Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/104

 Editorial Depart7)ient. should be in progress all the time. But this year, and especially this summer, there certainly seems to have been much more than the usual amount of it, and it will be interesting, when the returns are all in and someone has tabulated them, to learn whether this impression is well founded or not. For ten years past the Chicago "Tribune" has kept the run of murders and homicides so far as it could, and has made an annual report of them. According to a table based on these re ports, there were 1449 homicides in the country in 1886, and 7900 in 1895. The tables show a great but irregular annual increase. The "Tribune's" estimate of the number of lynchings is interesting. It gives 133 in 1886, 236 in 1892, and 160 in 1895. It shows 2^0P0 executions to every 100 homicides. The statistics of murders in Europe, as given in the World Almanac, show that Italians kill most readily, the average annual number of murders in Italy being 2470, or 29.4 to every 10,000 deaths. Spain follows with a ratio of 23.8. Austria's ratio is 8.8; France's, 8.0; and England's 7.1. These European figures, however, apply to murders alone, and do not include, like the tables for the United States, all sorts of manslaughters, justifiable or otherwise. Rufus Choate once, while addressing a jury, several times repeated a certain part of his plea — repeating in the same words and accent. Cer tain that the great advocate had some reason for so strange a proceeding — a reason not obvious to others — the late E. F. Whipple took an op portunity to ask an explanation. Mr. Choate's answer in substance was : " There was a numskull on the jury who was paying no attention to what I was saying; I would have kept up the repetition until he listened if it had taken the entire day!"

CURRENT EVENTS. Oil from the seed of the sunflower is one of the leading agricultural industries in the Czar's dominion, and the people can clear more money from it than from any other crop. It has been discovered that each of the two Testa ments in use in the city of London court is kissed 30.000 times a year. Both books are very ancient. They are falling to pieces, being literally kissed away.

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The average consumption of grain in Europe is four hundred and ten pounds per inhabitant yearly.

The mean annual temperature at the surface of the sea around England is forty-nine degrees Fahren heit, while the mean surface temperature of the Indian Ocean is eighty-nine degrees, and of the Red Sea ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit. An expedition under Prof. David to the Ellice Islands, northeast of Australia, has obtained evi dence confirming the theory of Darwin as to forma tion of coral islands. Diamond drilling in coral to the depth of 557 feet failed to reach bottom. Captain Parry speaks of the great distance that sounds can be heard during intense cold. We often, he says, in the Arctic region heard people converse in a common voice at the distance of a mile. In the report of 1892 of the Behring Sea Commis sion, the British commissioners had no intention of indulging in humor when they suggested as one of the most desirable measures the setting apart of at least one of the two seal islands entirely for the pur pose of breeding seals for pelagic sealers, no land killing to be allowed there.

In Spain, where the telephone is largely used in place of the telegraph, says the " Electrical World," an ingenious application of the phonograph to record the telephonic messages has been made. The re ceiving operator repeats the message into a phono graph, from which it can afterward be transcribed at leisure. This saves the delay caused by writing the message during its reception, and insures greater accuracy because the repetition of the message for the phonograph is heard simultaneously by the original sender at the other end of the line.

The royal British antiquarian and archaeological societies have lodged a protest with Lord Salisbury against the peculiar form of prison labor in Egypt since the Khedive's penitentiaries and jails have been under English management. It seems that the con victs, of whom there are one thousand and two hun dred in the Jourah prison alone, are employed in manufacturing bogus antiques, for which there is reported to be a large market, especially in America. The petitioners declare that the forgeries are so clever as to be scarcely distinguishable from the real article. — The Critic.