Multum in Parvo.

Otago Witness, Issue 1582, 18 March 1882, Page 6

Multum in Parvo.

It is proposed in Switzerland to pass a federal school law for the government of the schools which are at present under the control of the separate Cantons. One section of this law provides that every youth, after leaving the primary school, shall spend at least two hours every week in a night school. It was calculated that there were recently in the magazines of Odessa a million and a half quartet's of grain of all kinds ready for exportation, and another million and a half at the other ports of the Black Sea and those of the Sea of Azov, the whole valued at no less than 30,000,000 roubles. It is said that in the manufacture of Indian shawls not the slightest' improvement has been made since Napoleon introduced them into Europe by sending one to Josephine. The wool ofjtheshawlis obtained from the winter hairof the Thiber goat. It is cleansed in rice water to add strength, and spun by women. Each loom produces about five shawls in a year, The London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian writes : — ' The long projected tidal navigation scheme for connecting Manchester with the Mersey at Liverpool is again under consideration by a body of capitalists. The project has been thwarted in consequence of the depressed state of commerce ; but now that Lancashire trade is reviving, attention has once more been directed to this matter.

Four students of Wacousta, Wisconsin, stole a farmer's, gate. The college Faculty condemned them to expulsion, or the alternative of whatever punishment the farmer might inflict. He sentenced them to chop four cords of his wood, and deliver it to a poor widow. They did it to the music of a band and the plaudits of a crowd, that watched the operation.

The Odessa papers state that the simultaneous, police raids in all quarters of that city on .the' 2oth and 21st November last resulted in the arrest of no fewer than 1348 persons, whose aspects of proceedings were considered to justify suspicion, or who were not provided with Satisfactory evidence of, their identity. Jay Gould's greenhouses, at his summer residence on the Hudson, which were burned ten months ago, have all been rebuilt. _ They are 372 feet long by 80 feet wide, and it requires , 16 men, 25,0 tons of coal, and five large furnaces totransform the freezing air to tropical heat during the winter season. „ ' _ According to the .latest census, the population of Japan on January 1, 1880, was 35,925,313. Of these 18,210,500 were males, and 17,714,813 females, In view of the numerous and destructive civil wars of the last 20 years, this relative proportion of the sexes is considered striking. The losses by fire during the month of October in the United States, and Canada, aggregated over 8,000,000d015, or about 100.000.000d01s per year, a burden of tax heavier, than the national debt imposes. > The Queen commissioned M. Gounod to compose a nuptial march for orchestra and organ for the marriage of Prince Leopold (Duke of Albany) with the Princess Helena of Waldeck.

Brooklyn is the third city in the United States. According to the last census it contains a proportion of 566,689. It has nearly one and a half times more population than San Francisco.

A petition has received the signatures of some of those accustomed to travel on the New York and New Haven railroad, requesting the directors of that road to set apart the rear car on each of the morning trains for the use of those who desire to hold religious services on the train.

Qne of the first acts of President Arthur was to issue an authoritative announcement that in the future no Government appointments will be given to women. Women are no longer to be regarded as eligible for clerkships in the post-offices, pension agencies, &c. Dr Werner Siemens, of "Berlin, has been recently in the United States, with a view of conducting negotiations with the New York Elevated Railroad Companies for the introduction of electricity as a motive power. The proprietors of a cotton factory in Darwen, England, were recently fined £31 9s 6d for keeping their hands at work twelve minutes after the hour for closing by the Factories Act. >

The ex-Empress Eugenic is adding eighteen rooms to her new residence at Farnborough. There is to be a room filled with the relics of Prince Louis Napoleon, and fitted up exactly the same as the one occupied by him at Camden place. The penetentiaries in the United States are beginning to rank among the most flourishing institutions. The warden of the lowa prison has just paid into the State Treasury 20,000 dols of surplus earnings. A Venetian gondolier descends generally from a long line of ancestors, who were for centuries boatmen. A gondola costs about £40. The father lays by, week after week, a small sum, in order to buy his son one, and thus start him in life.

Professor Owen, in an article lately published, questions whether man ever received a third set of teeth. He ascribes alleged cases to the reappearance of old and worn stumps in consequence of the shrinkage and absorption of the jaws. In Prussia (according to an American contemporary), owing to the centuries of military rule, nearly the whole agricultural work is carried on by women, and this has been so from time immemorial, for the old Germans considered anything less than war unworthy of » man.

Bismarck is said to be very much disgusted because his son was beaten as a member of the German Parliament, and the case was still further aggravated by the fact that the young man's successful opponent was the son of the Count's bitterest personal enemy. Diphtheria, auiaU-pox, and scarlet fever aro raging and devastator tho centre aiid lowei portions of Rueai't. V^hatwith these ravagw and Nihilistic bomii*, cbo lot of the Russian is certainly not a happy one.

It will cost £118,000 to insulate the National Library of Paris. The work is expected to be completed by next summer, and the danger to the library will be proportionately lessened. The British Museum is entirely insulated.

Eight or wrong, the opponents of compulsory vaccination in England are in earnest. More than a quarter of a million tracts and other publications have been issued and circulated by the London Society during the past twelve months.

The lighthouse at Planier, in France, is illuminated by the electric light. It can be seen at a distance of twenty-two miles, and it lights up an area of many miles. It cost £12,000. It appears from the accounts of the Paris Jardin dcs Plantes that the current price of an elephant is 12,500 francs ; of a royal tiger, 7000 francs; of a rhinocerous, 13,000 francs; of a camel, 2000 francs.

According to a Berlin telegram, German emigration for tho year 1882 promises to become even more colossal than in the past year. Already, about 14,000 tickets havo been taken by vessels leaving Bremen alono in the early spring for the United States, and every day additional passages are being booked by that route. This does not include Hamburg, whence an almost equal number of emigrants will proceed to tho other side of the Atlantic. The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland has raised no less than 15,000,000d0l to 20,000,000d0l by subscription for various objects in the past ten years. One of the noblest institutions in South Africa is the missionary school at Lovedale, under the Free Church of Scotland. It embraces not only Christian teaching, but every form of instruction that can fit the African to till the soil, provide comfortable homes, and advance step by step towards a complete Christian civilisation.