HOW A FAMOUS TOOL WAS INVENTED.

Evening Post, Volume LVII, Issue 23, 28 January 1899, Page 10 (Supplement)

HOW A FAMOUS TOOL WAS INVENTED.

Mark Isambard Brunei, the famous engineer, Avas indebted to an insect for a great and useful -invention. Brunei was one day in a shipyard watching the movements in an insect known as the teredo navalis — in English, the naval wood worm — when a brilliant thought suddenly occurred to him. He saAv that the creature bored its way into a piece of wood by means of a very extraordinary mechanical apparatus. . booking at it attentively through a microscope, he found that it was covered in front with a pair of valvular shells ; that, Avith its foot as a purchase, it communicated a rotary motion and a forward impulse to the valves, which, acting upon the wood like a gimlet, penetrated its substance, and that, as the particles of wood were loosened, they passed through a fissure in the foot, and thence through the body of the borer to its mouth, whera they were expelled. " Here," said Brunei to himself, " is the sort of thing I want. Can I reproduce it in an artificial form?" He forthwith set to work, and the final result of his labours, after many failures, Avas the famous boring shield, with which the Thames Tunnel Avas excavated.

Lord Rosebery has the reputation of being a delightful host, and also of having keen tact. This latter gift was certainly displayed on one occasion when he was entertaining a large number of guests, amongst whom was a farmer, who, tasting ice pudding for the first time, came to the conclusion that there had been some mistake in the kitchen, and, wishing to save the other guests from a like experience, whispered to his host that by some accident the pudding had got frozen. Lord Rosebery listened without a smile, tasted the pudding, and thanked his informant ; then, calling an attendant, said something to him, and turned with a relieved face to the farmer, saying, " It's all right ; they tell me that it is a new 1 -kind of pudding, and is frozen on purpose."