MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1645, 2 June 1883, Page 6

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— A weil-clad and respectable man recently created a. great stir in London by promenading the streets sandwiched betweon two boards which bore these placards : " General Post office — Discharged for not saluting a clerk. Twenty-five years Her Majesty's servant." — " The day is coming," says an American exchange, "when a letter will go anywhere within the United States for one cent, a dispatch for ten, and a man for a cent a mile." — A yonngman named Timlin, who was taken to the New Haven, Conn., Alma House, recently, for examination as regards his sanity, was found to be suffering f rom a screw in the back of his head. Timlin claims that he was shot, and that the pistol was loaded with the screw. • — Alfred and Edwin Lister, Scotchmen, of sixty-five and sixty-eight years respectively, manufacturers of fertilizers in Newark, lately distributed sixteen thousand dollars among their five hundred employes, having made up their minds a year ago to divide a certain percentage of their earnings yearly among their hands pro rata. — The Crown Prince of Prussia received a telegram of congratulation on the occassion of his silver wedding, from the fourteen-year-old Emperor of China — the first time that a Celestial Majesty ever condescended to show a personal interest in the affairs of earthly royalty. — Next to sugar the most important industry in Mauritus is the extraction of fibre from the " yucca" plant, improperly designated an aloe. The cost of production is about £20 per ton, and the value io London about £30. — A curious conference is to take place soon in St. Petersburg between representative delegates of the religious sects in Russia, when, it is hoped, a universal creed can be arranged by Blight mutual concessions, that will bind them all into one religion. — In the report of Dr Means, of Portland, he asserts that, "in proportion to the aid and means employed, no missions to the heathen since the Apostolic age have been more successful than those to the American Aborigines." — From the eighteenth annual report of the Trustees of the Peabody bequests in London it appears that 7829 rooms, occupied by 14,604 persons, have been provided for the laborers of the metropolis, and that thirty-three blocks, containing 1885 rooms, will be opened during the present year. — Lord Shrewsbury, who is already well known in sporting circles, has become a cab proprietor. He has about half-a-dozen cabs on the stand already. The horses are really fine animals, and such as form a singular contrast to the ordinary hansom steeds. — It is proposed in Paris that a medical service be formed for the purpose of ascertaining what chronic or constitutional disease affect the teeth, eyes or ears of the pupils in the ' public achools, and of devising suitable remedies for the ailments. — Bismarck's paper, the North German Gazette, refers reproachfully to the fact that the North German Llyod Company has ordered from a well-known Clyde firm a couple of steamers, each of 2200 tons burden and 6000 horse power. Such conduct, it suggests, is both unpatriotic and anti-protectionist. — There is a watch in a Swiss museum only three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter inserted in the top of a pencil-case. Its little dial not only indicates hours, minutes, and seconds, but also days of the month. — A fish of solid gold, of the value of £500, is reported to have been dug np in OberLausitz, the border land betweea Saxony and Silesia. Its surface is said to be incised with mythological figures, wrought after archaic Greek patterns. — Engineers in Berlin are experimenting in war balloons and photography. It has been found quite practicable to mount to a height out of range, and on the way up to use an electrical apparatus by which a view of the underlying country can be taken in less than a second. ■ — The area of towns in Ireland with more than 2000 inhabitants was in 1881 only 119,792 statue acres, while the rural area was 167 times greater. — In Berlin with a population of 1,145,000, the church attendance is less than 35,000, notwithstanding that the library and public places are closed. — Th 6 average amount of travel over the fourteen bridges across the Thames in London is 384,042 pedestrians and 75,325 vehicles per diem. — In 1881 the lunatics in England would have peopled two towns as large as Bath and Torquay. — One of the most valuable points to Ger many in regaining Alsace-Lorraine was the recovery of an extraordinary rich hop-produc-ing district. — There is said to be in a graveyard in Pennsylvania a tombstone inscribed, ' Methuselah Smith, aged one year.' — Germany has purchased a tract of land in Mexico for the purpose of forming a German colony ; 1,000,000 acres have already been acquired, and 9,000,000 more are to be purchased if possible. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, jun., the inheritor of an illustrious name, has been appointed to a seat on the supreme judicial bench of Massachusetts at the early age of 41. He is the editor of what is now the standard edition of " Kent's Commentaries." — The abolition of slavery in Brazil is reported to be going forward rapidly. The Emancipation Society has adopted the plan of working in one province at a time, and so concentrating its influence. — The International Art Exhibition held in Rome this winter has astonished the world of ' art by unmistakable proofs that Italy has awakened from her slumber of centuries, and 1 promises to produce once more masterpieces in . painting. — A million and a half of kangaroos, 178,000 rabbits, besides wallaroos, wallabies, paddy ' melons, and native dogs, were destroyed during the past twelve months in New South Wales. • —In the Colac district (Victoria), the rabbits are breeding — a fact never known j before at this time of the year. | — An English paper asserts that it costs as i much to transport a bushel of wheat twelve I miles on a turnpike road in England as from an American seaport across 3000 miles of ocean. — A child named Beatrice Rowland, eleven years of age, was admitted to the Bendigo Hospital recently suffering from severe burns, alleged to have been caused by her mother pouring boiling hot soup over her. — Sir W. J. Clarke recently transmitted a handsome platypus skin rug as a present to H. R. H. the Prnice of Wales. Tho present, which cost a hundred guineas, was enclosed in a handsomely-finished portmanteau. — Over 30,000 people in New York are comSelled by their occupations to turn night into ay (says a San Francisco paper), and, judging by the direction in which things are now dvivag, all factories and mills will eventually run through th.c 2.4 houra.

