General News.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5024, 18 February 1885, Page 3

General News.

Prof.- Mantojjazza of Pavia, has discovered that pzdrie is generated in ims ■ense quantities by all plants and flowerc possessing green leases and aromatiodours. Hyacinths, mignonette, helio trope, lemon, mint, laTender, narcissus, cherry laurel, and the like, all throw off ozone largely oti exposnre to the sun's rays. So powerful is this great atmospheric purifier, that it is the belief of chemists that whole districts can be redeemed from the deadly malaria which infests them by covering them with aromatic Vegetation. The bearing of this upon flower culture in our large cities is also very important. Experiments hare proved that the air-of cities contains less ozone than that of the surrounding country, and the thickly inhabited parts of cities less than the sparsely built, or than the parks open squares. Plants and .flowers »nd preen trees csn alone restore, the balance ; so that every little flower-pot is not merely a thing of beauty while it lasts,but has a direct and beneficial influence upon the health of the neighborhood in which it is found. ,■'.■. . AH botanists are acquainted" with the remarkably ingenious.contrivance by means of which the awns of 'the stipa and other trasses manage to screw the seeds ipto the ground, where they are both out'of tight and in the proper situation to sprout. • By their means the seeds may be said to tow themselves. These awns are very j tentitive to moisture, and they tighten and unloose according to wet or dry conditions. Unfortunately, this ingenious mechanism, so. serviceable to the plant, is not profitable to the sheep-farmer, and on the western plains of America "^he sheepgrowers sufFer terribly by it. The awns are caught in the wool, and as this is moist ar dry, they screw themselves right into the skin of the sheep, breaking in off it, mod producing dangerous and even fatal woand*. They enter tbe nostrils of the . sheep a« the latter are feeding, and penetrating lips, nose, and face in similar man- • aer, producing acute suffering and death, insomuch that the presence of one species of grass (Stipa sported) is said to lose the grower more sheep than anything else. The recent practice of burning the pastures just wh«n the seeds are ripe is expected to check the spread of this dangerous grass. • A? young lady of OlDeyville, says a 'Frisco paper had been sitting in a chair and arose to get something, and as she attempted to regain her seat, a young friend quickly withdrew the chair and allowed her to sink heavily to the floor. The next day she was taken/ill, and a physician was #u«unoned, and for two months he has

been applying bandages, plasters, etc., to sate the young lady, who is eighteen years • of age, from' permanent curvature of the ■pine. As it wasj her body became "bent, and gave her friends great alarm. It will be fi?e years before all danger of spinal disease will be. removed. The fall caused tbe end of the spine to be driven upward and.to one side. # ■It is a somewhat remarkable 'fact that the cheapest, way to send af certain clas««*f goods from Liverpool to London it via Mew York. This arises from tbe ieen competition between outward bound Atlantic steamers for profitable dead weight; The other day about 1000 ton s tons rough freight were offered for carriage to .London, no time being specified. The LoWi lines tendered at $2 50 a toD, but oneV li the Atlantic Jrmß undertook^ delitret it for §150 a ton, and the offer ' fiaM accepted. ' Th« editor of a journal published in Antwerp sent a reporter toJ?russels for the JLinn'e speech, and with him a couple of carrier pigeors to t«ke back news speedily. At J3russel« he gave the pigeons in •barge to a waiter and called for breakfast. He was kept waiting for some tin\e, but a very delicnttf fricasse atoned for the delay. After breakfast he paid his bill, and called for his carrier pigeons. ■? Pigeons!" exclnimed the waiter, " Wby you.hafe *»ten them!"' ■