed against the Dark, and its tail is the only part of its body capable of coiling round anything.~â€"-Titâ€"Bits. 49-H- KISSING- THE BOOK. the Time When Kissing Was General in England. Sir Francis Jeune and Mr. Justice Gorell Barnes have had posted out- side the two courts of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division notices to witnesses calling their at- tention to the fact that they may-be sworn in the Scotch manner before giving evidence, says the London Lancet. That is to say, they may be sworn with uplifted hand repeat- ing a solemn invocation to the Deity, instead of taking a book and kissing it after listening to a. form repeated by a minor official of the court. The notice to which we re- fer is repeated outside one of the Relic of I courts of the Chancery Division and we have every hope that it may be- come universal. We have for many years contended that the oath by kissing a book has nothing to commend it, while it is nasty and may become a means of propagation of disease; \and We have seen with regret that the statutory permission to swear in the Scotch fashion was, as a rule, not by witnesses and frequently, also, that Judges, Coroners, and llilfagisâ€" trates were ignorant of it. The form of swearing by kissing a book is purely one of custom. There is- no direct authority for it in any Act of Parliamchit, or rule, or book of practice. The date also of its in- troduction is unknown, but this is not because it has been lost in the mists of antiquity, for it is fairly certain that, so recently as at the end of the seventeenth century, if the form existed it was not in any general use. out that makes no book but oath” as witness known It has been pointed Coke in his institutes mention of kissing the writes of the “corporal thus named because the touched with his hand a portion of the Scriptures. and this aspect of the oath no doubt sur- vives in the familiar warning of the usher to the witness to remove the glove for the purpose of kissing it. before taking the Testament It is also observed that in the “Book ’of was Oaths,” of which an edition the Waves. and the force sends a. published in 1689, there is no men- fountam of water into the air. tion of kissing a. book. How the broad, _ .._.â€"_. kissing originated is, We believe, al- most as much a matter of specula- tion as is the date at which it be- came frequent or universal. The laying of the hand on the Gos- pels in swearing is, no doubt, of great antiquity, while the laying of a hand on the altar of a, deity in'in- voking the deity to witness a state ment or promise is older than the Gospels. The laying of the hand on the Gospels has its parallel in other countries besides England. The kiss- ing of the book is, however, we be- lieve peculiar to England._or to Eng- land and Ireland, and it is not quite easy to assign its origin to the kiss- ing of relics when we apparently find it intruduced in England after all veneration for rezics had been swepf away and made illegal. It is worth noting that English people were more addicted to kissing once than they are now. Kissing as a form of Salutation was so common among them that it excited the in- terest and amusement of foreigners. Erasmus refers to it and a Hungar- ian gentleman who visited London and moved in good society in 1663 was much struck with the way in which men kissed ladies when they greeted them where Hungarians would have shaken hands. Even Frenchmen in the Middle Ages held kissing as a peculiarity of the Eng‘ lish nation, much as we remark up- on'it now among the French. It is, therefore, at least possible that the kiss bestowed upon the book in tak- ing an oath may have been not so much a, kiss of veneration as a form of salutation or acknowledgment by bodily contact, somewhat more cere- monious than manual contact, but still not associated with any great feeling of solemnity. ___.+_.____.__ FRENCH WOMEN WORKERS. Madame Schirmacher,‘ a doctor writing on Woman’s work, in a French magazine, says that over ‘6,- 300,000 French women work for their living, well on. for 3,000,000 0: whom are married. Most of them outside workers (over 2,700,000) art employed in forestry or agriculture, including women landowners. In dustrial occupations claim nearly 2; 000,000 more, the cloister 120,000, the theatre about 12,000, and tlu liberal professions 138,460. .___+____ THE DATE IN NORWAY. Probably the most curious Euro- pean oath is administered in Nor- way. The wifness raises his thumb his forefinger, and his middle finger These signify the Trinity, while tin larger of the uplifted fingers is sup posed to represent the soul of tho witness and the smaller to indicatc iis body. ' -.+â€".â€". A HUGE CRANE. A gigantic crane, 'which is styled by the Germans as “the largesf crane in the worlc , is to be seen in use at Kiel. Its own weight is 450 tons, and it is capable of lifting as much as 150 tons. Its arm stretches fifty yards from point to point, and is fifty yards and more high above the foundation. It is worked by electricity. â€"-+â€"‘-'â€"-‘ MILES or. SALT BOOK. The largest’mass of pure rock salt in the world lies under the province of Galicia, Hungary. ,lt is known to be 550 miles long, twenty miles and 250 feet in thickness. 17 ON THE WAY TO THE CORONATION. Heâ€"You know one of my ancestors was beheaded in the Tower." She (of London)_â€"â€"Oh! how perfectly lovely!’ r..-~....-_n_-I.I z..._n....,.......h ‘ ‘ â€"‘ rm - m.-- “amâ€"Aw ..~-... .. .. ... .. _ . 4â€"â€"~_.â€"â€"â€"_~Juw~â€"‘miflism<u-V i i . 5.. i l I . i-,' 11‘. ‘ '~ 1 i Q L ‘ I ‘ I 1 f I , i t j 'i C r e g} ‘l J; 41 . A i b l v, ., , ‘ x f 5“ ’ i l , l 2 ; . l i k i I i , i l l l i I I l i I l i 4 i I? i l 4 .‘ 1 " i ’3' E l . i '1 â€"~...\‘..._ y?«-~..---~.‘ .â€". .i u m 4