ODDS AND ENDS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3016, 29 November 1898, Page 5

ODDS AND ENDS.

In Danish cities it is against the law to ride on bicycles faster than the speed of a cab. France has kept 200,000 tons of coal stored at Toulon since 1893, to be ready in case war should break out. In Mexico the school-children who have done best are allowed to smoke cigars while pursuing their lessons. Princess Maud gives her husband an hour's lesson every morning in the English language. The largest bronze statue in existence is in St. Petersburg. It represents Peter the Great, and weighs 1,000 tons. Salt water is highly injurious in its effects upon rubber. Bicycles should not be ridden on roads which are watered with sea water. The hag-fish, or myxine, has a custom of getting inside the cod and similar fishes and entirely consuming the interior, leaving only the skin and the skeleton. The largest volcano in the world is at Manua Loa, in the Sandwich Islands. The crater is twenty miles in diameter, and the stream of lava flowing from it is fifty miles long and, in places, four miles wide. A useful charity called the Spectacle Mission provides spectacles for needlewomen and other deserving persons dependent on their eyesight for a living. Last year 726 applicants were provided with spectacles. When a child dies in Greenland the natives bury a live dog with it, the dog to be used by the child as a guide to the other world. When questioned with regard, to this peculiar superstition, they will only answer: "A dog can find his way anywhere." ! Some of the bags carrying the South African mails have' been made by Oscar Wilde during his stay in Reading i Prison, and one of them, by a curious coincidence, brought the type-written copies of his plays recently produced in Johannesburg, The uses to which human hair is put are various and startling. The cuttings from the masculine head are worked into strainers through which syrups are clarified. . The rag-picker gathers nightly, on an average, ioolbs. of women's hair, taken from their combs. This refuse is sold at from 3s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. per pound. There are no native barber shops in India. The barber is a peripatetic individual who calls each morning at the residences of his customers. He uses no brush to lather the face, and often dispenses with soap. After wetting the face, he finishes the shaving in a few minutes, and then polishes the skin with the palms of his hands. A single shave costs about a halfpenny, though the charge is usually made by the month. It was formerly the practice among physicians to use a cane with a hollow head, the top of which was gold pierced with holes like a pepper-box. The top contained a small quantity of aromatic powder, or of snuff, and on entering a house or room where a disease supposed to be infectious prevailed, the doctor would strike his cane "on the floor to agitate the powder, and then apply it to his nose. Hence all the old prints of physicians represent them with canes to their noses.