GENERAL INFORMATION.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXIX, Issue 2083, 9 March 1908, Page 7

GENERAL INFORMATION.

Parrots are fonder of music than are the other lower animals.

Fdison finds music most useful in helping him to think out his ideas.

A Spanish bull-fighter will make as much as £SOO at a single performance.

A single orange tree will produce 20.000 oranges, and a lemon tree 8.000 lemons.

If a chameleon becomes blind, it ceases to change its colour, and remains a blackish hue.

Ears seldom change in shape after childhood ; but they enlarge slightly after middle age.

The Abyssinian army has 200,000 men and its equipment includes fifty modern guns.

Fifty vessels are constantly employed in repairing the submarine telegraph cables of the world.

In many of the French, Italian, and Spanish vineyards the grapes are still trodden with bare feet.

No one in Saxony is alllowed to shoe horses unless he has passed a public examination, and * is duly qualified.

The Maharajah of Barm has a carpet valued at £200,000. It is heavily encrusted with diamonds and pearls.

In Holland it is ililegai for a cyclist to use a horn, as this instrument is reserved for the exclusive use of motorists.

The habit of snuff-taking is once more becoming popular in Paris, in spite of the dangers which medical men attribute to it.

In Siam the number of rooms in a house must always be odd. So with doors and windows. They regard even numbers as very unlucky.

The great Lick telescope reveals stars so far distant that it would require 30,000 of them placed together to be visible to the naked eye.

Statistics recently compiled in regard to German University iife show that men 1 are dropping medicine as a profession, while women are turning to it.

An association has been formed in Cape Town to establish diamond cutting there. At present this industry is practically monopolised by Amsterdam.

Nails are called “sixpenny,” and

“eightpenny,” or “tenpenny,” according as to whether one thousand of a particular kind weigh six, eight, or ten pounds, “penny” being a corruption of tire older form of “pq»uud.” 1588,