Short Papers and Notes. 185 
had actually stood his spade upright by the edge of the pan and 
sat on the handle with his legs stretched out on the platform in 
front of him. The spade slipped and the man fell backwards 
into the brine. Our informant, who fully appreciated the utter care- 
lessness of sucha proceeding, was not content with telling us about 
it, but would insist upon illustrating it, although we assured him 
that we quite understood, and would very much rather not see a 
second edition of it. 
The rock salt mined averages 200,000 tons a year. 
The total quantity of white salt made is 1,500,000 tons on the 
average. Of this 500,000 Is used at home, and the other 1,000,000 
is shipped at Liverpool to all parts of the world. 
Short Papers and Notes. 
Erplosive Wlitch=hazel Pods. 
OME time ago, says a writer in a contemporary, being 
desirous of testing the shooting powers of the witch- 
hazel pods (Hamamelis), to ascertain the distance 
covered by the flight of the seeds, I brought home 
several of the branches, as well as a pocketful of the 
nuts. My experiments with the latter upon a piazza and else- 
where proved to a demonstration that the momentum of the seed 
would commonly carry it to a distance of twenty feet, often over 
thirty feet, and in one or two instances the diminutive, double- 
barrelled howitzers succeeded in propelling their missiles to the 
distance of forty-five feet by actual measurement. I placed the 
bough, well laden with the nuts, over a picture in my room and 
retired, but I might as well have sought sleep in pandemonium. 
The incessant clatter upon ceiling, wall, and furniture forced me 
at length to drop the offending branch out of the window. A 
large paste-board box, containing a pint or more of the loose 
pods, kept up such a continual spiteful tattoo that these had also 
to follow their fellows, and several of my friends to whom I had 
presented sprigs of the festive shrub told me on the following 
morning that they had been obliged to give them separate 
apartments. 
bow Telegrapb=Poles are Preserved in Worway. 
Telegraph-poles are preserved in Norway by making an auger- 
hole about a foot from the ground, in which four or five ounces of 
