MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1640, 28 April 1883, Page 6

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— The Sultan of Turkey has commenced the foundation of a national public library, and has ordered all tho liforary treasures now buried in mosques and religious houses to be sent to Constantinople as the nucleus of the new library. He has invited several European ibrarians to assist him in the work.

— After the Ist of May in Chicago, no person or corporation will bo permitted to maintain or use any telegraph pole, telegraph wire or electric conductor in any street or alley pf that city. Every groat fire adds new emphasis to the cry of "Put tho wires undergiound." • — The total amount annually received or expended on Queen Victoria and the other members of the royal family is £893,352. In this is included maintenance of palaces, expenditure in connection with royal yachts (£35,885), households of deceased sovereigns (£6475), and many other such items. It is estimated that about £50,000 per annum would have to be expended were there no royal family to provide for.

— The campaign in Egypt having brought prominently to tho notice of the War Office the value and importance of a properly organised railway corps for service with an army in the field, the Secretary of State for War has under consideration a proposal by which theso duties would ba taken over by the corps of Royal Engineers. The idea is fco form separate companies for railway work. — The richest unmarried woman on the Pacific Coast is Miss Jennie Flood, who has 2,500,000d0l United States four per cents registered in her own name. She is very pious, and there is talk of her taking the veil. — English physicians claim to have discovered an antidote for alcohol in the kola nut, a product of tropical Africa. It contains anore cafeine than coffee, and has also the active principle of cocoa_ without its fatty matter. The negroes of Jamaica use it as a remedy for intoxication, and balieve that a single nut ground into a paste, will sober a drunken man in half an hour.

— A collected edition of the poems of the late Dr Robert Chambers is about to be issued in Edinburgh. The edition will be limited to 140 copies, will contain a new portrait of the author, and to the early poems numerous pieces, written in later life, have been added. —Several bags of cloves lately received in* London from Zanzibar were found on arrival to contain artificial cloves neatly manufactured by machinery. They were made of soft deal, stained of a dark colour, and soaked in a solution of- essence of cloves to give them the requisite spicy odour. It is further added, that they were traced to having been imported from America into Zanzibar.

— During the month of November of last year there were 4400 burials in Paris. Of this number 1207 were made without the observance of any religious ceremony whatever. The fact has been cited as evidencing the growth of atheism in France.

— The Indian census returns (says the Pioneer) show an aggregate of over 3000 professional acrobats in the North-West Provinces and Oudh. There are 1100 actors, 3000 ballet singers, 146 curers by incantations, 133 gamblers, 97 snake charmers, 50 match makers, four poets, 10,000 singers and dancers, four storytellers, and seven thieves.

—A singular death has occurred at Derby England. A servant girl in the employ of an alderman of the borough was found dead, susponded . by the neck from a roller towel behind the kitchen door. She had been in good health and spirits a short time before, and the supposition is that while wiping her face her neck was caught in the towel and she was suffocated. That, at lea&t, was the finding of the jury.

— The Beaumont borer has succeeded in piercing 130 yards of the Channel Tunnel heading at Sangatte, as the result of one week's work,' the highest average yet reached. — The municipality of Paris expended £32,000 in art instruction for artisans last year. At Rouen a large number of artisans attended the evening art schools. At Liege, in Belgium, out of a population of 100,000, there are over 6000 young men similarly occupied upon five or six evenings of the week. —No man in Great Britian will, henceforward, by the mere fact of marriage with a woman, acquire any proprietary rignts of any property which sucn woman owns at the time of her marriare, or which she may subsequently acquire. This is the result of the Marripd Women's Property Act, passed by the British Parliament last session.

— At Maldon, England, Quarter Ssssions lecantly, George Pudney pleaded guilty to a charge of maliciously killing a sheep. The animal had, evidently, beeti "severed in the middle, the skin being first removed while the sheep was still alive. A sentence of twelve months' imprisonment with hard labor was passed.

