HERE AND THERE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10240, 1 September 1909, Page 2

HERE AND THERE.

SPIKED MEXICAN MOUNTAIN. One of the most remarkable geological freaks in Mexico is a mountain situated on the outskirts of Pachuca which presents the appearance at a distance of being covered with spikes. The sides of the mountain are closely studded with stone columns or palisades. These columns are five to twelve feet long and as large around as an average man's body. It is a remarkable uplift of nature, which has the appearance, however, of being the handiwork of human beings. One side of.rtlie mountain is almost perpendicular, and the stone columns protrude from the surface at right angles, forming an impressive picture. The stone is as hard as flint and has withstood the elements for ages. The spikes form a natural battlement that makes the mountain appear from a distance like some ancient fort.

MARKING MIGRATING BIRDS. A short time ago a stork was shot in Rhodesia bearing upon its leg a metal ring which proved that the bird had been marked in Prussia, when it was a nestling, by the Rossitten Bird Observatory, while more recently a stork similarly "ringed" in Hungary was shot in the Kalahari Desert. H. F. Witherby is inaugurating a scheme for marking birds in a similar way in this country. It is hoped by this means to gain a more exact idea of the movements of individual birds than has ever been possible by any other method, and this should not only throw light upon the more general aspects of migration but it should tell us a great deal .that is at present obscure with regard to particular points.

GERMANY'S RAILWAY SYSTEM. Alhough the German railways, unlike the French system, were not conceived and built as a whole, and perhaps because of their lack of cohesion, which has enabled them to avoid some of the faults of a centralised system and secured the unimportant towns the benefit of an efficient service, the German system is to-day very complete, and responds very well to the business necessities of the regions served. Thanks to cheap labor and to the fact that the country for the most part is level, so that it is possible to avoid extraordinary outlay in building, this lack of unity in the construction of the German railways has not had the influence that it might have had- on the cost of the establishment. Between the Hook of Holland and Berlin the railway does not pass through a tunnel (there is, in fact, not a single railway tunnel in the whole of North Germany), nor does it pass through a single deep cutting or along a single high embankment. Bridges and viaducts across rivers are the only engineering works of special importance that had to be undertaken. In 1899 the total cost of all the German lines, how amounting to almost 50,000 kilometres, ' was stated at 12,403,038,875 marks, or an average, cost of no more than 253,615 marks a kilometre.

BREADLESS FOLK. . Baked loaves of bread are practical-

ly unknown in many parts of South Austria and Italy, as well as the agricultural districts of Roumania. In the villages of the Obersteiermark, not very many miles frdm Vienna, bread is very seldom seen, the staple food of tiie people being sterz, a kind of porridge made from ground beech nuts, which is taken at breakfast with fresh or curdled milk, at dinner with broth or fried in lard, and with milk again at supper. This sterz is also known as lieiden, and takes the place of bread not only in Steiermark, but in Caryntliia, and in many parts of the Tyrol. In the North of Italy the peasantry live chiefly on polenta, a porridge made of boiled maize. The polenta, however, is not allowed to granulate like Scotch porridge or like the Austrian sterz, but is boiled into a solid pudding, which is cui up and portioned out a string. It is eaten cold as often as it is liot, and is in every sense the Italian peasant's daily bread. The modern Roumanians are held by many scholars to be descended from a Roman colony, in other words, to be the cousins of the Italians, and couriously enough a variation of the polenta called mamaliga is the national dish of Roumania. The mamaliga is like the polenta in that it is made of boiled maize, but it is unlike the latter in one important respect, as the grains are not allowed to settle into a solid mass, but are kept distinct, after the fashion of oatmeal porridge.

UNPOPULAR PROCLAMATION. A proclamation issued by the Viceroy of tlie province * that all opium dens in Wansheiu must close has gone unheeded, as most things appear to do in China when it does not suit the popnlace. Wanshein is a city of 120,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by poppy fields, nine-tenths of the community indnlging in the drug, while the city itself"contains innumerable shops for retailing it. When the appointed time came for closing up, all the shops did themselves proud." Bright new h 1 * 1" terns gleamed from the portals, while clean curtains decorated the interior and trade was as brisk as ever. In other words, the opium vendors were "saving face," a peculiar characteristic of the Chinese, and not even a policeman, if there is such a thing m Wansliien, enforced the order. Opiumsmoking continues at Wanshein m the same old way and the crop to be reaped this vear is a third bigger than last. What can a Viceroy do when the people to a man won't listen, especially when the people know that the proclamation may be only a matter of form.

