Remarkable Curiesities.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 7, 9 January 1886, Page 3

Remarkable Curiesities.

Theee is in Turin, Italy, a tiny boat formed 6f a single pearl, which form it assumes in swell and concavity. Its sail is of beaten gold, studded with diamonds, and the binnacle light at its prow is a perfect ruby. An emerald serves as its rudder, and its stand is a slab of ivory. It weighs less than half an ounce; ita price is one thousand pounds.

There is a watch in the Swigs Museum only three sixteenths of an inch in diameter inserted in the top of a pencil case. Its little dial not only indicates hours, minutes, and seconds, but also days of the month. It is a relic of the times when watches were inserted in snuff-boxes, shirt studs, and finger rings. Some were fantastio-oval. octangular, cruciform, or in the shapa of pearls, tulips, £5,0, In 1578, Mark Scalliot, a blacksmith of London, made "for exhibition and trial of skill" one look of iron, eteel, and brass, all of which, together with a pipe-key to it, weighed but one grain of gold. He also made a chain of gold, of forty-three links, and having fastened to this the before* mentioned look and key, he put the chain about the neck of a flea, which drew them all with ease. All these together—look and key, chain and flea—weighed only one grain and a half. Oswaldus Korthlngerus is said to have mada 1,600 dishes of turned ivory, all parfeot and complete in every part, yet so Site and slender that all of them were inoluded at once in a oup turned out of a pepperoorn of the common size. They were ed> email as to be almost invisible to the eye. The* were presented to Pope Paul V ■Jrl^ 1 ba7? l, w? B "wto•♦Sleldaburg, in (rermany, wh oh is composed of H2solid^ the ends and 18 feot through the centre, and; contains 800 hogsheads; yet it warone* drank out in eight days.