HERE AND THERE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10763, 10 May 1911, Page 2

HERE AND THERE.

2,500,000 MILES OF OCEAN TRAVEL,

A remarkable record of ocean travel stands to the credit of Captain H. W. Hayes, of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company's Royal mail steamer Drita. Captain Hayes, who is the senior commodore sailing out of Liverpool, is making his 123 rd voyage in command. During his long career he had. covered a distance of 2,500,000 miles at sea, which is equal to circumnavigating the globe upwards of; 100 times. At various periods he has collected £4200 on behalf of the seamen's charities. TALLEST BRITISH SOLDIER, Private.- H. Barter, who has just joined the Ist Battalion Grenadier Guards, is only 18 years of age, but is 6ft BJin high, and is still growing. He is believed to be the tallest soldier in the British Army. His father, a Devonshire farmer, is 6ft sin, and his mother sft lOin. He has lived nearly all,his life in the country. Two hours a day in the gymnasium and about three' hours' drill is his daily work at present. Since he was 14 years of age smoked, THE FLOWING OP METALS. .It is perhaps not generally, known that one of the most important properties of metals employed in striking coins and medals, and stamping and shaping articles of jewellery, is that'of flowing under pressure. Standard silver is remarkable for this property, which precisely resembles the flowing of a viscous fluid. The flow takes place when the metal is subjected to rolling, stamping, or hammering, and the particles of the metal are thus carried into the sunken parts of the die without fracturing, and a perfect impression is produced. ECONOMY IN MEAT PRODUCTION. At a recent meeting of the French Agricultural Society a paper was read bv Messrs Gouin aiid Audouard discussing the influence of the age at which cattle are slaughtered upon the production of meat. It has been stated by some that the present scarcity of meat in France is due to the method in vogue of slaughtering animals before they have reached complete development. The authors consider that this is an error, and that stock should be utilised as soon as the flesh has attained its value as meat for the table, this being to the advantage hotb. of producer and consumer. The total amount of hay fed to three animals up to the age of three and a-half years is 33 long tons. This would suffice for seven animals up to the end of the second year. But the yield in meat from the seven young animals is 40 per cent, in excess of that from the three adults. Thus, with the same amount of food material the stock-raiser can put much larger quantities of meat on the market by rapidly renewing his stock. NERVE IN SURGERY.

Nowadays (says the Hospital) it is a commonplace to assert that anaesthetics have, for the most part, discounted the necessity for speed, dexterity, and sureness of touch in the modern surgeon; that the days of the "chirurgeon," the man of his hands, are over; and that anyone with training; can acquire sufficient manipulative dexterity for any ordinary form of operative procedure. The lightning dexterity of pre-anaes-thetic days is no longer required; it is unnecessary now to he ahle to amputate the thigh in twelve seconds, the time credited to Fergusson. There is a water-color drawing extant of Surgeon Macnamara, "primus et optimus," as the inscription has it, amputating the lower third of the thigh of a writhing sailor, who is heing held down by six burly, blood-bespattered assistants. This little picture conveys, in a manner untranslatable in words, the nerve, promptitude, and almost automatic, dexterity required in the days when neither anaesthetics nor haemostatic accessories were known. Happily, such extreme rapidity is no longer required; but that the nerve necessary to undertake anything humanly possible is still with us, and that promptitude in an emergency is as great au essential as ever, no one acquainted with the recent trend of modern surgery can for a moment doubt.

A combination tool, which has been recently invented, may be considered typical of its class. It consists of a pair of pliers, with the jaws shaped to provide an ordinary nipple wrench, and containing a depression near one end for the head of a wire nail when pulling such a nail. One of the handles of the plier is flattened to form a screwdriver, while the other is notched at the end to serve as a tack lifter. Mounted to slide on the screw-driver is a wrench jaw, bearing the usual worm that engages a thread or rack in the 6crew-driver. handles. The other member of the pliers carries a fixed jaw. One advantage of this arrangement lies in the fact that after the jaws have been set, they may be tightened on to the work, by pulling the handles of the plier apart. Owing to this arrangement the tool may be used as a pipe wrench. One of the jaws is further provided with a hammer head to permit of driving small nails and tacks, while there is the usual noteh in each member of the pliers, to be used, for clipping wire. A REMARKABLE VEGETABLE POISON. Recent experiments have demonstrated the existence of a poisonous substance of very remarkable qualities in the seeds of so well-known a plant as the recinus, or castor-oil plant, a common ornament of our gardens. It has long been observed that these seeds frequently proved fatal to animals who fed upon them, or to children who swallowed them by accident, but the toxic principle has first been isolated, as yet in every impurse form, by Professor Robert, of Bostock, the process consisting of maceration in a solution of sodium chloride. Even now the pure preparation cannot be obtained because of the, small amount of the poison and the difficulty of separating it from associated albuminoids." Even so its terrible potency is shown by the figures of Professor Ehrlich, of Frankfort-on-Main, who estimates that one gramme of ricinus is sufficient to kill one and one-half million guinea-pigs. This tremendous death-dealing power surpasses that of all other poisons known to us as enemies of living matter; such, for example, as strychnine and cyanide of potassium. HOT SPRINGS. A very interesting discovery was made in Spitzhergen last summer by / the Isachs expedition. In a cove of ,Wood s Bay, in the northern part of the island, hot springs were found which, in connection with other volcanic phenomena, justify the conclusion that an active volcano existed in this region in comparatively recent geological times. The springs, eight in number, are distributed along one straight fissure and have well-developed geyser terraces. The cone of the volcano itself is very regularly formed, and resembles the craters of Vesuvius and Etna. The volcanic minerals found in the vicinity" are of the slag type, and consist partly of olivin". The situation and appearance of the volcano prove that it is more recent than the glacial epoch, and must have been in eruption in the Quaternary period. A piece of pumice stone of peculiar appearance, which was found on the shore near Smerenberg by the Zeppelin expedition this year, and which was supposed to have drifted from Iceland, probably came from this volcano, which is not far distant.