ODDS AND ENDS.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume VI, Issue 72, 14 October 1897, Page 3

ODDS AND ENDS.

In Germany the census is taken every five years.

Nearly two-thirds of the population of Spain cannot read or write. The Chinese preserve eggs by coating them with mud.

Green snow is found in Iceland, South America, and near the mouth of the Obi.

It is said that the curliness of hair varies with its flatness. The flatter it is the more it curls.

There is a clerk in Marne, France, who has made seventeen unsuccessful attempts to commit suicide.

The body of a dead Chinaman is often kept three or four years by his relatives or friends before it is buried.

Farmers in some parts of Nebraska literally have corn to burn and are usiug it for fuel.

McKinley is another of the long list of American Presidents who were not college graduates. Imperfect teeth are a sure sign of civilisation. Perfect teeth are found, as a rule, only among savages. The most extensive cemetery in the world is that of Rome, in which over 6,000,000 human beiugs have been interred.

A room in the Castle of Simonetta, near Milan, Italy, has a wonderful echo. A loud noise, such as a pistol shot, will be repeated sixty times. Paper floors are in use in Einsiedelu, Germany. It is laid in a pasty mass, smoothed, and then pressed. Footsteps on it are noiseless.

No man who is intoxicated, or whose breath is even tainted with strong drink, is allowed to take his post on a train on the Grand Trunk Railway. The Queen of Servia sleeps on a narrow divan, spread with a hard, unyielding mattrass, and without the vestige of a pillow. A paper bicycle has invaded the field. Paper fibre, similar to that sometimes used in the manufacture of railway carriage wheels, is employed for tubing, and is as strong as any in use. All Fools’ Day is 200 years old. Brady’s Clavis Calendaria, published in 1812, mentions that more than a century previous the almanac designated the Ist of April as “ All Fools’ Day.” A curiosity is exhibited by a man in Blue Ripids, Kansas. It is the head of a rabbit, which has eight horns, ranging m length from Hill, to 2Hns. One of the horns sprouts from the nose and the others are round the jaw. At the beginning of the present century the Bible could be studied by only onefifth of the earth’s population. Now it is translated into languages which make it accessible to nine-tenths of the world’s inhabitants.

“ Crocodile tears ” are alluded to by several Latin and Greek authors, it being a superstition among the ancients that the crocodile, after killing a man, ate all his body but bis head, and shed tears over that before eating it also. It is now said that X-rays exist in nature and are produced by the common glow-worm. The light from these tiny creatures has the same capacity as the Rontgen rays far passing through ordinary solids. It will even penetrate thin sheets of aluminium.

The Queen’s Coronation-ring is never out of her sight, and is worn by her every evening. It is a band of gold containing a cross in rubies surrounded by white brilliants. A Coronation-ring is supposed to symbolise the wedding of the Sovereign with the nation. A bicycle race with a panther was the exciting experience of an English lady in Singapore one evening. When riding 3lowly homeward along a road outside a town the cyclist found that she was being quietly stalked by a huge black panther. She had the presence of mind to start off at full speed, and soon distanced her pursuer.