GERMAN JEALOUSY IN NOMENCLATURE. In Alsace-Lorraine the civil officials insist —no doubt under orders —in registering the names of newly-born children in German. Lately a young father, living near Colmar, gave as the name of his young son Jules Louis. The register, "however, wished to record Julius Ludwig, hut the father protested and appealed to chief local authority. His answer insisted on the German form of the names. Dissatisfied and -remembering that the second son of the Crown Prince, and therefore the grandson of the Emperor, was named Louis, he wrote asking for information to the Royal authorities at Potsdam. The answer read: "We assure you that the second son of his Imperial and Royal Highness, the Crown Prince, is named Louis Ferdinand Victor Edward Adalbert Michael Hubert." Should by any chance this L. F. V., etc., ascend the throne, he would bear a name Louis, which the officials of Alsace-Lorraine refuse to recognise.

GERMAN CHRISTMAS TREES. Christmas comes but once a year and the Germans try to make the most of it. ' Of the 6,000,000 families of the Kaiser's Empire it is said that 5,500,000 purchase Christmas trees. The trees usually are spruce, which grows in all parts of Germany. The planting and the cutting of trees is all under control of the Government officials, and it is thought that there is not now an evergreen growing in Germany that was not artificially planted. In the initial stage the young plants are set in rows about four feet apart, with the plants one foot apart in the row. As the trees develop they gradually are thinned. When one foot high many are transplanted into pots and' form miniature Christmas trees. But for this Yuletide market the forest plantings would have to be made further apart or the trees cut out in thinning, while small ones would have to be thrown away. This thinning is continuous until the trees attained a size suitable for sawing purposes. The thinnings are used for fork and hoe handles, grapevine stakes, hop poles, bean poles, scaffoldings, etc. The owner therefore does not have to await the maturity of his forest before realising •an income from it. In the economy of cultivating a forest every twig is saved, and even the leaves are raked up and sold. Old people and children find useful employment in doing such light and easy work and adding to the family income.

SULTAN HAS QUEER TITLES. Among the high-sounding titles which Abdul Hamid has been forced to surrender to his successor, Mohammed V., are a few which have proved curiously empty in the light _of recent events at Constantinople. One would not expect to hear the Shadow of God Upon Earth being cornered by a handful of soldiers and whining. piteously that his life might be spared. Otliex of the titles possesse'd by the Sultan of Turkey are Saltan of Sultans, King of Kings,' Bestower of Crowns Upon the Princes of the World, Emperor and Sovereign Lord of the White Sea and the Black Sea, of Rumelia and Anatolia, of Karamania, Roum, Kurdistant, Azerbidjan, Cham, Aleppo, Egypt, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem the Holy, of all the countries of Arabia and the Yemen and, moreover, of an Infinity of Provinces Gloriously Acquired. An.other potentate who glories in a string of grandiloquent titles is the Shah of Persia. He is not only the Shadow of God, but also the Footpath of Heaven. In addition he is described as "The Centre of the Universe, Exalted Like the Planet Saturn. Well of Science, Sublime Sovereign Whose Standard is the Sun, and Monarch of Armies Numerous as the Stars."

WHAT DEAD MILLIONAIRES ARE WORTH.

Deatli lias again prevented the Chancellor of the Exchequer with what he styles an "unsuspected henroost." As a previous cable has briefly stated, Charles Morrison, an eccentric bachelor, is dead and Mr Lloyd-George lias been agreeably astounded to learn that Morrison was probably the richest man in England, as he left over £10,000,000. Charles Morrison's death proves that England is an ideal place of residence for retiring millionaires. His. name was probably not known to 500 persons, and it has appeared in the newspapers scarcely a hundred times during his ninety-two years of life. In many ways he was the counterpart of Chicago Smith. But while England is an ideal residence for modest millionaires, it is a bad place for millionaires to die in—especially under "the new radical Budget which shows no mercy to the "indecently rich." The British Government will take from Morrison's gigantic fortune £2,300,000 as death duties and succession tax, which latter the heirs must pay. The record for death duties in England was established by Chicago Smith's estate, but the Morrison estate nets the Government double that of Smith's. Two other large estates have also contributed heavily by death duties to the Treasury during the past two months. Sir Donald Curi;ie's will was probated and showed that the ship builder left £2,200,000, arid the Treasury takes £300,000 deathdiities, and Frederick Gorringe, a merchant, left over £600,000, from which the Treasury takes £105,000.

