Following the discovery that Teodoro Rosas, a Mexican youth, of Phoenix, Ariz., had been conducting a gopher farm and mulcting the county out of fifty to one hundred dollars a month, the supervisors abolished the bounty of five cents which they had long paid on each gopher tail.
Farmers regard gophers as pests, and at their request the bounty was made. Bounty claimants were required only to present the tails of rodents, it being presumed that the animals the tails had belonged to were killed. Young Rosas presented several hundred tails a month.
One of the supervisors chanced to pass by the Rosas farm and saw that it was honeycombed with gophers’ bur[{62}]rows. He saw a number of gophers without tails, and questioned Fosas, who admitted that he had never killed a gopher, but, after removing their tails, turned them loose for breeding purposes.
Centipedes Moving North.
The department of agriculture has made a study of the house centipede which of late has spread from the Southern States to a number of Northern States, and has issued a bulletin in which some of its characteristics are set forth. It thrives in most places and devours various house pests, such as moths, roaches, flies, probably even bedbugs, and others. It does not injure household goods, woolens, et cetera, as is commonly supposed. Its bite is somewhat poisonous, but it seldom bites human beings except in self-defense. Prompt dressing with ammonia is recommended as the best remedy for the bites.
Biggest Lemon Is in Jersey.
Mrs. Henry H. Bull, of Sparta, N. J., is exhibiting a lemon said to be the largest ever raised in a hothouse in this section of the country. The lemon measures thirteen inches in circumference, is eight inches in length, and weighs four pounds. It took one year from the time the tree blossomed until the lemon was ripe. The trees is five years old.
Fat Girl Passenger Stops Railway Traffic.
Traffic on the New York Central line was delayed twenty minutes when Anna Chelton, Oil City’s fat girl, weighing more than 700 pounds, departed to join a circus.
Half a dozen men transported her in a specially made wheel chair to the baggage car, and when a transfer was made at Andover, Pa., the car was detached and shifted to the freight depot. Later the baggage car of the second train was shifted to the depot, and the weighty damsel placed in it. The train was held until the crew made the transfer.