HOW THEY ARE HANDLED DUR ING SHIPMENT. the Various Fruits. Between 5,000,000 and bunches of bananas are sold in this deal is shipped here and San Francisco. warehouses in which this stored and brought to maturity be- fore selling and shipping are located along North Third street. A ble among these brings out many in- teresting points, not only about the methods employed in handling and ripening bananas, but a deal ef other tropical fruit. Bananas for the St. Louis market come from points in British duras, Jamaica and the islands of the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Port Limon, Boco del Foro, Port Antonio, Araranca and the Blue Fields of Nicaragua are the greatest pro- ducers. The bananas grow on great planta- tions, and as they are cut are car- ried on the backs and heads of natives to the big vessels which are engaged in the business of transport- ing ropical fruits {to the United States. The fruit is green when load- ed into the hull of the and care must be taken, not only in load- ing the cargo in the vessel's hold, But also in preventing by the use of ventilation, any sweating process that would arise if the hold were allowed to grow warm. In this gre state the fruit in- tended for St. Louis and the Mississippi is loaded on boats or cars at Mobile and near New Orleans. From the landing stages where the boats arrive. ot from the freight sheds, it is hauled in huge express wagons to the already mentioned, a front of these any fine day when a cargo being received the scenes are truly interesting. As the big their precious f the doors dlers, ragged men scramble for such of as, having ripened on the bunche may fall to the sidewalks, and scenes that follow the scuffle amusing ih the extreme Now that fruit has arrive safely at its destination it require even more of an ol ness and suitably forthe market. are carried to long steam pipes or temperature at to points between The { Vessel, en points on 3 i warehouses of bananas is tra i § trucks. loaded i null u reight, up hundreds of Italian and ne 3 urchins or the of watel prepare The bune dark rooms where eX peri nee Io nes the degrees of heat, varying from 30 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The finer forme« bunches, bearing the larger class o fruit, are hung on while the smaller sized go to the top because the | sen trates rooms, to the small slowly than the | The orders that anas usually state ness in which the fruit shipped to k must be dons 13 it without doubt the most tender of tropical fruits &« First, the big paper bags and these toves Keep pe different i { the bottom racks. ilines aang greater ch ripens m wrger sort rages ‘ for ban s ; the stage of ripe- Foes puye Come in him. very carel all » handle. bunches are placed are then dipped into cases lined with straw or salt hay as a still further protection against the changes of temperature. In this packing ti shipped to the most distant points in the country. Aspinwall was at time the greatest port for the shipment of this fruit to the United States, but since the Pacific Fruit Transportation Com- pany ceased operating steamers, this away altogether. Oranges of every sort—navel, gerine and grape fruit—are plentiful in these great stock-rooms, and the supply is usually drawn from Florida, although California is called upon at times. Of the Florida fruit the best comes from Citra, Leesburg, Orange Bend on Indian river Tampa, Gaines- ville, Emerald Island and points in wy are easily one business Tangerines and glove oranges, as they are termed by the fruit dealers—are comparatively new in this market known, though in the Far South the cooks use them in delightful salads, marmalade and cake dressings or puddings. They are higher grade in flesh, flavor and price than the Flor- more carefully in their wooden cases, The long gray Spanish moss thet was formerly used in packing is away with by paper, tinsel and tissue dhoets. A few lemons are réceived from the Pacific Slope, but the greater portion are imported from points along the Mediterranean Sea, and especially from Sicily. Figs are received in bags from Arabia, and these are the coars- er sort. Finer, larger figs are sent from many points in the Far East and are beautifully laid one upon an- other, with alternate layers of their own leaves, and packed in wooden cases, iy Almena and Malaga in Spain fur. nish the finest varieties of white grapes and raisins. The grapes are shipped in half-barrels, packed in cork dust; the raisins in fine boxes, whose covers are elaborately colored lithographs of Spanish vineyard scenes, or of dark-eyed sons of sunny Spain making love to some fair sen orita on the shady slope of a vine- covered hill. Dates, nlways in sacks made of plaited ‘‘ vegetable palm,’”’ are re- ceived from Arabia and Turkey, and i for it is much heavier and LILIEF OF THE VALLEY. of Blooming. There is an interesting and curious trade between Germany and this country ir the lily of the valley. Many thousands of those lily ** pips,” as they are called, the roots, each with a single tight-wrapped bud, are imported at this season earlier and later. As the habit of the plant is well known, and it may be counted upon to flower in from nineteen to twenty-two days after the pip has been planted in sand and placed in a forcing house, the importers com- monly make their contracts