— There are now between three and four hundred Christian schools in China, containing ovor six thousand pupils. A Presbyterian kdy-missionaiy, mentioning thia phase of Christian work, claims that through tho agency of these schools, " before many years, it the church is faithful to her tru^k, the whole Chinese Empire will be full of light." — According to the United States railway returns for 1880 there were 11G5 companies* having in round numbers 87,000 miles of railway in operation — about equivalent to a track extending four times round the world. Iho cost of this gigantic system was nearly 5,660,000,000d01, of which about two-fifths has been paid for, and the companies are in debt for the balance.

— It is estimated that there are five times as many kinds of insects as there species of all other living things put together. The oak alone gives shelter and support to 4/10 species of insects, and 200 kinds make their home in pine trees. In 1849, Alexander yon Humboldt estimated that the number of species preserved in collections was between 150,000 and 170,000, but scientific men now say that there must be something like 700,000 species. — A new artificial ivory of a pure white colour, and very durable, has recently been manufactured by the inventor of polluloid : it is perpared by dissolving shellac iv ammonia, mixing the solution in oxide of zinc, driving off ammonia by heating, powdering, and strongly compressing in moulds. — The London Globe says :—": — " Taking compassion on a tiger at tho Jardin dcs Plantes the other day, a Frenchmen endeavoured to break a few wires of its cage. The tiger added its own efforts, widened the hole, and at last bounded off through the garden. Its emanci pator isnowin a cage himself, at the police office, awaiting the arrival of a compassionate tiger to release him."

— Good evidence of the value and power of the mission schools in the Turkish Empire is found in an article recently printed in a Turkish newspaper, of Constantinople, which affirms that no schools in the Empire are so pernicious as are the American ; and the authorities are urged to counteract their influence by issuing a proclamation that no one educated in these schools can hold any position in the , gift of the Government. — Missionary Herald. — Sir Capel Fitzgerald, Bart., whose name was so prominently before the public a season or two ago, is a member of a bill-broking firm in Cannon-street ; Sir George Augustus Leeds, Bart., is a clerk in the bank of England, and may be seen sitting on his stool any day in the week ; and Sir William Johnstons, Bart., of Caskijoen, with a pedigree going back to the days of the great Bruce, is in the employment, as clerk, of the Orential Banking Corporation.

