One Thing and Another.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 956, 27 June 1890, Page 6

One Thing and Another.

The patent for making gold-dust bricks has been sold to an English syndicate. The number of houses in Berlin increased during 1889 by 660, making 21,000 in all. The Pope has decorated the Shah of Persia for his kindness to Catholic missions. The Catholic Cardinal at Berlin urges Catholic workmen’s unions to head off Socialism. . The increased cost of wood and ivory is said to have increased by one-third the oost of English pianos. Beer bottled in 1798 by an English firm was recently opened in a London restaurant and pronounced sound and hearty. A vegetable oarfcridge case has been in* vented, in France. It weighs only half as much as a: metal case and costs less.

The. average pulse in iufancy is 120 per minute ;in manhood 80; at sixty, years, 60. Females are faster—that is, their pulse is faster- —than the males. Canada has an area of about 3,470,392 square miles/ The United States has an area, with Alaska, of 3,501,409 square miles. Alaska’s area ib 531,409 square miles. A bundle of spider-webs, not larger than a buckshot, and weighingleasthanone drachm would, if straightened ogt and untangled, reach a distance of 350 miles.. <

Europe is increasing its natlqhal indebtpdness to the extent of about 100,000,000 a year, while the debt of the United States is decreasing at the rate of about. £2O,OOO,QQQ a year. > Since 1883 the number of sheep in the United Stateslhas fallen 0ff7,00C,000 head, and the importation of wool has increased from 79,350,751 in ISS4 to 126,487,729158. last year. In the year 1700 there was but one newspaper in the United States, In 1870 there were 5571 ; this year there are 16,319, the total for the United States and Canada being 17,107. , It is supposed by many that Martin Luther wrote ‘ Old Hundred,’ but it is now certain that it was written by Claudius Gonbimel, who, in 1640, taught a singing school in Rome.

In the Province of Serghana, southeast of the Caspian Sea, 150,000 acres of first-class land is to be given up the coming spring to the planting of cotton from American seed exclusively. Large tracts of laud are also to be devoted to the raising of cotton in the oasis of Merv, and of the enormous estate of Murghab, belonging to the Czar. In fact Russia will grow all the cotton she uses in her factories. It is said that for four years after the fight at Chicamauga the battle field bright moonlight, even on the darkest nights. The light came from the phosphorescent exhalations of the decaying bones of the heaped-up dead. The greatest tunnel in the world Is the new aqueduct wh'ch has been built to convey the waters of Crofton Lake to New York and which will be completed by midsummer. It is thirty-three and one eighth miles long.