IN THE PAPERS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10782, 2 June 1911, Page 2

IN THE PAPERS.

Some of the good turns to which the. Boy Scouts are pledged are rather problematical. General Baden-Powell remembers one enthusiastic boy whose day's good turn was rescuing a mouse from the trap, and giving it to the cat. It is so difficult to know whom you are helping at the expense of wliom! Sailors on Baltic steamers in autumncatch flies and cage them for the feeding of the migrating birds that settle for a rest. Is tha,t kind to the birds or cruel to the flies? Wei], anyhow, it shows a kindly impulse. In the matter of truthful census returns the Indians set our criminal populotion a good example. Receivers of stolen goods, wizards, and cow-poisoners figured among the callings returned at the census of British India in 1901. A more beneficent calling, returned by a number of enumerators in Hyderabad and the Central Provinces, was that of "granting boons' and blessings." On investigation it was found that these over-zealous officials had included the shTines and temples among the occupied houses of their district, the idols being entered as occupants. Laziness has been ai the.back of many an invention, and it was a lazy pointsman who hit on the idea that made the distance signal possible. According Jo Sir George Finlay, it was in 1846 that a pointsman who had to attend to two station signals some distance apart decided to save himself the trouble of walking to and fro between them by fastening two levers together by a long piece, of wire. A broken iron chair served as a counterweight. The wire ran on into his hut. and there he sat nightly and worked the two signals without setting foot outside. Till lie was found out, and reprimanded, and promoted. Apart from the treasures which find their way to the bottom of the sea, and occasionally come to light again, there is more gold- in the sea than lias ever been coined into money. Such, at all events, is the opinion of Professor Wilde, of. Brussels "University. All sea water contains a certain amount o& gold in the proportion of about one grain to each ton of water. Reckoning the total weight of all the oceans at the * very moderate figure of 1,000.000 tons, Pro-, fessor Wilde estimates that they, would yield gold to nearly a hundred thousand times as much as. . . . . . Why,

.bless you, you can bathe in gold. Parasols, when they first came into use, must have been cumbersome. Henri Etienne, writing in 1578, speaks of a: parasol as capable generally, of sheltering four persons,from the sun. And when they diminished- in circumference tlie material still remained of the heaviest. Bed velvet parasols, with heavy gold fringes, were carried by ladies of fashion in the days of, Louis XLV. ,At that time. it was possible, when crossing a bridge in Paris, to hire a parasol at one end and deposit it at the other, the charge for he accommodation being a sou. Under the Regency. fashion went to- the other extreme. Men's parasols folded into the shape of a three-cornered liat, and could thus be carried elegantly under the arm. Ladies parasols-were hinged so that they could slip into the pocket, for ladies, lxad pockets then. The official History of the South African War, which, according, to the report of the Committee of Public Accounts, cost £34,706, is by no means the .most expensive of the British Government publications. This record is held by the report of the Challenger expedition, wliich fills 48 volumes and 28;000 pages.. The cost was just on £90,000, of wliich .£20,000 has been recouped by •sales. <jThe Government had one strange piece of :luck-in,this scheme. Thirteen cases of Challenger volumes sank to the bottom of the sea. They were recovered and can still ,be bought in good coridi.tioS, the beautiful plates which constitute the chief value of the work having'in no way suffered.