Lawrence Murphy, of Pilot Knob, Ind., has a bigboned Poland China sow that had a litter of eighteen pigs. Believing this number more than the sow could care for, Murphy took five of the pigs away to raise by hand, but in this he was unsuccessful.
The sow at present has only ten pigs, she having laid on three of them at time of birth. The sow weighs 350 pounds and is not yet two years old. Her record is nine pigs in her first litter and eighteen in her second, which is considered quite extraordinary.
Serves as Juror at Eighty-five Years.
A. R. Wright, who is serving as a juror at this term of district court in Fort Dodge, Iowa, despite his eighty-five years, is probably the oldest man that ever has served on a jury in Iowa. Notwithstanding his advanced years, Mr. Wright is in possession of all of his faculties.
He saw a dispatch in a local paper recently about a man seventy-eight years of age who served on a jury, and he decided to go him one better.
Boa Tries to Eat Zoo.
Ten pythons, a crate of parrakeets, now reposing inside the largest of the giant snakes; armadillos, boa constrictors, monkeys, parrots, Theodora, a baby bear; Brazilian wild cats and South American birds of all combinations of brilliant colors were part of the cargo of the Lamport & Holt liner Terence, which docked in New York recently.
In spite of the varied temperaments of the members of the party, the trip was calm and peaceful, except for one dary day, when “Old Tom,” the largest python, broke loose and devoured a crate of parrakeets to appease the appetite engendered by the sea breezes. Tom fell asleep while digesting the crate, however, and was bundled back into captivity before he awoke.
The zoölogical consignment is the property of Henry Bartels, of 72 Cortlandt Street, and was shipped to him by his brother Ferdinand, who has been collecting beasts and birds in the Amazon region to fill the hole in the wild-animal trade left when Hagenbeck was put out of business by the war.