— The following is the area of London parks : Hyde Park, 380 acres ; Kensington Gardens, 290 ; St James' and the Green Park together, 154 ; Regent's Park, 403 ; Victoria Park, 280 ; Battersea Park, 230 ; Greenwich Park, 174; Crystal Palace, 168; Alexandria Park, 192; Clapham Common, 100; Epping Forest, over 5000 ; Kensington Park, 15 ; Camberwell, 5—73915 — 7391 acres all told, a very respectable area of pleasure ground even for so large a city as London. — A rope of refined cast-steel has just beensent by the Roeblings from tbeir mills in Trenton to San Francisco. It is 50,440 feet long, and its diameter is one inch and a quarter, and it weighs 51,000 pounds. It was put in two box cars, each open at one end, half the rope in one car and half in the other, in continuous coil. The rope is for a cable road.

— An English inventor has devised a huge listening trumpet, by which a faint sound at sea is caught up and rendered audible on shipboard. Such an apparatus has been erected on the North Sunderiand pier, and it has been found that if a ship is hailed from this pior the person hailing can hear quite distinctly through the opening in the vibrating funnel the reply sent. Experiments are to be made to test the efficacy of the apparatus in fogs at sea.

— One of the most interesting works of art in the coming Paris Salon will be Gustavo Dore's splendid statue of the elder Dumas. The artist had entirely completed the figure, which hehad intended to exhibit at the Salon, so that his executors and the committee for the erection of the statue will be fulfilling the last wish of the sculptor in placing the cast before the Parisian public at the Palais Ac l'lndustrie,

— Emigration from some parts of Switzerland (the Geneva correspondent of the Times says) is becoming a veritable exodus. Several communes in the Bernese Oberland are almost depopulated ; one train alone recently took 900 emigrants from the Bernese Jura, and there was another large departure afterwards from Berne. The movement is attributable, in about equal measure, to bad trade and agricultural distress. Failures in business are numerous, and the suspension of another large bankinghouse, this time at Solothurn, has been announced.

— The late Prince Charles of Prussia left £6,000,000 to his son, Prince Fredrick Charles, whose daughter, the Duchess of Connaught, may ultimately receive a considerable supplement to the modest dot (£6000) settled on her by Prussia at her marriage. The Prince also inherits the estate and schloss of Sonnenberg, and the charming residence of Gilenicke, near Potsdam, where his father kept his famous pack of blood hounds.

— Louise Michel, the French petroleuse, says that Englishmen treat working women far better than the Frenchmen do. Women labourers at Lille work fourteen hours a day fora franc and a half (fifteen pence.) In the south of Italy matters are far worse. There may be seen gangs of women half naked dragging the plough in place of oxen and urged on by the farmer's goad, whilst for payment they receive a few bronze coins and a handful of lentils.

— His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, premier Duke of England, tried to enter Palace Yard, London, during the Bradlaugh demonstration at the opening of Parliament, but was prevented by a policeman, who didn't recognise him. In vain the Duke revealed his august dignity. " You a Peer?"- cried the guardian of the law; "your no peer; your a Bradlaughite." And the Duke had to give it up as a bad job. — The census returns of the Northwest Provinces of India and Oude enumerate more than 3000 professional "acrobats," 1100 "actors," 3000 "ballad singers," 146 "curers by incantation," 33 " gamblers," 97 " snake charmers," 50 "match makers," 10,000 "singers and dancers." 4 *' poets," 4 "sfcory-tellers," and 7 " thieves." There are moro than 7,500,000 cultivators of the soil, nearly 10,000 land-holders, and nearly 40,000 money-lenders. —Tho distinction of making the deepest sounding in the Atlantic ever yet recorded has been achieved by the officers of the Coast and Geodetic Survey steamer Blake, just returned lo New York after a two month's survey. The deepest soundings ever before reported was 3802 fathoms, having been made by the Challenger, sent out by the Royal Society of England. The depth rsached by the Blake was 4501 fathoms. The location of the sounding was 75 miles north of San Juan, Porto Rico, and not far from the point at which the Challenger Bank her deepest lead,