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The Rhondda Leader

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FACTS AND FANCIES.

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FACTS AND FANCIES. f ttHUi Sam employs nearly 7,500 women in tfci vuiooi departments at Washington. Iforway the average length of life is pttlff than in any other country on the globe. Snma,TssT FOB DRINKING-WATIM. Complaints are often made by holiday-makers [ Of the quality of the water obtained at many country and seaside towns, and many visitors •ven make it a rule never to drink water which they have not satisfied themselves by analysis is pure. That these precautions are in many cases justified is no doubt true. Dr. Dabbs, writing m the London Argus, explains a rough test for suspicious drinking water which should prove valuable to the larger class who cannot afford to mend a couple of guineas on an analysis. The first is as follows: You get a perfectly dean, rounded, glass soda-water bottle. You AU it with the water suspected. You cork it with a new, unimpeachable cork. But before you cork it down you add to it as much white sifted cane sugar as would cover a two-shilling Siece. You tie down the cork and place your ottle two days in the sun. If it becomes mjjky or clouded you may suspect sewage. I have never known this rough test to fail, says Dr. Dabbs. A Toy-Snop IN A TOMB. In the recent explorations of the tombs of Beni Hasan some curious wooden models were found. In some tombs worms had destroyed the wood, but in others the objects remained just as placed by the Egyptians over 4,000 years ago. In the tomb of Nefer-y, a Chief Physician, upon the painted "coffin and at its side were a number of wooden models of objects and scenes familiar from the wall-paintings of the larger tombs. Nearest to the door, upon the coffin, was a rowing-boat, the twenty oarsmen standing and swinging back in time to the beat of two figures on a raised platform in the centre. Beyond this was the model of a granary, with six compartments in rows of three on either side of the fiourtyard between them. Men are standing knee deep in real grain filling baskets, while a scribe seated on the roof, pen in hand, keeps the count. A flight of steps leads up to the roof, which is pierced with holes through which the grain is poured into the chambers below, the doors being closed and sealed. The principle is natural, as it would be impossible to fill the chamber through the open door. Behind were representations of various occupations, also in models of wood. A man carries a large offering-jar; a girl supports with one hand a basket poised on her head, and in the other holds the wings of two geese. In a group, women are engaged in making and baking bread. Another well-executed group represents the making of beer from fermentation of bread. One man is seen inside a tub, pressing with his feet. Two others are bearing water in pitchers suspended from yokes upon their shoulders. Others are working at strainers placed loose upon the casks, while in front a number of casks lie naturally in a row. By the side of the coffin was a sailing-boat. 0 WOODWORKERS AND THEIR WORK. The Bible gives us the most ancient records of furniture that we possess in print, says a writer in the Woodworker, and in the Book of Kings we have a wonderful account of the houses which Solomon built, of the "walls of cedar" and the "floors planked with fir," of the gold, ebony, and ivory benches and wardrobes, of the carvings and brasswork by "cunning" workmen from Tyre. The woods used were chiefly cedar, cypress- called gopher wood-and fir; but no definite reliance can be placed on the use of these names and the trees they are supposed to represent. The rarer woods-such as ebony, teak, and probably rosewood, were imported through the merchants who traded with the market at Tyre. "Shittim wood," the "Shittah tree" of which the Taber- nacle was made, was an Acacia; and Thyme wood, known to the Romans as Citron wood, and to us as Thuya, was reckoned a rare and "precious wood. Walnut was also spoken of, growing in Eastern Palestine, a wood still known there as Juglans Regia, the same species as our English and Italian wood. Of Egyptian furniture, there are some extremely interesting specimens in the British Museum, all in fairly good preservation. The huge mummy boxes, mostly made of cedar, are also worth studying; some of them are 6in. thick, mitred and pinned right through, and are decorated inside and out with the usual Egyptian ornament. The making of these chests was a speciality with the workmen of that day, and the absence of any large piece of furniture serves to illustrate how much the introduction of such articles was due to custom and habit, and also to religious life and belief. ♦ CALIFORNIAN REDWOOD. The Consul-General at San Francisco states that a new demand has sprung up for redwood, a material which California alone can supply. It has been discovered by the chief engineer of the Niagara Falls Power Company that, under certain conditions, which rule in connection with that enterprise, the hardest steel is inferior in resisting power to Californian redwood. The company sent an agent hereto obtain figures for furnishing several million feet of the local lumber for one of the great tunnels at Niagara Falls. It appears that the engineer-in-chief of the Niagara Falls Power Company had recommended that redwood should be employed instead of steel for a great tunnel to be con- structed. The reason given for the preference for the Californian wood was that when water passed over it continuously there formed a surface of a soapy and pasty nature which was proof against corrosion, whereas in the case of steel the particles of sand and matter carried with great velocity from the Niagara River cut into and destroyed the steel in an incredibly short space of time. The Redwood Association was asked if it could furnish 3,000,000 feet of redwood, and gave an affirmative reply. Red- wood has been found exceedingly useful in the construction of the big pipes used for the conveyance of water to many of the electric- power houses in the northern part of the State. These pipes are built up and banded. They cost less than metal pipes, are more durable, and are more easily carried around the sharp curves followed by these great water lines. It will outlive all other woods when kept constantly moist. While it is not non-combustible, which quality some enthusiasts have erroneously ascribed to it. it burns much more slowly than any other kind of timber used for building- purposes, as it contains no inflammable oil or resin. ♦ ■ THE COMMON FnOG. If a traveller were to announce that he had discovered in some remote part of the globe an animal whose tongue was rooted in the front of its mouth, the tip pointing down the throat, and further, that the creature's manner of breathing was so peculiar that the surest way of suffocat- ing it was to keep its mouth fixed open, there would be some little curiosity about the "find." If the discoverer went on to say that the creature began existence as a fish, breathing by means of gills, and having a heart of only two chambers, but had undergone transformation, discarding gills and gradually acquiring lungs, adding a third chamber to its heart, and so in the truest and most literal sense passing from the order of fishes to the order of reptiles, the public might even become excited about this extraordinary animal—until it came out that it was no other than the common or garden frog. Then probably nineteen persons out of twenty Would instantly cease to take any interest in the subject, if they. did not feel some resentment against the man who had contrived to draw their attention for a time to such a common reptile. A FEW EXCUSEL. Here are a few notes that teachers in an east side New York school have recently received: "Dear Miss H.,—Pleas excus Minnie and Lena for being absent, they got a wedding by a brother." Another pupil walked pompously into the classroom after a day's absence and presented her teacher with an epistle that read as follows: "Miss S.,—Please excuze my daughter Leahs absents. She went to a wedding, the last day before by her mother's sister." A tardy pupil brought in this production: "Dear Miss F.,—The reason by which our daushter comes late. it consist in her laziness

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