MULTUM IN PARVO.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 7 November 1925, Page 13

MULTUM IN PARVO.

Telegrams "will I>c transmitted tlnougli public telephone boxes in Britain if an experiment now being tested proves successful. The cost will be the usual l telegraphic fee, plus the cost ot tin telephone call. One beautiful butterfly found in the ,Fcn district in England is equipped with a scent gland in its head. From this the insect can eject a spray of peifume so powerful that insects hostile to it are driven off. In the will of a London barrister was this legacy: Ten pounds to. the. poor man for manv years standing daily at the south-west gate near the Middle Temple. The poor man is a niatch- » seller, and is totally blind.. Seventy million telegrams and 3500 million letters passed through the Biitish post office in 1924. There were 1000 million telephone calls last vear m Great Britain. One extra call a day hv each subscriber would increase the post office revenue by £2,000,000. ' About 100 square miles of excellent corn-growing land in Yorkshire hav., been washed into the sea since thedavs of William' the Conqueror. But although this little bit of England has been lost, England is now recovering a big slice of land from the sea farther south, the waves being gradually pushed baon from the Wash by a great reclamation scheme. Ford cars are now being bought in America at the rate of 250 an hour. Mining operations now use over three-quarters of the explosives made m the United States. The servants of Henry the First considered Is Id a good day’s wage. The men of the United States j Coastguard Service rescued 2642 per- \ sons from positions of peril last year. a million blind people in India, and not one efficient factory for Braille books. One of tlie big Atlantic liners has a tailor’s shop fitted up so that a passenger can select goods and have a suit made on the voyage. Twenty thousand people were killed in motor accidents in the United State.--last, year, nearly one-third being children under 15. Artificial limbs were in use in Egypt ns early as 700 B.C. They were made by the priests, who were the physicians at that time. The stationery and printing bills for a recent year for the House of Comcons amounted to £82,564. Wild elephants in Africa are in danger of extermination, the only herd left having dwindled to forty. A f single female salmon of 301 h weight deposits nearly 50,000 eggs, of which about 4 per cent, hatch. Mr. Sam B. Kimball, an aged rancher, has placed an order with a Los Angeles undertaker for a £240 steel coffin equipped with a wireless receiving set. Mr. Kimball explained that he is convinced the soul lingers near the body until the Day of Judgment, and that he will be able to “hear what is going on in the world.’’ Factories in '(Shanghai and Tientsin, for the manufacture of clothes, rugs, and matches, are supplied with British machinery. In one rug factory there are 2000 children, ranging from 9 to 15 years of age. They work 14 hours a day for a wage of 3d. A chimney 16ft higher than Nelson’s column has been built at Harrow witn--1 out bricks. It is a huge tube of rein- / forced concrete.

A snake’s fang is a sort ol holloa tooth, and when the snake strikes at anything the pressure of this hollow tooth against the gland above it forces the poison through the tooth into ih.e wound the fang has made. A world’s record is claimed for the Blue Nile Dam, 170 miles south of Khartoum. It cost 121 million pounds, and in the making 17 million cubic yards of earth were excavated. The word “telegram,’’ which means “writing from a distance,’’ was first used in England in the issue of the Illustrated London News for July, 1859. Four thousand boy and girl fiddlers played together recently, at the concert of ” the National Union of School Orchestras, in the Crystal Palace, London. The risk of. being struck by lightning is five times greater in the country than in cities, and twenty times greater at sea than on a railway. Cyclists and pedestrians who wear something white, such as a scarf or hat, are much more easily seen by motorists on dark' country roads. One-third of the population of the British Isles smokes cigarettes, and three-quarters of the tobacco to reach England is used to meet this demand. The oldest clock in Britain is the one that until 40 years ago was at Wells Cathedral. It was originally made at Glastonbury Abbey by monks ini 1325. . Out of 2500 men engaged in the Battle of Bunker’s Hill (American War of Independence), fought on June. 17, 1775, no fewer than. 1150 were either killed or wounded. An African elephant of the largest size measures about nine cubits, or 13i feet, in length, and is worth about £9OO. For huge Ceylon elephants £4OOO in sometimes', paid. Strong lights, with basins of petroleum below them, are used in France to destroy night-flying insects that injure vineyards. As many as 4868 insects have been caught in' a basin on one night. The Housing Committee of the London County Council have arranged for wire guard's to be supplied with all gas fires m the council’s dwellings. Aliens who landed in Britain during the six months ended June 30, numbered .162,982. .School girls in Ohio, America, have been studying tlic effects of different diets on white rats. London’s Fire Brigade cost £761,020 last year. Last year Palestine received nearly 12,000 Jews as immigrants. Fifty years ago in Britain there were 10,000 “people in penal servitude. Today there are only about 1600, apart from 1100 young persons in Borstal institutions. Frauds arc becoming so common in connection with platinum that reputable dealers in this costly metal arc asking for a hall-mark to lie authorised for it. Eight, tons of gunpowder were used in a blast at Bonawe Granite Quarries tons of granite being dislodged at once. An x\ustralian professor has offered to send to England a hundred fowls that will lay twice as many eggs as British hens. If a boy’s hair were left uncut it would never grow as long as the average girl’s as women have a stronger growth of hair than men. Nearly fifty names in a recent passenger list of the White Star liner Majestic began with Mae.