Multum In Parvo

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 20 February 1926, Page 9

Multum In Parvo

A French inventor, M. Dessau, is reported to produced waterproof matches. Rubber is added to the fulminating material, and then vulcanised. Every match tested, after immersion in water, is said to have ignited without difficulty. Lizards benefit the farming industry of Porto Rico by eating certain cropdamaging insects which otherwise would increase enormously. While dining at an inn in Connecticut recently with his wife, Mr A. J. Alpin found three pearls in a raw oyster, all graduated in size, and believed to be of considerable value. 'The proprietor made Mr Alpin an offer for the pearls, but Mr Alpin decided to keep them.

Because a passenger insisted on playing a guitar on a Marseilles tramcar the eonducter shot him dead. Thus this fortune from the unknown rich American relative may perhaps prove the means of saving thousands of gallant lives in the future. What else it may do is still a matter for quite free conjecture, for Mr. Stewart will say nothing of what he will do as a millionaire until the millions are forthcoming. i The largest leaves arc to be found on trees of the palm family. The leaves of the double cocoanut palm are often thirty feet long and several feet wide; only one leaf is produced each year, and they are so strong and so firmly attached to the stem that a man may sit on the end of one and rock to and fro in perfect safety. Icebergs sometimes last for 200 years. The Himalayas have been seen 224 miles away. An ordinary piano contains a mile of wire string. The Crystal Palace, at Sydenham (Eng.), is capable of holding a. greater number of people than any other building in the world. More than 100,000 can be accommodated within its walls. Statistics prove that nearly twothirds of all letters carried by the postal services of the world are written, sent to, and read by English-speaking people. Spiders always come out of their holes shortly before rain, being advised by their instinct that insects then fly low and are most easily taken. An ordinary healthy man, in the prime of life, can lift with both hands 2301 b, and support on his shoulders 330 lb. European red ants attack other kinds of ants, carry off the workers to their own nests, and detain them there as slaves. A nightingale’s song can be heard at a distance of a mile. It is estimated that 80,000 snapshots were taken of the Prince of Wales during his visit to Johannesburg. A caterpillar is so greedy that in one mouth it usually devours six thousand times its own weight in food. There are three times as many muscles in the tail of a do g as there Toads, bats,’ and snakes can live longer without food than any other creatures. When completed, Mount Pleasant Post Office, London, will cover sixteen acres. „ • On a very hot day in Washington recently a newspaper reporter actually fried an egg on the pavement. After nine minutes it was perfectly done. About the size of a starling, vet able to run so swiftly that they can race a horse, three tiny birds have arrived at the London Zoo from Africa Women motorists in England are now estimated at 100,000. About 1,100,000 gallons of perfume are used yearly in England, the average' value being about £2 a gallon.