MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1651, 14 July 1883, Page 6

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— Dr Barnardo's annual report of the state of the Homes for Destitute Children is to hand. In it thedoctorsays :— "The large family of little ones now under my care numbers 1250 orphan, destitute, and neglected children, an increase of 150 since the last report was issued. For the supply of their daily wants and the maintenance of our general Mission Work in East London, a sum of £100 per diem has been and is required." — One of the most remarkable cases of advance in the price of a book that the Ashburnham collection affords is the " Albani Missal," which was bought by an Englishman in Rome in 1838 for £20, and sold not long afterwards for £700, while its present value is supposed to be over £10,000. — So late as last year Dr Proust, in a paper to the Academy of Medicine, made the statement that there were then no fewer than 219,270 houses in France without a window.

— In the statue of Luther which is to be erected in Washington next November, " Luther," a correspondent says. " appears in colossal bronze, clad in a ministerial robe, holding the Bible in his left arm, upon which his closed right hand rests. The figure will cost £900 in Europe, and the expenses of transportation and pedestal, will be £500 more."

— The number of paper mills in the world is 4000, which produce 1,000,000 tons of paper a year. Great Britain alone makes £350,000,000 per annum. — Prussia gets an income tax out of everybody who earns £45 or more, and has just remitted the tax from 3,740,000 people who earn less.

— In the South Kensington Museum, London, is a small watch about one hundred years old, representing an apple, the golden base ornamented with grains of pearl. — John Guttridge Sharman, grandson of a popular Methodist preacher, has been poisoned at Sheffield by a dose of homoeopathic medicine administered to him by his mother. — A story comes from Canton, China, of a woman who, to punish a female slave who had stolen some food, cut a slice from the girl's thigh and made her cook and eat it. — It costs about £25,000 to sail and keep in repair the four yachts kept for the use of Queen Victoria. The original cost of the principal one, the Victoria and Albert, was £120,000, and great sums have since been expended in alterations and decorations. — A hospital for Mussulman women, presided over exclusively by Russian female doctors, has been established by General Tchernaieff at Tashkend. This is the first time that Russian women have been admitted to seperate and independent medical practice. — It is estimated that there are 70,000 dead laws on the statute books of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio, and the Detroit Free Press observes that the only way for a stranger to find out the live ones is to swing his hat on some street corner and yell out that he is from the headwaters of Fighting Creek. — At Heidelberg, the other day, an Englishman, being much put out at the way a student used his knife at dinner, at length ventured to suggest that he might cut his mouth if he continued the operation. The student remarking that he had a birthright to lacerate his mouth to his heart's content, left the hall, and sent a challenge, and was subsequently shot dead by the Englishman. — Italian murderers are very rarely hanged, but their fate is, if convicted, far from pleasant. Passavante, who tried to kill King Humbert in 1878, is fastened to the wall of a nearly dark cell by a five-foot chain rivited to his ankle. He has become imbecile. — There is said to be at Redcar, a small village in England, a cork model of Lincoln Cathedral, made by a ploughman, which contains the extraordinary number of one million odd corks, and occupied ten years and seven months in building. — That scientific wonders will never cease is again illustrated by the fact that fireproof houses can now be built out of cotton and straw. In the first instance, the cotton used is the refuse of the plantations and factories. It is converted into paste, which gets to be as hard as stone, and is called architectural cotton. It is made in large slabs. — The shape of the new British man-of war Mars i* so particular that her keel cannot be laid in any of the usual building slips, and the vessel must be constructed in one of the docks, t&reat care is taken to prevent strangers having any opportunity of making any examination of the model and drawings.

— There is still extant in the Post-office Department at Washington a small folio ledger of not more than three quires of paper, aipon which Franklin, when PostmasterGeneral, kept all his acounts for two years. — John Bright, at a public meeting recently, stated that his father was a hand in the facto-s-ies in Toad Lane, Rochdale, -and that he made up his mind that he would probably marry when his wages reached a guinea a week. The occasion was the opening of a new infirmary given to Rochdale by Mr Watson, a silk manufacturer, who began as a workman and now employs hundreds of hands. — The German papers are greatly exercised over the frightful extravagance of the German Government in paying £1,094,801 in army pensions for the current year. In the GermanFrench war the armies of Germany reached 1,125,000 men. The total enlistments of the "United States' army in the War of the Rebellion fell short of that number by 125,000 men. The pensions now paid yearly by the United States aggregate about £20,000,000. —At London public dinners .of late it has ceased to be fashionable to rise to any toast except that of the Queen. Lord Aberdeen incidentally explained at the British Orphan Asylum dinner' the real reason for the change in society manners. He stated that the Prince of Wales discouraged rising to any toast save that of the Queen. At the Mansion House dinner the other night, the toast of " the Prince of Wales and the rest of the Royal Family" was received by the company sitting, although the Duke of Edinburgh was at the table.

— A very plain-spoken report, which has rust been issued by the Adminstration of Prisons at St. Petersburg, declares that their present condition is deplorable, and announces that the sum of £100,000— a mere bagatelle — has been assigned this year for the extention and impoopement of the State prisons. The oreport declares that the prisons, which afforded .accommodation for only 76,000 persona are crowded with at least 100,000, and that five prisoners are crammed into cells designed for •one, with results as to Riorality which can be imagined. —From the inquiries conducted by Professor .H. Cohn, Breslau, Bince 1865, it appears that short-sightedness ia rarely or never born with those Bubject to it, and it is almost always the result of strains sustained by the eye during study in early youth. A better construction of achool desks, an improved typography •of text-books and sufficient lighting of classirooms are the remedies proposed to aba,te this malady.

