Miscellaneous.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 700, 3 November 1909, Page 7

Miscellaneous.

According to recent experiments, the heart of a vegetarian beats, on an average, 58 times in a minute; that of a meat eater, 75. For the nourishment of horses, experiments have proved that five pounds of oats are equal to ten pounds of fresh clover. Thiiteen thousand four hundred different kinds of postage stamps are now used by the various countries of the world. A German investigator has just shown that a smoker sends ino the air about four billion particles of dust at every puff. The viceroy of India and the Emperor of China between them govern more than half the population of the world. In proportion to its weight, the wing of a bird is declared to be twenty times stronger than the arm of a man. YHAT IT IS LIKE 2000 MILES UP THE AMAZON. The first ocean steamer to make a 2000 mile voyage up the Amazon River of South America is the British steamer England. This vessel has just gone up the Amazon and Madeira, penetrating into the heart of the country below the United States. The voyage from the mouth of the Amazon to Porto Valho on the Madeira River and return to the mouth occupied two months. The England loaded railroad material at Swansea, for the Brazilian Government for the railway which that country is building for Bolivia to pay a £400,000 award in settlement of a boundary dispute. The officers of the steamer were told by the engineers out on the line that on account of the dense foliage they had not seen the sun for months. COST OF REPRODUCING THE GREAT PYRAMID. A painstaking compiler has just written a paper which gives the estimated cost of reproducing the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The author assumes that the material should be equally as good as that of the original, and that all the chambers and passages should be reproduced. The length of the sides of the pyramid are at present 746 ft., the height 454 ft., and the area of the base i2f acres. To build it there would be required: 3,313.000 cubic yards of coarse limestone as backing stone, 140,000,000 cubic yards of fine limestone as facing stone, 2000 cubic yards of granite as facing stone, and 2000 cubic yards of polished facing granite. .The total cost of the above would be at least £7,200,000, and the labour required would be 24,000,000 days' work, which is equivalent to the work of 40,000 men for a period of two years. 900,000,000 DAYS' WORK. Assuming that the labour required to reproduce Egypt's wonderful pyramid would cost -no more than an average of 6 shillings per day for each workman, this item would reach a total for the two years of £7,200,000, which would make the total for material and labour £14,400,000. To this figure mu.st be added at least £600,000 for transportation and smaller items, and, practically, wherever built, the cost of a suitable foundation would also have to be considered. The Pyramid of Cheops stands on a foundation of solid rock 120 ft. deep, and if a foundation this depth were built, an. additional 2,600,000 cubic yards of material would have to be used, bringing the total cost of the reproduction up to about 4200,000,000. The Pyramid of Cheops consumed the labour of 100,000 men for 30 years, which is about 0.00,000,000 days' work.

POSSIBILITIES AND BEAUTIES

OF THE DESERT .

American deserts are to give us some of the surprises of the near future, as Dr. C. R. Keyes has just pointed .out. The arid regions, with an inch to a foot'of rain a year, are by no means repulsive, but even scientific men are only just becoming- acquainted with their beauties and possibilities. The landscape is striking. The deserts are mountainous, yet the broad sand plains are the dominant feature, and the mountains—though bold and lofty—rise sharply from the level expanse. The earth as we see it has been carved by water. The deserts, as has but lately been discerned, have been sculptured and levelled by the wind; and the rocks,, free from chemical action, are unweathered, bright and fresh. DO BIG BRAINS MEAN ANYTHING. \ If we are to credit the results announced by Kohlbrugge, a recent German investigator, the average weight of a European's brain is steadily increasing. Lest we should be unduly proud, however, he goes on to tell us that the Japanese equal us and the Chinese and Eskimo both surpass us in brain weight. The negro, it is true, has a somewhat lighter brain, and it may sometimes be possible to distinguish between races by this characteristic alone, but on the whole brain weight appears to have nothing to do with either education or intelligence. An overtrained brain may be abnormally heavy, but Kohlbrugge does not consider the possession of such a brain a sign of great intellect. We often read of the unusual weight of this or that great man's brain, but the average of these would appear to be about the same as that of the whole social class from which such celebrities are generally recruited. Neither, says this German scientist, is there a relation between genius and the outward form of the brain, as evidenced by the shape of the skull, despite the claims of phrenology, now rejected by brain anatomists. As a result of extended study Kohlbrugge concludes that the anatomist is totally unable to distinguish intellectual superiority or inferiority or difference of race by mere examination of the J>rain.