GENERAL ITEMS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2293, 5 January 1900, Page 3

GENERAL ITEMS.

It is estimated that one crow will destroy 700,000 insects every year. The word " dad " ia not slang ; it is a pure Welah word, and meaua father. The seaweed grow* to a greater length than any other plant in the world*

Short aight is more common to residents in town than in the country. Nearly three quarters of a million of bulbs are required each autumn for planting in the London parks and open spaces. The greater portion of the bread eaten by the Ghinese ia first boiled and then browned by baking. A German professor reports that he has found bacteria in wine that has been bottled for five and twenty years. Out of the twenty-seven Royal familiea of Europe two-thirds are of German origin. The population in Paliatine is increasing fast. Ten years ago there wete only 15,000 residenta in Java; to-day there are 50,000. A French agriculturist haa grafted tomatoes upon potatoea, with the reault that hia plant producea potatoea underground, and tomatoes above. An inventor in India haa devised an apparatus for cooking by the heat of the sun. They would have aold well here laat summer.

The latest issues of stamps in Ifow* foundland bear the portrait Princess 6f Wales. A pretty complithis* - " l almost profane to heat that % railway ia to be conatructed front the Bed 8m to the top of Mount Sinai,.and that a station is to be on the spot where it is supposed Mmm received the Tables of the Law, . The Chinese detective force is a secret body, and the beat organiaed in the World. They have an eye upon every man, woman, or child, foreign or native, in Ohina, and, in addition, watcn over eaoh other. A noted physician asserts that high living checks the growth of the hair. He declares that it ia eaay in sooiety to pick out the girls whose parents have arisen from the ranks of poverty, by the superior quality and abundance of their hair. Under the Belgian law unmarried men over twenty-five have one vote, married men and widowers with families have ; two votea, and priests and other persona of poaition and education have three votea. Severe penalties sre imposed on those who fail to vote. Scotland aeema a atrange plaoe to find a atatue of Abraham Lincoln, and yet there ia one there. It adorna a monument erected in the old Oalton buryingground, Edinburgh, to the memory of the Scottish-Americans wlio fought in the American Civil War. On their wedding*day the bride and bridegroom of Thuringia, Germany, partake of soup from the same plate. They watch each other closely during this performance, as there is a belief that the one who takea the last spoonful will be the firat to die. « The microscope haa revealed many wonders, among othera that the common caterpillar has 4,000 muscles in his body, that the drone bee's eyea each contaiu . 1,300 mirrora, and that .the large, prominent eyea of the brilliant dragonflies are each furnished with 28,000 polished lenses. Smoking was condemned in the early part of the seventeenth oentury by the Russian Government, and made a

I u-i!iu!. In tome oases the noses of I« -en we're cut off. In Turkey, 1 nrfiar Amurath IV., about Is9o, the punishmeut Tor smoking was death?" Beginnt>?s were sometimes let off with indignity of having their pipea thruat through their noaes.