— A correspondent writes to the London Pall Mall Gazette that "of the 7500 members of the bar of England, 13 per cent appear to be in practice abroad, 37 per cent appear to be in practice here, and 50 per cent appear not to practice at all. Still the 37 per cent wbo are in practice here amount in all to 2700, so that, when opened, the nineteen courts in the new Law Courts could each be provided with a separate bar consisting of about 145 practicing counsel."

— "Metalline" bricks, made of the beßt Welsh clays, are now used in the chemical works of Lancashire to resist the action of acids and alkalies. The brick is very dense and free from pores, and is formed under pressure. They are used for "revolver" linings ; and such is their power of resisting acids, that a brick boiled for two months continouusly in vitriol was quite unaffected. — An interesting discovery has recently been made in the Marburg archives in the shape of 30 large parchment volumes containing the official documents relatingto the employment of Hessian troops by the British Government, and to their participation in the American war. These volumes not only contain the entire diplomatic negotiations between the Landgrave of Hesse and Great Britian. but also the complete correspondence of this Prince with his generals in America, with excellent sketches and maps of the localities of the Hessian headquarters. _ —A buried treasure of gold and silver coins, rings, brooches, and other ornaments, was discovered recently at Slagelse, in Zealand. The Slagelseposter says that 56 of the silver coins are English— Edward I. to Edward 111. There were 37 gold pieces of Philip VI. of Valois ; and two gulden of the burggraf Freidrich V. of Nuremberg (1372-98). The largest number of gold pieces in the "find" are gulden coin at Lubeck between 14U0 and 1450, of which there are 144. The silver pieces of Philip VI. (210 in number, were coined in Tours. — At Chester, England, on February 21st, a man named Henry Wickham was charged with being a wandering lunatic. In the dock he delivered an oration on Washington and Columbus, and declared that he was the husband of the richest woman in Philadelphia. Apparently it was a clear case, and he was sent to the Country Lunatic Asylum, where he was recognised as having been in that institution four times before. The Chief Constable of Chester thereupon made an investigation, and found that the man had sojourned for short periods in more than forty country asylums. He is, in a word an ingenious impostor, who simulates madness in order to secure the comfortable fare and treatment bestowed on lunatics. —Advices from the West Coast of Africa state that a native trial on a large scale was recently proceeding at Tyamah, Mendi country, concerning more than 100 people charged with cannibalism ; the native belief being that these people transformed themselves into leopards or tigers by evil fetish or gre-gre, or covered their bodies with skins, and preyed on unsuspecting travellers and traders on the towns. All the kings and chiefs of the adjacent countries are present at this solemn palaver, which is expected to last about four weeks. There is no doubt that cannibalism is still secretly carried on, and murders committed to satisfy this horrible craving. The native punishment for this offence is roasting alive. — The London Standard says that the petitions presented to Parliament in favour of the Manchester ship canal measure ten and a half miles long.and weigh seven hundredweight. It also says that they contain 200,000 signatures. —The Nouvelle Revue contains an interesting study of the prehistoric races of Africa, which claims that Northern Africa and Europe formed one continent, and were inhabited by white races during the earliest ages. — In Germany, the suppression, or limitation, of the use of aniline dyes in the manufacture of articles of clothing is being agitated. These dyes have been found to be highly prejudicial, and even dangerous, in some recent remarkable instances, and so strong is the feeling in opposition to their use that it is likely to take the form of a Parliamentary action. — It is a singular fact that it has taken Italy seventeen years, as it did the United States, to resume specie payments. The present Prime Minister of Italy, Signor Depretis, now seventy-two years of age, has the satisfaction of bringing to a triumphant conclusion the policy oi preparation for resumption which he inaugurated when in the Cabinet in 1876. —The Due de Charters, who is the youngest brother of the Comte de Paris, the heir of Louis when France was in [her extremity, dropped his title and joined the army as Robert Lefert. His farewell words to his regiment on his enforced retirement were : " I was by your side at Solferino, and with the army of the Loire, and I shall be there the next time fighting is to be done."

— In a few hours a pitcher of water will absorb all the respired gases in the room, the air of which will have become much purer, but the water utterly filthy. The colder the water is the greater capacity to contain these gases. At ordinary temperature a pail of water will absorb a pint of carbonic acid gas and several pints of ammonia. The capacity is nearly doubled by reducing the water to the temperature of ice. Hence water kept in a room awhile is unfit for use. Impure water is more injurious than impure air.

— " Old Betty Morgan," a resident of the Vale of Llangollen, well known to tourists in Wales, died recently at the age of 107 years. Two of her orphan children are over 80 yearß old. Until within a fortnight of her death she was remarkably hearty and well, and could even make long journeys on foot. She was very fond of smoking the last 50 or 60 years of life, and continued the practice as long as she could hold a pipe in her jaws. — At the Nuremberg exhibition was shown a novel use of bricks of coiks. These bricks have only been used for building purposes on account of their lightness and isolating properties, but they are also employed as a covering for boilers, and are said to excel even asbestos in preventing the radiation of heat. They are stated to be very cheap, being prepared of small corks, refuse and isolating cement. At Nuremberg, the application^ of cork bricks was largely shown. The usual size of cork bricks is 10 x 4| x 2£ inches. —In some places in Europe steel bare are used in preference to bells, supplanting them sometimes altogether in church steeples, and producing very fair, distinct, and melodious sounds. An English writer even advocates their general use, on the ground that, while m point of sonorousness they are equal to the common bell, in certain other respects they are to be preferred to it. They are also much cheaper than bells. —Prince Louis Jerome Bonaparte, Becond son ,of Prince Napoleon, has been entered at Cheltenham College. It is proposed that he shall remain at Cheltenham until his period of military serviqe commences, about two years hence.