VARIETIES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2217, 19 January 1904, Page 3

VARIETIES.

The German navy employs 20,000 men. There are 100 national banks in Japan. The world’s navies employ 1,690,000 men, Germany’s forests cover 31,350,000 acres. Europe has women commercial travellers. Germany has 915 dentists and 4,988 druggists. Wealthy people in Japan regard it as undignified to ride a horse faster than at a walk. Zoologists say that all known species of wild animals are gradually diminishing in size. The undertaking business of Paris monopolized by the municipal government. A 17-year-old girl, who was arrested in Brooklyn recently on the charge of vagrancy, could converse fluently in six languages. A Florida turtle’s burrow was explored and among its inhabitants wore found thirteen species of insects, ten of them new to science. In China a man who killed his father was executed, and along with him his schoolmaster for not having taught him better. The woodpecker exerts a force with his bill against a tree equivalent proportionately to that of a 20-ton trip hammer. The question whether a female claiming to be a ' lady’ was libeled by being called a ‘ woman’ has been decided by a British Judge aud jury ia the negative. Germany, whose population is about 50 000,000, had 21,621 physicians in 1893, against 20,500 in 1892 ; that is, an ineieaso of 1,521. That: makes about 437 doctors for every 10,000 inhabitants. A young woman of Butte (IT.S.) applied to a court there the other day for permission to kill her lover, who had jilted her. She thought «be hud a right so to do, but wanted to go about it legahy and The court was inclined to agree with her in the premises, but was obliged to dismiss her application. The effect which living at high altitudes has on the blood of man and animals has recently been investigated. The result shows that the proportion of oxygon and oilier constituents in the blood of Alpine men and animals is exactly the same as among similar creatures living below the level. It is estimated that the number of Jews in London is between 100,000 and 120,000. There are 15,964 Jewish children attending the London Board aud Jewish Voluntary School of the lower grades, so that the total number is probably not far from 20,000. It is rumoured that a petition has been sent to the Emperor of China praying him to prohibit the custom of ‘ foot-binding,’ which prevails in bis dominions. Foot-binding is not enjoined by law, but is merely a fashion, though it is as widespread as it is foolish. No one quite knows how it originated. One account of it tolls that a certain Emperor s favourite, named Yao-hiang, tiled to make her foot resemble the new moon, and that everybody imitated her example. The Celestial ladies do not object to the custom, it is said, because it guarantees them against being expected to do any hard work.

Two colored women at Sedalia, Mo., run a farm themselves, and, when ploughing time comes, in lien of using a horse, one woman draws the plough while the other guides it. Seventy-five distinguished American architects are at work upon competitive plans for the six principal buildings for the next Cotton States and Interhational Exposition. Whenever a murder is committed In Argentina it is customary to put every possible witness in prison keep him there until the real culprit is convicted. In tests last year in the German town of

Dessau it was shown that cooking by wood and coal costs a little more than twice that * done with gas. Recent figures show that the total value of the matches made and consumed each year throughout the world is but little short of £10,000,000. » 5: T. - Explorers declare that no flowering plant has ever been found within the Antarctic Circle. In the Arctic Circle 762 different kinds are known. Mexico is regarded as the most productive country in the world. In most parts two crops are possible each year. During last year no fewer than 6,336 persons met with accidents in the street of London, about a tenth of whom owed their injuries to cycles. Wheat can be grown in the Alps at an elevation of 3,600 feet; in Brazil, at 5,000 ; in the Caucasus, at 1,000; in Abyssinia, at 10,000 ; in Peru and Bolivia, at 11,000, Kasper says that of clergymen 42 per cent reach seventy years; farmers 40, merchants . 33, soldiers and clerks 32, lawyers 20, teachers 28, physicians 24. Great Britain has 5,789 cannon ; France, 7,694 ; Germany, 5,380; Ru-sia, 4,424; Austria, 2,170 ; Turkey, 3,762 : the United States, 4,155; the world has 41,073. An advocate of electrical cooking claims that of every hundred tons of coal used in a cooking stove ninety-six tons go to waste.