MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1777, 12 December 1885, Page 7

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— The Jesuits are active in missionary work. A Catholic magazine, in reviewing the work of the Society of Jesus, counts up 3592 Jesuits engaged in missionary work. They have 2500 stations, and are said to have converted last year 9000 adult heathens. — The over-fishing of the last 15 or 20 years is doing for pearls what it long ago did for oysters. Fashion als&> bears its part in raising prices, and a good set of three black-pearl shirt studs cannot now be got wholesale much under £40. Four years ago they could be had for less than a third of the price. — The monster petition of the Salvation Army regarding the protection of girls, recently presented to the English Parliament, was two miles 600 yards and one foot long, and bore upwards of 393,000 signatures.

— The cutaneous exhalation of Alexander the Great, according to Plutarch, had an odour of violets. A, smell of prussic acid is said to be given off by dark-complexioned individuals, while blondes are said to smell slightly of musk.

— A Pittsburg mechanic is said to have devised a plan by which a car in motion supplies it own motive power by its wheels. Compressed air receivers are to start the car, and the motion i of its wheels pumps the receivers full again. — Baltimore American.

— A tribe called the Wabouma, living to the sotith of the Congo in Central Africa, I found ruled by queens and female chiefs. The pleasing features of the women here — their graceful and well-developed figures, lithe and lissom, and undeformed by laborious toil — were a pleasant contrast to their Congo sisters. Some of the husbands had a real or fancied henpecked appearance, which afforded amusement to our party. — Blackwood.

— Jeanne Blinn is the greatest of present Parisian social notorieties. She was the companion of Marchandon, the murderer, and she paid £50 for a balcony from which to see him guillotined. Her toilet was exquisite, aud she watched the execution minutely through a glass. This exploit advertised her, and one of her ensuing conquests is that of a prince of royal blood, who has been arrested in a street broil on her account.

— Not one of the earldoms — and yet there were twenty — created by William the Conqueror exists, nor a single honour conferred by William Rufus, Henry 1., Stephen, Henry 11., Richard 1., er John. Dugdale's " Baronage," published in 1675, contains all the English peerages created to that period. The index occupies fourteen closely-printed columns, a single one of which would easily include all the dignities that remain out of the category.

— An English Protestant missionary, traveling through Spain distributing Bibles, narrowly escaped death at the hands of the ignorant populace during the height of the cholera epidemic. The people of a certain little town insisted that he brought the terrible plague with him, and they hit upon the remedy of stoning the Englishman, who fled, wounded and in terror.

— The deepest well in the world is located at Homewood, Perm. The drill at present is said to be •a little over 6000 feet below the surface, which would make it by all odds the deepest well in the world. A careful record is being kept,and portions of^each formation encountered preserved. There are in Washington county some wells drilled to a depth of 4000 feet, and the only others so far as known approaching the depth reached by Mr Westinghouse is an artesian well in France, in which a depth of 5000 feet was reached.

— Every " good report " from an inspector adds to the English teacher's value up to a certain point, and the various grades of salaries are, for male assistants, £60, £75, £85, £95, £105, £115, to £155. For females the salaries progress similarly from £50 to £125. When a male tea,oher is promoted to a head-teachership his salary may be anything from £150 to £400, and a female head-teacher gets from £120 to £300.

— An Indiana telegram in the Boston Journal tells of an extraordinay revival thus: — Mrs Woodworth, toe evangelist, closed a two-weeks' meeting in a grove 12 miles northwest of this city yesterday, preaching to 25,000 people. Such religious excitement was never known. The •poods rang with the shouts of the new converts, while here and there lay men and women by by scores in trances apparently dead. Hundreds of people from this city attended her meetings and are unable to account for what they -—The original text of the treaty of peace between France and China is sealed up in a roll pf yellow silk, fastenedby gold cords, and secure i in a red lacquer box, handsomely decorated with mother of pearl, and guarded by a gold padlock. The box is placed in a richly carved sandalwooii casket, and this, in turn, is sealed up in a metallic case.

— The ordinary American is apparently always in a hurry. He eats quickly, drinks his liquor at a gulp, travels quickly, thinks quickly, and Uk^s to read hi.inewspaper quickly, and to grasp in an augenblick (as the Germans would say) what is going on all over the]|world. — Globe.

— In Ogden, Utah, a curfew law has been adopted. The bells are sounded at 8 or 9 o'clock p.m., according to the season, and after that hour boys or girls under 16 years of age, abroad, unless accompanied by a parent, a guardian, or a friend, or provided with a permit, are liable to arrest for misdemeanor. A similar law is in effect in several Californian cities.

— Sponges are very offensive in smell when taken from the water, and soon grow worse. This is cured by burying them in dry sand, and when decomposition has ceased, exposing them iv wire cages to tho action of the tides? — The interior of St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, is to be decorated in order to relieve its present sombre aspect. The plans have been under discussion for some time, and though the improvements will not be so gorgeous as at first contemplated, the whole place will be brightened.

— Ahmenuggar, in Bpmbay, is afflicted by a plague of rats. Rewards were offered for the destruction of the pests, but after 1,800,000 had been killed the people recognised in the rats the spirits of their friends who perished in the first great famine, and refused to permit any more of them to be killed.

— In France the agricultural population is 51 per cent., in Prussia 45 per cent., in Austria 25 per cent. In England it is only about 5 per cent.

— A German manufactory is turning out over a tou a day of glucose made from old linen rags. These rags, which are composed of hard vegetable fibres, are treated with suphuric acid, which converts them into dextrine, and hence into glucose. The process is said to be a very cheap one, and glucose chemically indentical with grape-sugar. A strong outcry, however, has riseu against it, and the enterprise is understood to be in danger of being interfered with by the German Government.

— In doing nothing there is no one to compare with the Asiatic. His industry thereat is proHgious, his diligence admirable. And he does it >o thoroughly too. Squatting down on his heels, with his hands hauging over his knees, he will remain absorbed in himself as long he is allowed to do so.' To look at him, he is not even thinking. He has put life and everything belonging to life outside himself for the time being, md is an empty shell — a mere husk of of a man. Vet it is impossible to deny that he is quite ■' happy." There is a total absence of interest ;n; n anything and everything," a complete temjorary freedom from care. He seems to have •piuni in his mental constitution, and whenover he is at lesiure he lapses into dreams and a languid contentment. — Telegraph.

— Mexican officials estimate that the yearly loss to the treasury of Mexico by smuggling along the northern frontier is not less than 1,500,000d01. The United States Consul at Guaymas places the value of gooils smuggled t'rora the United States across the Arizona frontier at 200,000d0l annually.

— The Hawaiian Government has been forced to arrest Chinese immigration. The new rule is that no more than twenty-five shall be admitted in any one ship.