— An ordinance adopted by the Board of Aldermen of New, York, which came into effect on January Ist forbids the sale of dead poultry in the city with food in their crops. The penalty for tho violation of this ordinance is five dollars for each full-cropped dead bird exposed for sale.

— Scientific men have for some time suspected that parts of Greenland are slowly but steadily sinking. Some recent observations confirm this belief. Between latitude GOdeg and 70deg buildings have to be continually moved inland, or they get below the , level of he sea. On the other hand there are avidences that the land is rising in Sweden and Norway. Buildings have to be continually removed so as to bring them down to the level of the sea.

— Mr L. KitXj one of the earliest promoters of -he now flourishing Victorian wine trade, is now the first to show what may be done with an over abundant crop of apples. Down at Brighton ho has erected machinery for cider Tfiaking, and has already manufactured upwards of 10,000 gallons. He expects to make 20,000 allons before the close of the season. He obtains abundance of apples at £2 per ton, and on the average, one ton of apples make 100 eallons of cider.

— China is ahead on bridges ; the largest in beworld being her structure at Lagang, over •inarm of the China sea. It is fi e miles long, ouilt entirely of stone, has 300 arches 70 feet .lißh, and a roadway of 70 feet wide. The aarapet is a balustrade, and each of the pillars, : hich are 75 feet apart, support, a pedestal on Vnich is placed a lion, 21 teet long, made of one •)lock of marble.

. "T^ ue inoculation (if doga with the virus of •Tyarophobia ay a protection for society against bat horrible malady, ia urged M. Pableur, vno for the past ten years has been experimenting with mad dogs. Animals inoculated successfully did not have a return of the disease, and therefore he thinks that a general and compulsory inoculation of dogs would save the world untimately from exposure to hydrophobia.

— Rents m Scotland still continue to fall. A * g oJ& rm i n Berwickshire was recently re-let at £600, after haying for many years commanded £830. I his is a reduction of about ■ a per cent. Ihe conditions of the new lease <re said, hi addition, to be very liberal.

—Good conduct stripes are now granted to English letter-carriers. Each stripe carries Is a week of good conduct pay with ifc. For tho first class (three slripos) the men must have served fifteen years, for the second class (two stripes) ten years, for the third class (one stripe) five years, and their conduct must have been satisfactory during these periods. — Speaking at the Sheffield School of Art recently, Mr Mundella, M. P., referred to the necessity, if England was to compete with foreign makers, of combining art with manufactures, believing that in these days cheapness was not so important as beauty in form, colour, and texture. He urged workmen to attend schools of art not merely for prizes, but for ttie advantages a knowledge of art would give, and said he should be thankful if some effort were made to retain the splendid offer Mr liuskin had made to the town.

—Within a day's journey of tho New Guinea coast, Port Moresby, may be found pandanus trees, orchids, magnificent banyan trees, wild strawberries and raspberries, birds of paradise, bell-birds, sugarcane, and bananas. No wonder Queensland wants to appropriate Now Guinea. — Ballooning has become so popular in Vienna that the Municipal Council have deemed it advisable to pass a law, "That all married men desirous of taking aorial voyages shall not be grauted licence until it has been proved to the satisfaction of the authorities that they have received the consent of their wives and children. "

— As showing the extent to which newspapers are extending their circulation, it ib stated that tho Liverpool Daily Post, Echo, and Weekly Post have altogether a weekly salo of 428j605 copies.

— Tt is now claimed that papor can be utilized for the manufacture of rails, in place of steel, which has almost displaced iwra. It is said in favour pf the new material that the cost per mile will be less by one-third than that of steel, and it will last much longer, being almost indestructible. There is no expansion or contraction from heat and cold, consequently no loose or open joints, and, being so much lighter than steel or iron, tho rails can be made longer and connections perfectly solid, making the road as smooth as one continuous rail.

— A Russian banker, who insured a letter for the value of 1600. roubles, when it contained 120,000 roubles.or about £16,000, has just lost that amount for his trickery, the postal authorities detecting the cheat and appropriating the money as the law directs.

