The mileage of the blood circulation reveals some astounding facts in our personal history. Thus it has been calculated that, assuming the heart to beat sixty-nine times a minute at ordinary heart pressure, the blood goes at the rate of two hundred and seven yards in the minute, or seven miles per hour, one hundred and sixty-eight miles per day and six thousand three hundred and twenty miles per year. If a man of eighty-four years of age could have one single blood corpuscle floating in his blood all his life it would have traveled in that same time five million one hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred and eight miles.
SOME MICROSCOPIC EUROPEAN REPUBLICS.
ONE IS IN THE LOWER PYRENEES.
It Lies Between France and Spain, and
Every Army in Europe Has Rumbled
Pell-Mell Past Its Very Doors.
A republic without an army—without a navy—without even one policeman—with only one square mile of territory, and a population of fifty: who can tell what its name is, and where it is located?
Stranger still, it has stood in the midst of warring nations, and yet remained as independent as the United States. It has heard the roar of Napoleon's artillery. There are famous battle-fields on the north of it and on the south. Great armies from France and Spain and England have swung past it on all sides. Vast nations have arisen and gone down again to oblivion, and yet this baby republic goes on for centuries—without growth and without death.
Goust—which is the name of this wonderful little atom among the nations of Europe—is situated in the Lower Pyrenees, between France and Spain.
For over two centuries and a half Goust has elected a president every seven years, and its independence has been recognized by both France and Spain.
There are two tiny republics in Italy—the famous little state of San Marino, and the less-known islet of Tavolara. The latter did not become a republic until recently. In 1830 the absolute dominion of the island was conceded by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, to the Bartoleoni family, whose head became King Paul I.
He was likewise Paul the last, for on his death, in 1882, he requested that his title should be buried with him and that the kingdom be turned into a republic. A constitution was accordingly drawn up, and under its terms a president, with a council of six, is elected every six years, all adults, male or female, casting a ballot. No salary is paid either to the president or the members of his council.