Flotsam

In Spain the theaters ilo not ipsue programs. Stage jewels cost about seventy-five cents a dozen. It w%S the custom, y . for Japanese ladies to gild their teeth. Swallowa have been seen at sea over one thousand miles from land. Scientists prediet that in a eentury there will be no disease not curable. The Btrength of a horse i3 equal on an average to that of seven and a half men. A doctor says that the growth of children takes place entirely when they are asleep. The prioe of a wife in Zululand, twenty years ago, was six cows, with their calves. Alore public money is spent for brass bands than for schools in the Argentine provinces. Out of the 17.000.000 inhabitants of Öpain, 11,045,870 are ignorant of the art of reading or writing. Experiments made in France show that the reason the sapwood in timber is worm-eaten is because it contains staren. In 1300, splinters dipped in oll were used In England and France to furnish Hghts to guests retiring tu their rooms. Black pearls are mostly found in t!ie black-lipped oyster of Lower California, and, being so rare and precious, are eagerly sought for. It is the custom in Lima, Peru, to keep animáis on the roofs of houses. A calf makes its first appearance on the roof, and never descends until it comes down as beef. The Berlin war office has deWmined to furnish artificial teeth gratis to such soldiers as may need them, as they can, of course, work better with teeth than without. The remedial effects of laughter are really wonderful. Cases have beer known where a hearty laugh has banished disease and preserved life by f sudden effort of nature. The price of quinine has gone up In France in anticipation of the quantities which it s supposed will be consumed by the French army during their operations in Madagascar. The bees of Hrazil hang their combs outside on the branches of the trees at the very summit of the tree and the end of the slenderest twig, so as to be out of the reach of the monkeys. In puiling down an old house in Paris recently the workmen came across a pair of boots, in which were found bonda which had been stolen from a Xew York bank twenty-one years befo re. During the winter the shores of South África an3 South America are alivc With penguins that have sv.am six hundred or eight hundred l.'agu&s f ron; the south polar ice fields to tne nearest land. A machine has been inventad that will paste labels on one hundred thousand cans in a day of ten üours. Ther-. is an endless proce.ssion of rolling cans on n shoot, and each can picks up a label as t passes. Professor Geikie writes in Nature that geologists have been on the whole inclined to acquiesce in Lord Kelvtn s theory that the earth is about a hundred million years old, but some biologists have reduced the estímate to only ten million years.