One Thing and Another.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 913, 30 August 1889, Page 6

One Thing and Another.

An official inspection of Russian prisons has revealed a sad state of overcrowding. The real property held in Fatis is valued at eighty thousand millions of francs. Prince Christaiu, son of the Grown Prince of Denmark, ia said to be the tallest Prince in Euiopo. In Rome there are 30 cardinals, 35 bishops, 1469 priests. 2215 nuns and 3000 monks, friars, candidates, etc. It is proposed to establish a home for German invalids at San Remo, as a memorial to the Emperor Frederick. The population of Africa is eighteen to the square mile ; in Europe there are eightyeight to the same space. Cycling has beoome the rage In parts of Spain, and large numbers ot machines are being shipped to Barcelona. The breach in the Yellow river, in China, which has caused such widespread disaster, is said to have at last been closed. There are about 70,000 lacemakers in Normandy and in all France there are nearly 200,000 women engaged in this industry. The Toronto Globe thinks the French language is slowly but surely giving way to the English tongue in Lower Canada. The oldest horse probably in the world is owned at Rockland Late, N, Y., the animal being now forty-four years old, and at last acoGuu‘B was fit for driving. It is contemplated applying'.the process of electric welding to boiler plate and other sheet metal, thereby replacing the ordinary method of riveting. Beamless boiler tubes are now made from solid ingots of metal by a process that twists and stretches the fibres, and is said to make a tube much stronger than, the ordinary ones. Quite a novel engineering feat was recently performed on the line of the Panama Canal nothing less than the lifting of a steamlaunch over a bridge, under which it could not pass. The bright star Canopus emits more than 1500 times the light of our sun, Sirius is at such a distance that its light occupies nearly . nine years in reaching us and its real brightness is that of sixty-three suns.