The trial shall proceed in the usual manner in the presence of the thirteen jurors, but the thirteenth shall take no part in the deliberation or determination of the jury unless one of the twelve becomes physically incapacitated for further service, when he may be retired and the thirteenth man put on duty in his place. Next in order is a plan whereby our courts can be relieved of the incubus of " the obstinate juror."
It is said that during the past year sentences amounting to a total of more than twenty-six hundred years' imprisonment have been imposed by the German courts for offenses described as high treason — that is, for expressions derogatory to the Kaiser.
CURRENT EVENTS. The first advertisements known were placed on the doors of St. Paul's Cathedral.
There are said to be fewer suicides among miners than among any other class of workmen.
S1nce the beginning of this century no less than forty-two volcanic islands have risen out of the sea. Nineteen of that number have since disappeared, and ten are now inhabited.
M. Henr1 Bourget, of the Toulouse (France) Ob servatory, has called attention in " Nature " to a com mon phenomenon which he believes has not been men tioned in any scientific book. If one end of a bar of metal is heated, but not enough to make the other end too hot to be held in the hand, and then sud denly cooled, the temperature of the other end will rise till the hand cannot bear it. All workmen who have occasion to handle and heat pieces of metal, he says, know this. An old Newcomen steam engine at North Ashton, near Bristol, England, as described by Mr. W. H. Pearson in the British Association, is still doing practical work after an active career of nearly one hundred and fifty years, it having been erected in 1750 at a cost of seventy pounds. The piston is packed with rope, and has a covering of water on the
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top to make it steam-tight. The working of the en gine is aided by the vacuum formed by the injection of water into the cylinder. The old man now en gaged in working this engine has held his post since he was a lad, and his father and grandfather occupied the same position. "The wonderful growth of the telegraph business is shown," says " Popular Science News," " in the fact that thirty years ago there were only 3,000 telegraph offices and little more than 75,000 miles of wire strung throughout the length and breadth of the land. At the present time there are about 25,000 offices and over 1,000,000 miles of wire. The annual number of messages handled thirty years ago was 5,879.282; to-day it is 80,000,000. The average cost to the sender 30 years ago was $1 .047; the average cost to day is 30.9 cents. At the start the cost to the com pany was more than twice what it is to-day to the sender." A number of Confucian scholars, in long-sleeved gowns, kneeling before the palace gate, have peti tioned the Emperor of Corea to remarry. " Their memorial," says Dr. Sherwood Hall, "attributes all Corea's calamities, including Christianity, to his Ma jesty's remaining a widower."
LITERARY NOTES. The March number of Scr1bner's shows Governor Roosevelt in the sort of description that he likes best — a narrative ofa fight. With his usual candor he calls this "General Young's Fight at Las Guasimas," and pays a hearty tribute to his brigade com mander and to the regulars who won equal honors with the Rough Riders in that hot skirmish. Senator Hoar, as a young man frequently heard Webster speak, and this instalment of his " Political Reminis cences" gives his impression of the character and oratory of Webster. W. J. Henderson, a well-known critic, has written of " The Business of the Theatre," revealing that side of theatrical affairs of which the public never hears. In fiction a new writer, Albert White Vorse, and a new field, the Eskimos of Green land, are introduced with a dramatic short story. Another newspaper story, by Jesse Lynch Williams, tells the famous tale of a college lark that helped to make history. Robert Grant writes a "Searchlight Letter to a Modern Woman with Social Ambition," and in « The Field of Art " a critical review of Bartlett's "Michael Angelo," with illustrations of the statue.
