INTERESTING ITEMS.

Northland Age, Volume 2, Issue 44, 12 June 1906, Page 2

INTERESTING ITEMS.

The average man’s eyelids open and shut four million times during the year. Swedish school children under the* guidance of their teachers annually plant about 600,000 trees. * A complete Atlantic communication—cables, land lines, etc.—cohs about £600,000 ; a repai ing ship costs from £65,000 to £BU,OOO. The value of all kinds of fish landed in England and Wales in one year is-over 7,000,000, and the number of men and boys employed over 40,000. The tails of the horses used by the Shah of Persia are dyed crimson for six inches at the tips—a dos< lyguarde 1 privilege held only by the ruler and his sons. In France out of every 1,000 inhabitants, 123 are old people of more than 00 years, as against sever, tythree in England and seventy -nine in Germany. * Japanese hairdressing is cp.Ue a fine art, and a Japanese woman will not grudge a whole day S| it in front of her mirror, while her attendant applies the pomade so necessary for her elaborate coiffure, in which there must be not a hair out of place. * The milk inspectors of Groat Britain have no light responsibility upon their shoulders. Every year some 1,725,000,000 gallons of milk, from more than four million cows, are consumed in its original state and in the form of butter and cheese. * A queer occupation is that of dragging for lost anchors. It is carried on in bays and rivers, and even in the open sea along the coast, there being several vessels engaged almost exclusively in this pursuit. The recovered anchors are generally sold again at a price lower than new anchors would cost. The Empress Eugenic has been engaged on a diary for many years and every line of it has been written with the diamond pen used for signing the Treaty of Paris in 1856. It is a quill from a golden eagle, richly mounted in gold, and studded with numerous brilliants. *— The naming of vessels of the United States Navy is a matter which is regulated by law. Vessels of the first class are required to be named after States, those of the second after rivers, those of the third after the principal cities and towns, and those of the fourth as the President may direct. The fallen city of Omdurman as it is to-day is not impressive. * Its colour is that of its surroundings ; it is five miles of mud. five miles long and two broad, huddling by the Nile, swarming with humanity,, dry and dusty. From the top-deck of a river steamer you can look right into the place at high Nile, stare down on the narrow streets, on the. flat roofs, on the wards or "hooshes,” on the busy hive of a city of markets. At low Nile there is a foreshore where men fish and bathe, and women draw water and wash? and animals drink, and little black boys, with prodigious bellies, splash about, and boats lie loading or unloading. Markets of gum and sand and other commodities are here, and markets of every kind further back in the heart of the ..great native to®#* &j&.