in ad- vance with florists, and order in ac- cordance with these contracts, The pips come over in the holds of the great steamers, twenty-five together, tied with and wrapped in moss. They are thus delivered to the florists, transfered to the forcing five or six weeks from the time when the meaningless looking pips have Taft ie a vegetable ~ ing the jacket of some young as she trips down Broadway. sand they must be pipes for the sake of the bottom heat, and kept continuously in a high tem- perature until the blossom is advanced. They moved from the pipes in the time of bloomi ed. They are ordinarily are order off as it after spray is clipped ed for bouquets, or roots and all transferred tting in clumps 1. The plants in the or ait are much less attractive blossom when made int Many thousands of tl Itivated . wh eymd 1nYy be sed OL us are a the open air. They om Germany at almost a sar, and they resist frost ect hardiness, The river rng @ bloom in the sp the season for the erop of the forcing hou exhausted. When ymers are exhau ¢ another resour Thousands of lily from blo hav (rermany, are at of ent ke cold storage, an there ¢ temperature for weeks months, The develop: plants is thus arrested weeks before the tims door bloomers will have be ed, are part of the pips brought forth indoors or permi i in the open ait » senson is further Florists find that the ji is most difficult autumn flowering lopment is ther he flowers f inet wy are whole less satis ter and spring as the f The pit Jeautiful expensive $0) conts per dozen 0 about per hundred. The price : 1 porters is far below thi to the to florists is such that there isa some profit in the plants cut flowers retail as low as five per spray. As 1 : w only one set of blossoms ant cach florists know count on in pretty well forcing the valley.—{ New York Sun. Ostrich Farming in Texas. ing a good deal of attention, and many prominent men are interesting themselves in the subject. Prof. and be- lieves it guite feasible. The country has a climate very similar to that part of California where it is follow- ed, and where it has proved wonder- fully profitable, The fittingup of a farm, purchase of the land and birds, would cost a considerable sum, but there is, it seems, no reason why it should not return handsome profits by the in- vestment, Correspondence with a number of wealthy Californians is now going on and a company will likely be formed and a farm establish- ed in the near future. R. H. Wood, the principal land owner of the is- land, offers every inducement and will aid in every way he can. It is to our other industries. Arkansas Pass Beacon. Long Distance Firing. A series of tests was recently made at Bhoeburyness for the purpose of investigating the conditions attend- ing firing at very long ranges. The weight of the gun used was twenty- two tons, and that of the projectile #80 pounds, which, fired with a charge of 270 pounds, gave a muzzle velocity of 2,860 foot-seconds, The elevation of the first round was 40 degrees. The projectile fell at a range of about 21,000 yards, or nearly twelve miles. A shot at 45 degrees elevation gave a range of 21.800 4, or about 12.4 miles. The les remained in the air about 66.4 seconds, and its trajectory reached a height of 17,000 feet, or about 2,000 feet higher than the summit of Mt. Blanc, ~{New York Telegram, CURIOUS COINS. SPECIMENS PRESERVED THE PHILADELPHIA MINT, ' IN | Some of Them of Vast Antiquity~ | The Pet Eagle of the Mint-Queer Things for Money. The wonderful collection of coins | at the United States Mint in Phila. | delphin has been made at a cost to] the government hardly more than | nominal. It was begun in 1838, says the Washington Star, but previously | a custom had been established of pre- | serving what are termed ‘master coins’ ’'—that is to say, the first pieces of new issues, Such ‘‘proof pieces’ are always made with unusual care, and retain the beauty which is so! quickly marred in circulation. Thus the numismatie cabinet had already a nucleus, which exhibited the his- tory and development of American coinage up to that date. Since then the series of proof pieces has been and kept complete, while has supplied money for foreign coins. In 1889 Congress purchasing pose, and since then $300 a year has been given. such small sums would not go very far, but other means have ben adopted for adding to and en- A good many secured by exchange Of course, Y ‘hing the collection. ns have been for merely their | } 1 On thousands of valuable ones have 1 obtained ul- value by keeping a wate the ign money of all sorts sent into int for melting In such money vy now and then a rare and inter. ng plece turns up and United issionaries is rescued destruction. uls abroad, m r citizens have presented nume for this col- ns to Unele Sam most interest oval plate It = 4 is worth id nseription 3 Jananeses ou #0 much popular dis copper nt is now bei: {tl efit of : per ie 3 Ihe Chinese claim tha had ined § IX) voars, money { Many of tRei i ’ Osi TO have i possesso It is on a Chinaman dies =a piece of money is placed in his mouth same custom was followed in Rome. but the coin was tended to pay the passage of the de- funct across the waters of the river Styx. Some of the Chinese coins used as charms are covered with mestical characters and symbolic animals. The Chinese have money of