— The longest line of fence in the world will be the wire fence extending from the Indian Territory west across the Texas Pan-Handle, and 35 miles into New Mexico. Eightyfive miles of this fence is already under contract. Its course will be in the line of the Canadian river, and its purpose is to stop the drift ot the Northern cattle. It is a bold and splendid enterprise, aud will pay a large percentage on the invesment. The fence will be over 200 miles 1 '

— Professor Virchow, the German scientist, has in his famous laboratory at Berlin a collection of GOOO skulls, representing all races and times.

— Sir Samuel Wilson owns no fewer than 53 runs in the Albert district, not to speak of his other possessions. No wonder he could bid for Hughenden Manor.

—According to official returns just out, tho British Army is composed of 124,434 Englishmen, 13,723 Scotchmen, and 36,9-15 Irishmen. It is estimated that over eighty per cent, of the sailors in the Navy are Englishmen. —It would cost £14,000,000 to illuminate London with the electric light ; that is, to provide the apparatus required. — British army statistics show that tho effective strength on' January 1, 1882, was. 189,133, against 188,958 at the same time in ISBI. The total number of desertions was 4412, of whom 1353 reourned. , — The Bengal Methodist reports a body of five hundred natives who have applied for baptism at a Wesleyan station in the Madras Presidency. — A London dentist uses a small incandescent carbon lamp to illuminate the cavity of the mouth during dental operations.

— The Marquis of Lome is to be made a peer, so tho cable informs us. As the eldest son of the Duke of Argyll, the Marquis is, of course, heir to a peerage, but while the old man lives the son is only a commoner, and those Highlanders are so confouudedly tough that there's no saying how long the old Duke will hold out, perhaps even to surviving the son, in which event the Princess Louise will be but a commoner's wife, after all, and that does not ' sort well' with Court notions of the dignity appertaining to Royalty. Hence the younpr Campbell's elevation.

# — An engineer in Oregon has put into practical operation a plan recently proposed for removing sand from rivers. According to the Inter-Ocean he removed 22,000 cubic yards at a cost of lOOOdol, while by dredging the cost would have been 10,000dol. The process is to load a steamer by the stern, anchor her head up stream, and then let her turn her propeller. This loosens the sand, which is carried away by the current. A steamer in that way deepened the channel of the Columbia river 18 feet, by a width of 75 feet, in 20 minutes.

—While the elephant is the largest beast known to the world, its size has been greatly exaggerated. -Ten feet is a good height for one of the brutes, and a twelve foot elephant is a big one. Jumbo, the notorious, is about seventeen feet high, and "still growing." these quadrupeds reach between seventy and eighty years of age before they die, but there are instances of elephants living for over two hundred years.

—An evidence of the weakening of caste in India has occurred lately among the Sentals in a district north of Calcutta, where the Free Church of Scotland sustains a mission. Quite a number of the natives became Christians, but it was distinctly understood that whoever ate with them, or attended the Christian schools, should be treated as outcasts, and compelled to pay fine if reinstated. In course of time, however, so many violated the law in this particular that the head man of the district called a council, wherein it was agreed that eating with Christians should no longer be considered a crime. Such a public act is very significant, and the missionaries are jubilant. '

— An elderly lady in Athens, Ga., owns the original manuscript of " Home Sweet Home," as written by John Howard Payne. The words of the poem as first written are all interlined, with here and there an endearing expression from the writer to the lady who now holds it. In the old days Payne was devotedly attached to her, aud she has many of his letters. She has been offered a largo sum for the manuscript.

— The growth of the dairy interests in France of late years is quite surprising Statistics show that France produces enough milk to form a stream one metre (forty inches) wide and a third of a metre deep, flowing at the rate of one metre per second, day and night, throughout the year. The young animals consume a part of fhis enormous volume of milk, the_ French people drink another large part, whilo the remainder is convorted into butler and cheese.