Miscellaneous.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 506, 31 January 1906, Page 7

Miscellaneous.

GERMANY has 120 firms engaged in the manufacture of aoatylene. Throughout the Empire there are twentysix small towns lighted by acetylene gas. Stockings made from human hair are worn by Chinese fishermen as the best preventive of wet feet. They are drawn over ordinary cotton stockings, being too rough for wear next to the skin. In the matter of woman's rights Abyssinia is far ahead of Europe. The house and all its oontents belong to the wife, and if the husband offends she turns him out until he is duly repentant and makes amends. In Korea every unmarried man is considered to be a boy, though he should live to be 100. No matter what hia age, he follows in position the youngest of the married men, despite the faot, perhaps, of having lived long enough to be their father. A novel method of advertising has been adopted by a firm of bootmakers at Ballarat, Viotoria. A boot is attached by a string to the end of a long rod, whioh promote from the firm's premises aooross the footpath. At irregular intervals the string is out, and the spectator who seoures the boot oan obtain its fellow free of oharge inside the shop. Every Siamese girl who reaohes a oertain age without marrying is tioketed and labelled and placed in a privileged class under the speoial oare of the King, who binds himself to finds husbands for them all. His method is delightfully simple. A prisoner in any of the Siamese gaols may find his pardon and release by marrying one of the ineligible class. DANGEROUS INSECTS. One of the greatest drawbaoks to life in West Afrioa is the blaok ant, an inseot measuring from half to three-quarters of an inoh in length, and armed witha formidable pair of nippers, with whioh it oan bite very severely. The inseots usually come in huge swarms, and generally by night, When they appear one oan either desert one's house (the easier plan) or prepare to fight them with boiling water or burning straw. TROUT FISHING IN A STREETAt Winohester it is quite a oommon thing to Bee men fishing through the street gratings. Under the High-st. there flow several streams, whioh ultimately discharge into the river lohen—a noted trout stream. These streams receive the storm and surface water from the street by means of the ordinary street grating. The line is dropped through and fastened to the end of a stiok small enough to go through the grate. When the fish is hooked the line and stiok are dropped through the gratia? and the fisherman rushes to the point where the stream emerges from under the street, and is there able to reoover his line and land his fish. THIRTY-ONE YEARS IN A TRANCE. Leonora Romaldo, the wife of a farm hand at Villaoiensa, near Burgos, has awakened from a trance whioh has lasted thirty-one years. At times it was believed that the woman was waking, and various means were employed to restore her to oongciousness, but they failed. She has now regained her senses, but oannot be persuaded that she has slept for years. A ourious feature of the oase is that she remembers the inoidents of her girlhood up to the time that she fell into the trance. Her body is fairly well nourished, but her hair has turned white. On being shown a mirror the woman shrieked with horror, and declared that the image it refieoted was not her own. A LONG-TAILED FOWL. In Japan thrive some fine speoimens of the remarkable long-tailed fowls with tail feathers often twelve feet in length. The introduction of the breed is said to have been brought about by a Prinoe of Japan, whose Imperial crest was a feather. Yearly he offered a prize to the person who would bring to bim tbe longest feather, and thus inoited the production of the present breed. At present only a few old fanciers in and around Koohi, the oapital of a province of Tasso, know the seoret process of successfully breeding these fowls. There is said to be no artificial method of making the tails grow, all is done by seleotion. The hens are kept housed up, and sit all day on a fiat peroh, and are taken out only onoe in two days, and allowed to. walk half-an-hour or so. a man holding up the tails to prevent them from being torn or Boiled, The birds are fed on rice and greens, and a seoret food known and prepared by the old fanciers themselves. They demand plenty of water and are wonderfully tame. The ordinary number of long-tail feathers possessed by each bird is fifteen or sixteen. About twioe a month they are oarefully washed in warm water, and afterwards dried on some high place, usually a roof. A CURIOUS MUMMY. A most interesting addition has reoently been made to the collection of mummiea whioh forms such an attraotive, if weird, feature of the Egyptian Galleries of the British Museum in London, It is the body of a man (with a look of fair hair still remaining on the scalp), ourled up in an oval pit which is an exact reproduction of the grave in whioh the mummy was found. This is believed to be the oldest mummy known, and was taken from a neolithic grave, where it was found surrounded by flints and pottery. The body is supposed to be that of an aborigine of Egypt. That oountry was conquered by Asiatic invaders about 8000 n c.; and the natives having afterwards intermingled with their conquerors, the foundation of the race known as Egyptians was laid. The hands and fest of this old dweller on -the banks of the Nile are small, and the intellectual characteristics of the head warrant the assumption that the man belonged to a superior race,

THE LARGEST TREE IN THE WORLn, A surveyirg expedition in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in California, reoently disoovered a remarkable tree, whioh is de olared to be the largest in the world. Professor John Muir. who has been officially sent to report upon the forest monaroh, writes that it is 'well preserved, well ba'anoed, noble and majestic,' He also g i V 3s the following dimensions, whioh he obtained by oareful measurement. At 1 foot above the ground the oiroumferenoe is 108 feet; at 4 feet above the ground, 98 feet; at 6 feet above the ground the girth is 93 feet. This new disoovered patriaioh is of the speoies of Sequoia gigantea sempervirens, and is several thousand years old. The bark is over 2 feet thiok. It is free of limbs up to a height of 175 feet, where it is estimated to be 12 feet in diameter. The branches, clothed in dense foliage, radiate symmetrically from every side of the trunk above this height, and form a thiok, flat orown, while myriads of cones flutter like gay green tassels on the outes: borders of the foliage masses,