153
years! In St. Petersburg the thermometer has been -32 deg. Reaumur, or
40 deg. below zero, Fahrenheit. Drivers have frozen in their seats, and
the police kept large fires burning in the streets at night.

The difference between exploding powder under water and above ground is
shown in the relative effect of 50,000 pounds of giant powder fired in
the great Hell Gate blast, and the small quantity of 370 pounds of
black powder which is the service charge of the 80-ton cannon at
Shoebury, England. The former made but little shock or sound. The
latter has shaken houses to pieces by the force of the concussion wave
produced in the air. The first blood shed by the gun was that of a half
dozen sea gulls. A canister shot, containing 2,170 balls, burst just in
front of a large flock of them.

The United States issued 15,911 patents in 1876, and received 22,408
applications.

Important works in construction and other branches of engineering are
now sometimes continued at night by means of the electric light. The
buildings for the French international exhibition are pushed in this
way, and the method is used at the Taybridge Works and others in
England.

Among the interesting facts which have been developed by the careful
study of ants is the existence of piracy among them. Mr. McCook has
noticed that ants descending from trees with abdomens full of honey dew
were waited for by workers from the hill, seeking food, and compelled
to disgorge their accumulations. If this was not done willingly, force
was used.

The walrus has a singular mode of adapting his attack upon enemies to
the circumstances in which he is placed. They can shiver ice from four
to six inches thick by rising from below and striking it with their
huge heads. An exploring party near Novaya Zemla, while walking over a
field of new ice, noticed a herd of walruses following them under the
ice. They presently began operations, and broke the field in pieces on
all sides of the party, which barely escaped by running for the main
pack ice near by.

Oxford university, England, has a revenue of about $2,000,000 yearly,
43 professors, 160 lecturers and tutors, 2,400 undergraduates (1875),
of whom 24 per cent. hold scholarships worth from $150 to $500 yearly.
Seventy-five per cent. of these read for honors as follows: 33 per
cent. for the school of Literae Humaniores (philosophy, classical
history, and philology), 20 per cent. for the school of modern h