INTERESTING GLEANINGS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVII, Issue 1360, 14 May 1895, Page 7

INTERESTING GLEANINGS.

.1$ Men Capable of Bearing Arms.— 1 T number of men capable of bearing arms j calculated at one-fourth of the population Great Cafe of Venice. —The great ca of Venice—Floriana’s, or. the piazza of f i Mark—has never been closed, night or da for one hundred and fifty years. Blind Readers. —lt is said that no few than 200,000 books for the blind are be rowed annually from the free-lending librari ; in different parts of the old country. Appearance of a Man’s Height.— lt found by calculation that at 32S yards man has the appearance of one-third hj height; at 437 yards, one-fourth; and 546, one-fifth. ; /4.000 for a Lady’s Tooth. —M. , 1 Lenoir, the founder of the French Musem relates that during the transport of the r mains of Abelard and Heloise to the Peti Augustins, an Englishman offered hi ioo,ooofr. for one of the teeth of Heloise. Wooden Skewers. —The only manufa lory of wooden skewers in the world, it supposed, exists at Toledo. Ohio, whenc millions of them are shipped to Englam They are made by machinery from hickoi blocks. Between eighty and ninety thousan are turned out every day. Thimbles. —Thimbles lined with indi; rubber are now employed, and are said nc to fall off so easily as the ordinary unline thimble. They are also warmer to the ski: and free from the metallic " rust” whic sometimes takes the form of verdigris, a sul stance of a poisonous nature. A Quaint Law.— ln 1541 the Corporatio of Chester ordered, under the penalty of fine of 3s. 4d., that no unmarried woma should wear white or coloured caps, and thi none but sick or aged women should wear bat unless riding or going abroad into th country. Effect of Arctic Darkness. —The Am trians who passed the winter under deck i the Tegetthoff, when that ship was caugh in a floe above Spitzbergen, hardly kne each other when the sun reappeared, fc owing to their imprisonment in darknes; they were all of the colour of white paper. The oldest vessel is the Vigilant, bui! at Baltimore in the year 1780, and, conse quently, m years old She is owned b Mr. S Peathany, of Santa Cruz, and i now doing good service as mail carrier be tween St, Thomas and Santa Cruz, in th ■West India Islands In her day she wa a coaster, a peaceable common carrier c merchandise, a slaver, and a pirate. A Grave and Rose Garden. —One Ed ward Rose, a citizen of London, who diei in 1653, bequeathed £2O for the purchase c a piece of land, wherewith to provide hi grave in Barnes churchyard, Surrey, with , constant succession of rose trees. He in sured the fulfilment of his trust by devotinj the surplus profits to the poor of the parish and after the lapse of more than two cen turies his grave is still a rose-garden. A Newspaper Without an Editor.— In Madrid is a popular newspaper edited ir a very peculiar way. In fact, it has nc editor, but a dozen wide-a-wake reporters, who scour the town for every kind of information. They come to the office and drop the manuscripts in a bag, where they staj until the foreman wants copy. Everything is then thrown into the forms without regard to order or anything else, and the paper is read from end to end in spite of this fact. Not all the petty princes of India are rolling in wealth, for a certain Prince Moung Latt recently applied to the Civil Judge at Bengalore for permission to pay into court five rupees per mensem towads a judgment debt of 2SO rupees. The Prince explained that his Goverment allowance was not sufficient to enable him to maintain his wife and family, much less to meet his liabilities. This plea had no effect, for he was advised to reduce his expenditure and pay his debts in full. .After so much said about the splendour of Indian potentates, it rather " takes the gill off the gingerbread” to find one of them in the position of a small tradesman in financial difficulties. Amcngst living centenarians must be included the venerable Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Provo W. Parry Wallis, G.C.8., who was born in 1791. He enjoys the honour of being the oldest officer in the Royal Navy. His early years were passed during a period of unrest, for England was then fighting foi her very existence. Sir Provo will ever be remembered as a participator in the captute of the Chesapeake, when he and his comrades upheld the honour of his country at a time when her fortunes were apparently on the ebb. This celebrated engagement once more proved the power of the English navy on the high seas. The gallant old Admiral is spending his declining years at Chichester. Unlike their French neighbours, the Germans are rapidly increasing in numbers. A census just completed elicits the fact that the population of the Empire is becoming very much larger. In Berlin alone it has grown 20 per cent, since 1885 —an increase of 259,000, the total population of the city now being 1,574,485. Hamburg, too, shows an increase of 21 percent. The most remarkable of all, however, is the city of Leipsic. According to the population, which has increased 83 per cent., it is now the third city in Germany—Breslau, which had hitherto held that position, having dropped to fifth place. This multiplication of the Teutonic race fully explains their desire for colonial development. The Rev. W. Baxter, who so often prophesied the end of the world, is no sooner disposed of than we. are threatened with another terror. He is called "Christus Secundus," and he is going to wort; miracles. He is, in fact, going to raise Dean Stanley from the dead—nothing more nor less. Whether, when a just man’s life work is accomplished, it is worth while bringing him back to this 11 vale of tears" we leave for others to decide. A London newspaper explains that the new Messiah reached his sublunary sphere some half a century ago, and that he has been an athlete, an author, and a man of business. Unfortunately, the name of this individual is not given; but no doubt it will be divulged in due season, probably when he walks arm in arm with the saintly dean from Westminster Abbey! The Sahara. —The African Sahara is by no means a uniform plain, but forms several distinct basins contaning a considerable, extent of what may almost be called mountain land. The Hoggar mountains, in the centre of the Sahara, are 7,000 ft, high, and are covered during three months with snow, The general average may be taken at 1,500 ft. The physical character of the region is very varied, in some places, such as at Tiout, Moghrar, Touat, and other cases in or bordering on Morocco, there are well watered valleys, with fine scenery and almost European vegetation, where the fruits of Hie north flourish side by side with the palm tree. In others there are rivers like the Oued Guir, an effluent of the Niger, which tlie French soldiers, who saw it in IS7O, compared to the Loire. Again, as in the bed of the Oued Rir, there is a subterranean river, which gives a sufficient supply of water to make a chain of rich and well peopled oases squal in fertility to the finest portions of Algeria, The greater part of the Sahara, iiowever, is hard and undulating, cut up by ivy water courses, such as the Jgharghar, which descends to the Chott Melghigh, and ilmost entirely without animal or vegetable .ife.