GENERAL INFORMATION.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 22, 8 January 1907, Page 6

GENERAL INFORMATION.

Denmark’s army is the cheapest in Europe. It costs only £24 a head, against £ll3 spent by England. On a rough average, 45,000 sovereigns pass over the Bank of England counters daily. h The water is so clear in the fiords of Norway that objects 14in. in diameter can be distinctly seen at a depth of 150 ft. .jEvery inhabitant in London eats 11731 b. of potatoes in a year. \ Parisian consumes on an average but 49It>. per annum. * Medical statistics have established the fact that in winter there are three times more men than women suffering from cold, neuralgia, toothache. and influenza. Wives of Siamese noblemen cut their hair so that it sticks straight up from their heads. The average length of it is 14 in. Sweden and Norway are the only two countries where practically every grown man can read and write. Bavaria comes next in this respect. The total number of lives for the saving of which the Lifeboat Institution has granted rewards - since its establishment in 1824 lias l>ecn 44, 880. * Russia with a poi ulation of 127, 000,000, has only 18,384 physicians. In the United States, with a population of about 75,000,000, there are 120,000 physicians. JU In boring an artesian w’ell in California, charred wood was found at a depth of 500 feet, and at 580 feet shells and a portion of the skull of a bird were taken out. .!. In several battles of the FrancoPrussian War the soldiers ran down to the same watering-place, and therij returned to their positions to recommence slaughtering one another. * Twenty years ago the wages of Nottingham lacemakers were as high as £6 and £7 a week, and the profits of the employers ranged up to 100per cent. To-day if a man is wording full time he may earn from £2 10s. to £4 a week. + The inhabitants of France insure inore heavily against fire than any other nation. Compared to Great Britain and Russia, the total amount insured for averages at £66 per inhabitant for France, £39 for Great Britain, and £1 for Russia. It has been reckoned by an ingenious handler of figures that Strat-ford-on-Avon gains £IO,OOO a year by Shakespear. Every year from 20, 000 to 30,000 people go to Stratford from all parts of the world, and a trifling average expenditure from each makes up £IO,OOO, —* The biggest water-pipe in the world —capable, it is said, of holding any average river—is owned by the Ontario Power Company on the Canadian aide of Niagara Falls. The gi-

gantic pipe, which is made ol steel throughout, is a mile and a quarter in length and 60ft. in circumference. * The natives of India are in the habit every year, in the summer, of digging the dry river banks for fish, which they dig out by hundreds, just as they would potatoes. The mud lumi s are broken open, and the liata, perhaps Sin. or lOin. long, will always be found alive, and often frisky) as if just removed from its supposedly native element—-the _wate;\ 1512*