William Redke, forty years old, with no permanent residence, out of
employment and broke, is in the Washington County jail, Pennsylvania,
a confessed burglar and attempted suicide. Redke's cracking of the
safe in the Pennsylvania Station at Houston the other night, he told
the authorities, netted him but 16 cents. Discouraged over the small
haul, he turned on all the gas in the station office. Five hours later
he awoke still in the land of the living. In disgust he surrendered to
the officers. He pleaded guilty and was committed to jail in default of
$1,000 bail.
WHERE DO SEALS SPEND THE WINTER?
No one knows where the seals go in the winter. In Alaska they begin to
appear on the Islands of St. Paul and St. George about the end of April
or the first of May, and toward the latter part of August or in the
first weeks of September they disappear as strangely and mysteriously
as they came. This is one of nature's secrets which she has kept most
successfully hid from scientists as well as the prying eyes of the
merely curious and inquisitive.
Even in the days, years ago, when the seals numbered five millions or
more, apparently some signal unknown to man would be given and the next
day the fog-wreathed rocks would be bare, the seals having deserted the
islands. With their slipping off into Bering Sea, all trace of them was
lost until their return the following spring. Then some morning they
would suddenly reappear, disporting themselves in the water or on the
shore.
ABOUT SCENTED WOODS.
With the woods of the world to choose from one can easily arrange a
whole scale of scents from the sweetest and most delicate of perfumes
at one extreme to rank and overpowering odors at the other, says the
American Forestry Magazine. The stores of the perfumer's shop will not
yield a greater variety than one can find in woods.
The most famous of all scented woods is the incomparable sandalwood.
The true sandalwood (Santalum album) is an Oriental tree, the use of
which for perfumery and incense began thousands of years ago, and its
popularity remains undiminished. The later Greeks considered it one of
their greatest luxuries, and no festivities were complete without it.
There are many false sandalwoods, at least three from India, one or two
from the Philippines and Java, one from Australia and another from the
West Indies and Venezuela.
In some parts of the Himalayas and in the Khasia Hills the yew tree is
called deodar (God's tree), the name that is elsewhere applied to a
true cedar. The wood of the yew is burnt as incense, as is also that
of the cypress. One of the favorite woods for incense in the Buddhist
temples of India is the juniper. In parts of South America a wood
closely related to the lignum-vitae is called palo santo (sacred wood),
because of its use for incense in churches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account