porcelain al- The coin of the least value in the world is Japanese, 7,000 being re.) yuired to make $1. Not less carious are the Siamese Some of them are known as “bullet money,”’ being merely lumps of silver and gold hammered into a rudely spherical shape, with charao- | ters stamped on them. They bearasa | device the sacred white elephant. In Burmah the peacock is a sacred animal, and for that reason it ap- pears on some of the coins from that country. A very extraordinary Jurmese piece of money is an ordi. nary gravel stone inclosed in a circlet of brass. There is one small case in the cab | inet which contains only one solitary coin. An inscription says that the piece was ‘struck in the Philadel- | that when small ie ancient ROY, coins, ting caugnt in the machinrey, was killed, The first coins issued by United States were half dimes of struck in 1792, in which year mint was established by act of Congress, The first gold eagles made were turned out in 1795. So late as 1825 the erime of embez- zing any of the coins struck at the mint, or any of the metals brought thither to be coined, by any of the officers of the establishment was punishable by death. The same penalty was attached to the of- fense of debasing any of the coins issued. In the weighing room of this institution #1,500,000.000 worth of gold has been weighed. Formerly the silver used by the mint was mostly obtained from South America and Mexico, but now the supply comes from Colorado and elsewhere in the West. The copper is derived mainly from the mines of Lake Superior, and the finest is from Minnesota. Most of the nickel is dug in Lancaster vania. The money in sand, ward imprinted of a hammer medigval adopted f metel into sheets of the sil- was by the design being upon it and times the that of hammerin the desired thick was ORS hears, and then hand. Was 11 stamping vented in 1888, In various ages almost everything bee sed as has Mexico, sugar in the West codfish Newfoundland Massachusetts ‘hy. tobaceo Indias, bullets in logwood 11 early Abyssi 5 in Chin . Burmah Rr iT in Siu t= of Virginia, sal f tea inTartary ot land gander © Was RO The Processes It Undergoes in Its Evolutions. y the main work heated Mit a mer and is welded is 1 ¢ compile 14 d and crews of men in work, and each an make 1.500 axes per das the axe { wil oy sy » : 18 SOme supertuous metal st forming ering to the edges and technically kpownasx a fin, of the fin the ax is again furnace and taken sawyer, who trims the The glass in front of him eyes from the sparks which fly off by the hundreds as the hot pressed against the rapidly revolving saw. The iron part of the ax is now complete, The steel for the blade, after being heated, is cut by machin. ery and shaped. It is then ready for the welding department. A groove i® cut into the edge of she iron, the the blade inserted, and the firmly welded by machine Next comes the operation of tempering. The steel portion of the ax is heated by being inserted in pots of molten lead, the blade only being immersed. It is then cooled by dipping in water and goes to the hands of the inspector. An ax is what is To get rid in a then heated in hand by a ends and edges operator has s to protect his metal is steel of whole The steel must be of the required temper, the weight of all axes of the same size must be and in various other ways conform to an established standard. The in- steel does so by hammering the blade and striking the edge to ascer- tain whether it be too brittle or not. An ax that breaks during the tests The mint in which it was stamped, however, was not in the Quaker City, bnt in the city of Attalus Philadel. phus, Asia Minor, from which Wil. | linm Penn took the name for the | town of ‘brotherly love.”” There are | also some specimens of the gold shell | money-—made out of gold beaten into the shape of shells by African na- tives, who supplied Portugese slave traders with slaves. These were worth about $1 apiece, and forty of them would buy a slave. They were ealled ‘‘spondylugs macutus,’’ and it is alleged that from this term came the word ‘‘spondulics,”’ meaning money. a A relic in the cabinet is a superb American eagle, stuffed and inclosed in a glass case. Its portrait has been reserved on the silver dollars of R36, 1888 and 1830, and on the niokel cents of 1866. The bird's name was Peter, and he lived at the mint six years. He was known as the “mint bird,” and flew about the cit as he chose, nobody interfering with him. He alway returned before the Before the material of the ax is in five times, including the tempering process, and the ax, when completed, has passed through the hands of about forty workmen, each of whom has done something toward perfect. ing it. After passing inspection the axes go to the grinding department, and from that to the polishers, who finish them upon emery wheels. — [Philadelphia Record. A sixGULAR disease is epidemic in Southwestern Ohio and Southeastern Indiana. It appears to be & fever of the glands of the body, and is ex- tremely annoying. The disease ap- pears to be contagious, and itisa gingular fact that the patient im- roves after a sharp wind blows. hose afflicted are compelled to take to their beds, Missouri has a most remarkable phenomenon in Ray York, eleven ears old, whose eloquent preaching as been stirring 2 the dry bones during a revival