MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1764, 12 September 1885, Page 6

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— When a body is burned the part which longest resists the action of the fire, after the feaseof the skull and one or two of the most solid portions of the bone, is the liver. The heart, feeing hollow and smaller, is easily destroyed; fout the liver, a moist and solid mass, repels intense heat, and ultimately deposits an ash of pure carbon, which no continued burning or increase of temperature can further change. — In 1874' the average monthly consumption t>f Chinese tea in England was ten million pounds, and that of Indian tea about a million and a-half. In 1884 the consumption of the former had sunk to a little over nine millions, while that of the latter had risen to nearly six million pounds. — Dr A. L. Loomis is credited by the Canada Lancet with. saying { A man can take two or three glasses of stimulants daily and may continue the habit for, perhaps, 25 years without harm, but when this man reaches that period of life when the vital powers are on the decline he suddenly finds himself old before his time, for he has all these years been laying the foundation for chronic endoarteritis. I believe that 50 per cent, of all diseases arise from the use of stimulants.

—The celebrated English physiologist, Dr. Carpenter, has proposed a substantially new version of the germ theory of diseases. He believes, from observations based upon the mutability of bacille, that the same germs may produce different constitutions, a theory that is corroborated, if not confirmed, by recent observations, which show that the bacteria of typhoid fever and malaria are of the same description. — A correspondent of the London Times, writing from Naples, says that all animals whose skins are worth a centime are skinned alive in. that fair city of the sea. Old horses, young kids and lambs, all dogs, cats, and rats are skinned alive, because the skin when removed from the living creature is considered more supple, and sells for somewhat higher price. — For one-and-three-halfpence you can become the owner of a monster volume containing a novel of Thackeray's, one of Dickens', one of Lytton's, one of Reynolds', sorae standard poems, an essay or two, and other literary matter. The type is necessarily small, but it is readable, and the tome is "prof uselyillustrated." — St. James' Gazette.

— The Prime Warden of the Fishmongers' Company, London, told the Society of Arts, in a recent address, that the daily supply received at Billingsgate, the great London fish market, amounted to 500 tons. A ton of fish is equal to the weight of 28 average sheep, so that 500 tons equals a consumption of 14,000 sheep. — According to the Progres Medical, the mortality among children "brought up on the bottle" is frightfully large. Of 4510 infants under one year who died of gastro-intestinal troubles in Paris in 1882, it is found by recent investigations thatvery nearly the whole number were victims of artificial alimentation, wholly or in part, or had been fed prematurely with solid food. At the dispensary of the Societe Philanthropique not a single case of the disease was found in infants fed in conformity with natural laws.

— Improved cabs in England are now provided with electric bells to signal the driver. A new hansom has a receptacle for an umbrella (presumably a wet one) outside the door ; the owner, moreover, will not forget it, because he must raise the. umbrella in order to open the door to get out.

— M. Lessar, the Russian envoy in London, is not a professional diplomatist, but a military engineer. He is under 30 years of age, a fluent talker, and a Chesterfield in deportment. He is by birth a French Jew, and transacts his business with the British Foreign Secretary, not in Russian or English, but in French. - * — « Tommy Atkins "is generally accepted as the typical name of an English soldier, just as John Bull is for an Englishman, and, curiously too, the, first Guardsman wounded in the Soudan was Sergeant Atkins. — The sago of commerce is almost wholly made of potato starch, shaped into small balls, of which the surfaces are then gelatinised by passing over them hot air saturated with steam. There is scarcely any apparent difference between sago so made and the genuine article manufactured from certain tropical plants. Neither should be used at all by fat people. — Thousands of English sparrows have built nests this season on the trestles of the elevated railways in "New York, within six inches of the tracks.

—A verdict of " Death from starvation," or " Death accelerated by privation," was returned last year in thirty-seven cases of inquests held in London. Twenty-six of these cases occured in the eastern division of Middlesex, two in western division, and eight in the central division, while one occurred in the Greenwich division of Kent.

— A hazardous experiment was made some time ago by an association of English philanthropists, who advanced money to send a colony of East Londoners into the Canadian Northwest. Not one of the colonists had the slightest experience in agriculture, yet the settlement is reported to have prospered, and only one man lias deserted.

— Tapioca is prepared from the Cassava | (Jatro2)ha manihot). The tree is propa<*~* from cuttings, and the tubers form v" * „,-vort clustering round the stem, p" " .-uergrOuild, like gigantic sweet rr 1 - -•« Somewhat washing, peeling, j-'"*^ 66 ' A "^ digging, subjected t" -* «°«- Siting up, the pulp is iuicp C - ft %^™ Pressure to express the J „ n-aiea is poisonous. The pulp is afterrttttMS ttried in the sun, and when dry, baked Over a slow fire.

— During: the last two years tha German Chancellor has incesbantly labouted to compass the overthrow of Mr Gladstone. Almost all our difficulties with the German Government, and many Of our difficulties in other quarters, have originated in Prince Bismarck's personal antipathy to the Liberal leaders and their works. — World.

— The last report of the French Department of Agriculture shows how extensive have been the ravages of the grape-destroying phylloxera in that country, but comforts its readers ,by evidence that the pest is decreasing. The statistics given show that France has now more than 1,000,000 acres less devoted to vineyards than she possessed before the appearance of this insect.