Moreover, lier present wealth has been built up almost solely in the last fifty years. Of the great fortunes of the eighteenth century, either in estate or movable property, almost none survive to-day. In particular, the few large landed estates of to-day have been all formed during the last half century. This is, of course, the country where property is most evenly distributed, and the viscount gives some remarkable figures in this connection. Only 5000 persons in France own capital yielding £4OOO a year, and among them only 1045 have £BOOO a year, 350 £20,000 a year, 120 £40,000. Ten persons in France enjoy a revenue of £200,000 a year. The lecturer also mentioned the low pay of civil servants, of whom only 1000 draw salaries of £6OO a year, which is a small figure' compared with the earnings of men employed in business, the three managers of a certain large shop, for instance, which is only one of half a dozen similar establishments in Paris, being paid £BOOO year each. Present incomes, in spite of the equalisation of property, are far greater than those of past centuries. Thus the total annual revenue of the Crown under Saint Louis never reached an amount the purchasing | value of which to-day would be £160,000, and the Queen's privy purse was equivalent only to £IBOO a year. Louis XIV drew the largest income, amounting to the equivalent oi £540,000 in the present day. Tlic conclusion of the lecturer's historical survey of the wealth of France was a prophecy for the future. Three limir dred years hence Socialism will be remembered by historians as a quaint fad, and they will be amused to think that j for a brief period in the past men seriously feared it.

RACE WAGERS IN INDIA

The native of India wagers his money according to the colors worn by the jockeys and takes no heed of the merits of the horses, or he will back a horse ridden by his favorite jockey, no matter whether the aniinal is a rank outsider or not. His ideas of gambling, in fact, are distinctly novel. Some oi' the more wealthy Indians form rings and back every horse in the race, thus gaining the satisfaction of getting a winner every time. It is really only of late years that the native of India has become an habitual gambler on the turf, and nowadays the bulk of the betting of the various racing centres in India is done by natives. Indeed, the authorities are becoming somewhat concerned about the growth of the betting which takes place among Indian natives, it being asserted as many as thirty lacs of rupees (about £300,000) is lost and won in the course of a season. The ignorant masses have not a great deal of actual money to wager, but so badly bitten arc many of them with the craze for betting at race meetings that they frequently wager what little property they possess on a horse, and if they lose they simply replace their loss by stealing a neighbor's goods. The consequence is that when the racing season conies around the police are kept very busy dealing with eases of petty larceny and other crimes involving loss of property.

NEBULAR THEORY GROWS. Sir Robert Ball, in an address on "Modern Views of the Origin of tlie Earth," at tlie University College, London, said that tlie general truth of the nebular theory of tlie origin of the earth was becoming more and more (irmly accepted every day. The great difficulty about it was the enormous periods of time they were called upon to consider. They could look through the universe and see objects here and there which exhibited various phases through which our own system had gone in its transformation from the original fire mist to the form in whicfi they now had it. The existence of the whole human race was but a flutter compared to the stupendous periods which geology opened up to their vista. Tlie fire mists flattened down and contracted and began to revolve, and then to take spiral form. In the central part of the spiral nebulae the sun formed. It was now generally believed that the sun and the earth all formed part of a spiral nebula.

SMOKING IN CHURCH. Smoking in church is a Dutch custom. Dutchmen are such inveterate smokers that one of them is seldom seen without his pipe. Indeed, it is a fact that they find themselves unable to forego the indulgence, even for the short period of a cliurcli service. A similar practice exists in several of the South American republics. Smoking in churches in Great Britain is said to have been prevalent at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. At one time smoking was carried to such an excess in the. Cathedral of Seville, in Spain, that the chapter applied to the Pope for power to repress the abuse. Urban VIII., yielding to their wish, issued a bill 011 the subject, promulgated in January, 1642. 111 Wales smoking ill church was indulged in as late as 1850; and the practice obtains to this day in certain parts of the Italian kingdom. In one Welsh cliurcli the communion table stood in the aisle, and 011 this the farmers were accustomed unceremoniously to deposit their hats, and, just as unceremoniously, when tlie service began they lit their pipes and smoked, without any thought of irreverence in the act.