at Warrens yin building was closed, One da verches on a fy- that State. Kay preaches hes, wir! A GENEROUS SACRIFICE. For a Patient. The layman's invariable test of surgery is implied in his question, “Did the patient get well?’ 1f the answer is negative, he doegn’t care for the operation. The doctor's views are not so prejudiced. He knows surgery when he sees it, and recognizes the merit of it, when it has merit, without regard to idiosyn- crusies of the patient, When the doctor says that the operation was entirely successful, but the patient died, the layman usually says noth. ing, but looksdespondent. But even a layman can understand the success of that operation the other day at the Long Island Hospital, whereby the blood of Franklin * al lowe Collegs Dr. Pomphrey. Kate Pomphrey gag, and was dying. house surgeon at the hospital, the blood. two hun- pflared to contribute operation was done bafore dred students in the of the hospital de a) of good blood the efforts of chances ly through Dr. persistence work right did run ti veins and int immediate, been blac death died twenty-fi ceomnplidatio gins ol fx mp's ian OG the wa and i.—{ Harper's Weel A Queer Florida Sink Hole. Hernando ( beautiful : was I'l | down tince tious Is 10 iol 100SC Ar but that is rather undig: down its forcibly impressed on depths, its size is i the ming took to be saplings and stones de d wahoo trees circume- stones that looked velop into magnolia ar Mmeasurin eo five and «ix feet in ference i the from very 1t is hard to estimate the bowl, but between ang the brink respectable size while the bottom is about this size and is top. most boughs of the trees ground. with beautiful vines, and dotted mosses and over with vio- ferns, all under the delicate maidenhair fern nd vines. and it is hard for the stranger to re- alize that the scene is in Florida. — [Brookville News-Register. What Smoke Consists Of. Smoke consists of minute particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air. and its color depends partly upon the chemical constitu- ents of such particles, but also largely upon their size. Exact expe- riment has shown that as the size of minute particles suspended in air is gradually increased they rise to col. ors varying from sky blue down through the whole range of the spec. tral scale. This is the cause of sun- set and sunrise colors in the sky. Its effects can be traced in the case of the two kinds of tobacco smoke modi- fied by the murky tints of the car- bonsceous products. The smoke given off from the heated surface of the burning tobacco in the bowl of the pipe consists of matter, all of which has been highly heated and very fully oxidized and decom d. It consists mainly of exceedingly small solid particles, exhibiting by virtue of their smallness a blui color. On the other hand, that smoke which has been drawn Shiough the tobacco into the mouth of the smoker carries with it a relatively 1 r quantity of water and hydro. carbon, which are condensed upon the solid particles above mentioned. The relatively large size of such par. ticles explains the well-known gray- ish color of the smoke which issues AT ANNA ESKIMO WEAPONS. the Far North. collection of Edwards In- To the gathered by Capts. I'nited interesting fo States few 'yengs, have lately been he hunt and chase, other and relies, pre- sented by persons in the Northwest and British Columbia. The Eskimos’ weapons were pre. inspectors by the widow of the late Capt. John M, (sen of Astoria. Master of the sealer Polar accordance with a requost befare his death, The most interesting of the Eskimos in t articles Various these curios i8 a spear with a poiso which is the mo weapons the ‘land of spear entire is made of is thought of high degree or at least a From ihe ollection of itwho is still in Indians have i th of their fore. fathers of fi: ning the rear part of sir female children This was done so that distinguished from This woman had a full back head, but a low and retreating forehead. —{ Oregonian. they might be Knew the Apple. A man of about sixty years of age went into a store on Main street Wednesday afternoon and stood by the stove warming himself and listen- ing to the conversation of the men present. Happening to glance at a barrel of apples by the counter, he took one up and bit it. He stopped, looked at the apple, and then stopped reflectively. After taking another taste of the apple, he broke out: “Say I'd almost be willing to bet a dollar that 1 can tell where this apple grew. There is only one tree on earth that has the flavor that apple has, and it grew back of the house where I first lived when 1 was mar ried and set up for myself. Say, now, didn’t that apple grow in Bow- doinham? [I know full well it did.” The clerk told him that a man from that town brought'them in, and the stranger said: ‘I have not been down there in ten years, yes, fifteen, but I remember this bittersweet apple tree, and the apples here taste as they did twenty years ago.—{ Lew. iston (Me.) Journal. Scientific Discoveries. A scientist has discovered that peo. ple eat more in cold than in warm weather, He may have also observed that they wear more clothing in win. ter than in summer, and that they maintain fires more constantly. Science is constantly making dis. coveries, but it sometimes overlooks ThEX somaman phenomena. —{St. Paul {