— Mr Muswus, the Turkish Ambassador in Londonv has occupied that post for over forty years. The late Mr Van de Weyer was Belgian Minister at London for over thirty years, and Baron Brunnow represented Russia there almost as long. — The old notion of '* combating " with medicines such diseases, as lung inflammation has given plac& to more enlightened views. The system of the late Dr Hughes Bennet is described as "treatment by restoratives directed to further thejuatural progress of the disease, and supporting the vital strength." The Lancet states that the doctor had 105 cases of uncomplicated inflammation of the lungs, which he treated on this principle without a single death.

— Much of the land in • Cambridgeshire, England, belonging to the Earl^ of Hardwicke, who was saved from bankruptcy at the eleventh hour by his sister-in-law, a Rothschild, is let at three shillings an acre to prevent its going out of cultivation, and the highest bid for a property in the same county, sold not long ago for £70,000, was £22^500 last May.

—The famous Pfeffers Hot Springs, near Ragatz, Switzerland, which dried up at the time of the recent eruption of Vesuvius, are running again. — By a fair all-round calculation, it has been definitely ascertained that 40 per cent, of the children attend school in London in the morning breakfastless, 28 per cent, attend in the afternoon without having had any midday meal, and 36 per cent, of the parents are always out of employment. The youth of both_ sexes receive their lessons in morality during school hours, and then go home to the piggeries where the packed families sleep ; they finish studying the exhilarating verse of Dante's " Prophesy " or " Lucy Gray " on Friday evening, and they starve and shiver until the bell calls them hungry to school on Monday morning.

— It is said that one-fourth of all the property in Ecuador belongs to the church. There is a Catholic church for every 150 of the inhabitants, and 10 per cent, of the population of the country are priests, monks, or nuns. Besides this, '272 of the 365 days of the year are observed as feast or fast days. The priests control the Government in all its branches. Seventy-five per cent, of the people can neither read nor write.

— An Italian doctor has lately asserted that the workmen in borax f actories appear to possess a charm against the attacks of cholera. During the terrible epidemic of 1864-65, the workman in seven contiguous factories in Italy were quite free from disease which killed off onethird of the population of a village in their immediate neighbourhood. He .recommends the internal administration of borax as a specific for cholera in doses of five grammes (seventy-seven grains) each day. He believes that it not only destroys the microbes in the intestinal canal, but also in the blood. *

• — In 1771 the population of the city of New York was a little over 21,000; and in 1786, three years after the close of the Revolutionary War, ithad23, 6l4inhabitants. In 1880 it was 1,206,299. The population of New York city has doubled six times within a century— doubling, on an average, once in every 17 years. In other words, the New York oi to-day is 64 times as large as the New York of 100 years ago.

— The Italian savant Narducci has just laid before the Academia dei Lincei a number of documents showing that Pope Sixtus V. and the Republic of Venice were at one time negotiating for the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez ; a plan which was only abandoned for fear lest the difference in the level of the two seas would quickly cause the traffic to be impeded by the sand. — Court Journal.

— There may lurk in Lord Rondolph Churchill, though he is no longer in his first manhood, some unsuspected sobering force; but ho has seemed to the world as yet a political Puck, with a strain in him which admirers might misinterpret into genius, but also a strain of waywardness, deepeniug occasionally until his foes have half-doubted his perfect sanity. Very close observers who wish him to win doubt his ever winning, and declare in sporting language that although he has courage, form, and a turn of speed, he is incurably a jibbing horse. Be that as it may, he hat., as yet, given no impression of being what the French call a " serious " politician, or of belonging to the class in which a nation like the English, which is essentially gra ve, will put its trust. — Spectator.

— An Englishwoman " for more than quarter of a century resident in Roumania " says : — We have a court unimpeachable in morality, and a queen gentle, dignified, and good — president of an orphanage where some three hundred children are trained for their work in life; organiser of a Society of Sisters of Charity ; of an industrial school for the advancement of native industry ; patroness of the Bucharest Ladies' Benevolent Association, &c.

— Unlike his great predecessors, Gortschakoff and Nesselrode, unlike, indeed, all former Chancellors of Holy Russia, De Giersis no Muscovite born. He is understood to be of HebrewTeuton descent — to be, in short, a German Jew, and, if contemporary gossip be correct, his paternal patronymic is no other than the sufficiently characteristic one of Hirsch. Like every other incomer, however, De Giers is more Russian than the Russians themselves. Besides, as his policy shows, he is a man of brilliant intellect, keenly alive to the weaknesses and blunders of his enemies, and careless of the means so that the end he has proposed to himself be gained. — Trawling, though a familiar word, has not hitherto been one of much meaning to the general public. Few persons are aware that somo of the choicest forms of sda-fish, such as soles, turbot, and brill, are taken almost entirely by this method of fishing. Fewer still have any idea that 3000 deep-sea trawlers work off the coasts of Great Britain, employing a capital of £15,000,000, and catching annually about £3,000,000 worth offish ; or that the proportion of trawled fish to that taken in other ways in the London market is about five or six to one,