FRAGMENTS OF FACT.

New Zealand Mail, 3 December 1896, Page 66

FRAGMENTS OF FACT.

TIT-BITS OF INTERESTING AND USEFUL INFORMATION.

In proportion to its size, a fly walks 50 times as fast as a human being. The Imperial Library in Paris has thirty-six books printed on white silk. Sea water on the British coast attains its greatest warmth towards the end of August. Little oak trees an inch and a half in height are grown by Chinese gardeners. They take root in thimbles. Boston claims to have the longest paved street in the world —Washington street, which is seventeen and a half miles in length. A white tar has been invented. The beauty of the substance is that under no climatic conditions will it become soft, so that in caulking the decks of a ship it will probably supersede pitch. There is a Spanish proverb that “ on Tuesday one should never travel or marry," and this superstition is so ingrained that even in Madrid there are never any weddings on Tuesdays, and the trains are almost empty. A foreign scientist throws doubt on the assumption that insects are strongly attracted by bright and contrasted colours in flowers. Showy dahlias hidden beneath leaves and coloured paper seemed to be visited by bees and butterflies quite as often as the exposed flowers. It is concluded that perception of odours is the insect’s guide. England and Australia are the only islands which exceed Cuba in natural resources. When not wasted by war Cuba produces, with a large share of her soil untouched, £20,000,000 worth of sugar and tobacco annually, besides the products of orchards and forests, rivers and mountain mines. A physician who has experimented upon oranges declares that they have a power rarely possessed by other fruits, that of absorbing odours from the atmosphere. Blood oranges are especially liable to do this, and if placed in the same room with onions for several days will acquire a decided onion flavour. The latest invention to facilitate field operations is the typewriter bicycle. This consists of a typewriter mounted on a serviceable machine, which can follow the movements of the army through an ordinary stretch of country. The operator can take commands and general orders in shorthand, and strike off several duplicates on the typewriter, being held erect by portable props. At the time of the great distress in France in the year after the FrancoPrussian War, a citizen of Bourges, Delorme by name, vowed that he would never wear on his back any other garment than the blouse he was then wearing. He still adheres to his resolution, but the famous blouse has been patched and repatched so often that but little of the original material remains. The town council of Bourges recently offered him 100 francs for the garment, with the idea of exhibiting it in the museum, but Delorme refused the offer. He means to wear the blouse till he dies. “ Once, in order to test the courage of a Bengal tiger and lion,'" said a wellknown showman, “ we placed a lighted squib in each of their cages. As soon as the fuses began to burn they attracted the attention of both animals, but in a widely different manner. The lion drew into a corner and watched the proceedings with a distrustful and uneasy eye. The tiger, on the contrary, advanced to the burning fuse in his cage with a firm step and unflinching gaze. On reaching the squib he began to roll it over the floor with his paw, and when it exploded beneath his nose he did not flinch, but continued his examination until perfectly satisfied. The lion betrayed great fear when he heard the report of the explosion, and for a time could not be coaxed out of his den." The philosophers who have figured on

The philosophers who have figured on the condition of things that exist at the earth’s centre, differ very widely in opinion. Some think that the earth’s interior consists of white hot molten matter ; others are of the opinion that the pressure is so great that all substances have been condensed beyond all powers of comprehension. Dr Young goes so far as to say that a block of steel ten feet square would be pressed into a block only two feet square if taken 4000 miles below the earth's surface.

Postmen throughout the United States are now being supplied with straps to do up their packages of letters when making them ready for delivery in lieu of using twine as heretofore. The old method was found to be an expensive one. Deports showed that 274,000 pounds of twine were used by postmen during the past year, representing an outlay of T4OOO. This large expenditure has been dispensed with by furnishing the carriers with straps at a yearly outlay of T3OO, thus showing a saving to the Government of T 3700.

Some curious researches have been made in regard to fatigue, which, it is claimed, engenders a true poison. In recent experiments it has been found that if the blood of a fatigued animal be injected into another animal that is fresh and unfatigued, all the phenomena of fatigue will be produced. A decree has recently been published by the German Admiralty by which the officers and men of the Imperial Navy are either to be cleau-shaven or to wear full beards.

