UNIVERSITY COURIER.
13
LITERARY.
Joaquin Miller's next volume is to be "Songs of Italy." Joseph Cook earns about $25,000 a year by lecturing.
Within the last seven years there have been more than 500 publications concerning Dante.
Three thousand dollars worth of works on chess were lately found in the library of a deceased professor of the University of Pennsylvania.
The last relative of Thomas Hood has just passed away. Mrs. Frances Freeland Broderip, only daughter of the humorist, died at Cleveland, in the 49th year of her age.
A newspaper printed in the Indian language, and called "The Pipe of Peace," has recently been issued. This is a method that may do more towards civilizing the Indian than the Quakers or the army.
Papyrus manuscripts have been found in the Egyptian Catacombs, apparently several thousand years old. Manuscripts have been discovered in large numbers in Herculaneum.
Among the recent issues of the Japanese press is a version of the Apocalypse of St. John, made from the oldest Greek manuscript, by Rev. Nathan Brown, an American missionary.
D'Aubigne's great work on the Protestant Reformation, begun more than 40 years ago, will be completed in a few days by the issue of the concluding volume.
Rev. John Lang, of Edinburg, has completed a dictionary of the anonymous and pseudonymous literature of Great Britain, which contains 22,000 entries.
Mr. Bullen, of the British Museum, is compiling an elaboate bibliography of Uncle Tom's Cabin, for a new edition of Mrs. Stowe's novel now in preparation by Messrs. Houghton, Osgood & Co.
Gen. Eaton, after a long search, has procured a copy of the life of George Washington, in Latin prose, edited by J. N. Reynolds, and composed by Francis Glass, of Ohio, as far back as 1825. It was published by the Harpers in 1855. It is a very rare book, and curious as it is rare.
SCIENTIFIC.
Boston is the city of lectures. Speakers who cannot draw paying audiences in this city are able repeatedly to fill the largest halls there. Attendance on at least one course of lectures every winter is a weakness with those Bostonians who do not countenance theatres. Of late the managers have interspersed the lectures with concerts and dramatic readings, to the high displeasure of the admirers of the platform orators. Exchange.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the most active and efficient of scientific societies.
One of the most valuable discoveries of modern times is a process for the permanent protection of iron from rust and atmospheric influences.
A Paris worker in metals finds himself with a head of green hair, from some unknown chemical cause. His wife, who is a kind of Xantippe, calls him a "greeny."
The Sierra Nevada mine is at a depth of 2,200 ft.; Consolidated Virginia and California, 2,050; Gould and Curry,1,900; Savage, 2,309, and Hale and Norcross, 2,300.
Four per cent. of all the coal laden vessels that have left English ports, for the last five years, for destinations south of the equator, have lost their cargoes by spontaneous combustion.
An accident in a factory led one of the owners to experiment as to the cheapest and best substance for making garments incombustible. He found it to be a five per cent. solution of ammonium phosphate.
Prof. Tyndall contradicts the statement of the London Times that he once suggested that the earth must have received the germs of life from some other planet. He says he never entertained such an opinion.
England has an exalted idea of the inventive genius of America. It is asserted by Punch that American babies crawl out of their cradles, take critical surveys of them, invent improvements and obtain letters patent.
Dr. Wachsmuth, of Berlin, says that if one-third part of oil of turpentine is added to chloroform, the latter can be administered as an anaesthetic without the risk usually attending it. The turpentine prevents pulmonic paralysis, sometimes induced by chloroform.
Necessity is the mother of invention. A patent was lately issued for a coffin torpedo, which consists of a canister containing powder, balls, and a firing trigger, so arranged that should any attempt be made to open the coffin, the torpedo would be instantly exploded, with a loud noise, and deadly balls sent in all directions.
FACETIAE.
Miss Harriet Hosmer has discovered how to change limestone into marble. It is done by the application of damp heat and great pressure. By this process she is also able to color marble all conceivable shades, producing a manufacturing article at much less cost than the real, or rather that produced by nature, for this is equally real, produced by a process similar to that employed by nature herself.
The "Sweet Bye and Bye" is alluded to as the "saccharine future."
A wide spread evil—a big umbrella in a crowd.
In a Danbury clothing store is a card announcing, "Perfectly fitting garments—every article sets as good as a hen."
Professor, in Physical Geography: "Where on the globe is eternal spring? Junior Prep.: "In a rubber factory."
We don't care a straw what Shakspeare says, "A rose by any other name would" not "smell as wheat." Make an oat of this."
How many apples did Eve and Adam eat? Eve 8 and Adam 2; total, 10.
We often find that an eloquent speaker is like a river greatest at the mouth.
"How intoxicating the moon is to-night," said a certain Freshman girl. "Yes," replied her companion, "that is because the moon is full."
"I am standing," said a student in a public meeting, "on the sacred soil of liberty." "You are standing," yelled his creditor, "on the soles of a pair of boots you have not paid me for."