MISCELLANEOUS.

North Otago Times, 19 January 1907, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

Doctor—Do you know, I think you r profession is absolutely useless. It certainly doesn't make angels of men! Lawyer— "Weil, I allow doctors have the best of us there In view of a new service dress for the British army, the army clothing factories have been asked to submit suggestions and specimens. Though khaki is matchless for invisibility on the burnt veldt of South Africa or the sandy desert of India orEgypt, yet in a civilized country, against green fields or dark belt of trees, it is only little less inconspicuous than scarlet, This fact, <-ay.s a London cofrespondent, was made very clear at the recent Sussex manoeuvres,

In writing to his home folks in Kansas, a soldier in the Philipines is very plain in saying what he thinks of the country. He regards the islands as "a bunch of trouble, a God-forsaken, cannibalistic blot on the face of God's green earth." He reports that the inhabitants are industrious in their 'thief occupation of trench building, manufacturing pf bolo knives and reloading Remington _ cartridges; their chief amusement is cock-fighting; their diet consists of boiled rice, stewed rice, fried rice, and rice," The natives are friends "at the point of a Krag." The climate is a combination of electrical changes conductive to wrecks, tarantula*, alligators, boa conrlrilctors, scorpions! centipedes, and snakes, The chief export is American homesickness, Upon the whole, this disgusted soldier thinks that the Philippines "would be an appropriate gift to a deadly enemy," But as the United states is at peace with all the world, the prospect of getting rid of this "bunch of truoble' is unpromising,

An igenious trick, practised in Paris by a woman known as the "human cashbox," has been stopped for a time. In a cafe at Moutmarte, she nicked up a twenty frame piece teloniiig to a cstomer who was waying his bill, and asked to be allowed to bite it "for luck." He consented and she promptly swallowed the coin. The customer had seen the trick before, and had the woman arrested. She is said to have made a confortable income (or some time past by the trick.

The Duke of Westminster, who owns 19,000 acres in the Orange River Colony, has built eighteen farmhouses and out buildings, erected schools, and sent out every sort of machinery which might he useful to the tenants. Some eighteen families of British blood have emigrated, and the settlement now numbers seventy souls. Up . to- the present the Duke has spent ;£i 50,000 on this scheme.

Many indications are apparent of the desire of the. Chinese Goverment to cheek the use of opium, and, although

there is no fresh development in the matter, the GoveriimWis still considering the framing, . the regulations' ;to control the trafic in the drug. The use of opium has been strictly [irohibiled j in the new Chinese arniy and in'scools.i Several Corps haye been cashiered for smoking opium,! and it is understood that the higher officials in all the Yamens have been ordered to break themselves off the habit within six months. ' When the Boer war was at its height the women of Guelph, Ontario, engaged | wilh thousands of others throughout the Dominion in making warm clothing for the wounded British soldiers,- Among those was Miss' Annie Callander. While at work one day, a correspondent at Toronto states,: Miss Callander placed her name and address on a garment she was making, wondering if she would ever hear of it again. This ultimately reached a soldier named Thomas Huby, of Sheffield, England, who, while in hospital, wrote to the address given, thankipg the donor of the garment for her interest in the cause. A correspondence followed, whiah has led to the marriage of Huby and Miss Callander,