Half of the coffee crop of the world is grown in Brazil. Deafness does not tend to shortness of life. Deaf people live as long as others* The making of cod-liver oil is an important industry at Christiania. The quantity exported last year was 70,000 barrels. “ To be in a brown study " is said to be a corruption of “ brow study," a study requiring much thought and contraction of the brows.

A bride recently appeared at the altar with her pet canary fastened to her shoulder bv a golden chain. During the marriage ceremony the bird broke into song. Experiments made abroad are reported to have shown that aluminium is particulurly suitable for use in kitchen utensils, because it is not liable, like copper, to communicate any poisonous ingredient to the food.

One result of Russian slavery is the fact that nearly all Russian estates are mortgaged to the Government until 1912, as security for the advances that were made by the Czar at the time of the manumission of the serf-s.

Country roads in Ciiina are never bounded by fences, but are entirely undefined. "While the farmer has a right to plough up any road passing through his land, drivers of vehicles have an equal right—and they exercise it —to traverse any part of the country. _ Forests cover one-third of the land surface of the earth.

The silk industry of China employs, it is estimated, from 4,000,000 to 6,000,000

people. The most effective Krupp gun has a range of seventeen miles, and can fire at the rate of two shots a minute.

A naturalist who sewed bits of red silk on swallows caught in England identified one of the same birds in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids. In the formation of a single locomotive steam engine there are no fewer than 5416 pieces to bo put together, which have to be as accurately adjusted as the works of a watch.

In France some of the hospitals for infectious diseases are furnished with telephones, so that the sick may converse with their friends without danger of communicating disease. Two men and a woman, the wife of ono of them, have started to go round the world with a wheelbarrow. The barrow is large enough for one person to sleep in at a time, and all three will take turns in pushing it along. The phrase “ sending a man to Coventry" dates from the days of the Civil Wars. When any straggling Royalists were found on the Warwickshire battlefields, it was the custom to send them to Coventry for incarceration. Hence the origin of the term, which became a byword.

Coal sometimes exceeds forty-three shillings a ton in Vienna. More than 50,000 patents have been taken out for appliances for the benefit of the farmer.

The ear of the bird is a small orifice, which is generally c.overed very closely with a little tuft of feathers. One engine-driver in the Midlands, in a journey of 104 miles and back, has, it is said, to watch 720 signals, and sometimes his signal has to be picked out from ten. The Australian mail steamers pay 4:100 a day fine for every day taken beyond the contract limit. The Indian and Chinese mails are fined .£IOO for every twelve hours’ delay. A rich but eccentric gentleman recently deceased stipulated in his will that an electric light was to be kept constantly burning in his tomb, and another inside his coffin, for twelve months after his death.

A Dutch soldier was court-martialled at Flushing for refusing to wash his face : but the decision of the court, upheld on appeal, was that such an order was beyond the powers of the commanding officer. It is said that the quivering of the aspen’s leaves is due to the fact of the leaf stalls being flat on the sides, and so thin about the middle that the slightest breath of wind sets all the leaves wagging horizontally. There are said to be 9000 cells in a square foot of honeycomb. Switzerland is the only civilised country in the world which grants no patents for inventions.

It has been estimated that on an average four persons are killed and forty injured every week in the streets of the metropolis. By a new law in Paris, each owner of a bicycle is required to have a plate containing his name and address soldered on his wheel.

A new watch is said to have a phonograph cylinder hidden away inside, and at the hour and each quarter of an hour a tiny voice may be heard giving the exact time.

When a Russian family moves from one house to another it is customary to rake all the fire from the hearth of the old domicile and carry it in a closed pot to the new residence.

Thirty-two thousand varieties of goods are manufactured from wool.

The average cost of a criminal prosecution in Great Britain is at present £o'3. The amount spent on patent medicines annually is something like .£2,500,000. A biii has been introduced into the New South Wales Legislative Assembly to suppress juvenile smoking.

A Denmark old maids’ insurance company pays regular weekly “benefits'' to spinsters of forty years and upwards. The Mexican dog is utterly devoid of hair on his back or anywhere else, the hot dim tte having rendered it superfluous!.