THE OTAGO WITNESS. MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1855, 10 June 1887, Page 6

THE OTAGO WITNESS. MULTUM IN PARVO.

— The Court Journal states that considerable surprise is expressed at the .small amount of money which Lord Iddesleigh has left behind him. That notwithstanding all the years he served his country he should only have been able to save • a sum of £25,000 shows that Ministers of the Crown in England are not overpaid. Lord Iddesleigh might, it is calculated, have trebled the amount of his personality if he had devoted himself to literature.

— Not to mention promotions in. the peerage and peerages of the United Kingdom conferred on Scotch and Irish peers, no less than 54 commoners have been raised to the peerage at the instance of Mr Gladstone alone, against 37 at the instance of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury.

— M. Marey has succeeded in taking .instantaneous photographs in' the one-two-thousandth of a second, and he hopes to reduce this period by exposure "still further.

— The learned tell us that chalk is nothing else than the remains of sea-shells ; and a more than usually learned one says that the flints which are scattered through' the chalk are made up of the glaze •of those same shells. I don't know ; but learned' men are the men one believes, in matters that nbbody knows anything about. It is a great comfort to have them with us. — Vanity Fair.

— Out of more than 120,000 species of plants known to botanists only : about 250 have been put to use by man ; yet this pro-, portion is much greater than in the animal world; from which only some 200 species have been selected, while the . animal kingdom reckons millions of species.

— Manufactures in Ireland have ■ made steady progress during the past 33 years. The linen trade of Ulster has attained very large proportions; and the manufacture of woollen goods has been established in several places in other provinces. Irish friezes and Irish tweeds now compete successfully with the best productions of English and Scotch looms.

— A novel advertising scheme has been introduced by a merchant in Carthage. • A series of prodigious boot tracks were painted leading from each side of the square to his establishment. The scheme worked to perfection, for everybody seemed curious enough to follow them to their destination.

— The only European army,, that is numerically superior to the Italian is the Russian. Italy has a permanent, (though not permanently active) fighting force of 892,687 men, and mobile and territorial militias which bring up the available strength for defensive purposes to a total of 2,387,332 men, inclusive of non-combatants.

— A gentleman crossing London bridge in a carriage at a foot pace during a recent fog, was aroused by a tap at the window. The glass was dim, and, thinking it might be a wayfarer seeking assistance, or a policeman proffering it, he lowered his window and put his head out, whereupon his hat vanished, as two seconds later did the thief— in the fog. — Your Tory is a very teachable creature ; and what is the purpose of Providence with Tory Ministries except that they should carry out the necessary reforms which no Liberal Government would yet dare to propose I—Pall1 — Pall Mall Gazette. — The statement is made that all the varied machinery of Great Britain now operated by steam-power is capable of performing more work, and hence producing more products, than could be produced by the labour of 400,000,000 able-bodied men — a greater number than all the able-bodied men on earth 1

— The dials of the Westminster clock are 22£ feet in diameter, ?nd contain 400 square feet each. Each minute is 14 inches wide. The only larger dial in the world is in Mechlin Church, which is 40ft wide. The minute hands of the Westminster clock are partly counterpoised outside, making their total length 14ft. —The most abundant element in nature is oxygen. Of animal substances, oxygen forms three-fourths ; of vegetable substances, four--fifths; of mineral substances, one-half. It forms eight-nineths of the waters and onefifth of the atmosphere; and taking the whole of creation, from one-half to two-thirds consists of oxygen.

—Of the 229 " Friends " who died last year in Great Britain and Ireland, 51 were between 60 and 70 years of age; 74. were between 70 and 80, 69 were between 80 and 90 ; and 10 were between 90 and 100 years. Among them were 17 recipients of income from the Friends' Provident Institution whose average of age was 75 years. — Doormats are now made from scrap leather, which is formed into links, threaded on metal rods or wires. The appearance of the mat is pleasing, and the materials are made up in scalloped or other patterns. It is flexible, and is said to afford a safe footing while being at the same time durable.

— On the principle laid down by Adam Smith, the wages of statesmen should be high. According to that much-quoted authority, an equivocal and dirty employment is naturally better remunerated than that which is respectable and cleanly. — World. — The smallest English bishopric is that of Sodor and Man, which embraces a territory of 180,000 acres and a population of about 51,000. The income of the bishopric is £2,000 a year ; the number of its benefices 31.

— The emissaries of Eussia are all over Central, Asia from Armenia to Kashgaria, from Khiva to the Persian G-ulf. India itself is not free from them — not Russians, but Asiatics in Russian pay, who are familarising the people Avith grandiose ideas of the overpowering growth, the magnitude, the wealth, and the generosity of Russia. — St. James' Gazette.

— Experiments have recently been made in France with the electric incandescent light and the camera in photographing under water. It is proposed to photograph sunken ships, works, and so on by this means ; and it is expected that the apparatus will be useful to divers.

— A German botanist has discovered a source of brandy and alcohol in the poppy. It appears that the pulp -which covers the poppy seed contains saccharine matter which, after due fermentation and distillation, produces a kind of brandy of an agreeable flavour.

As this pulp as been hitherto thrown away, the . discovery, ,it is' said, " affords, poppyplanters an opportunity of realising more profit from their crops without a very .great expenditure of capital. • ' '-. — One of the calamities of political economy is that it is has, been written by rich men or by the friends of rich men. Another is that it has been developed from ideal and not' from actual conditions. A' third is that it has often drawn inferences from . temporary circumstances, not ,, from permanent motives. — Thorold Rogers. — Germans and Magyars, agreed on little else, hate Eussia. Poles hate her". But few of the Southern Slavs love her much, andas^ for the Czechs, troublesome as they are, he must, be a very odd Bohemian who. wants to see Prague turned into another -Warsaw.-^ Saturday Eeview. — There was a sale of beautiful old silver at Christie's the other day, at which an amusing incident occurred. A well-known gentleman, who, however, is not acquainted with the rules of plate sales, bid a trifle under two sovereigns for a couple of charming little goblets. They were knocked down to him, and he was evidently delighted at securing them at sd cheap' a rate; but on presently proceeding to the office to pay for his purchase he was amazed and horrified beyond power Of expression 1 to find that the bidding had been" at per ounce, and that his bill was nearly £50.

— -A cynic might indeed say that the complaint that people are growing weak-kneed' is singularly prevelant 'over Europe just now. England longs to finish \yith 'Irish disaffection, but dares not. Germany longs to cripple France for a generation, bat dares not. France longs to recover Alsace-Lor-raine, but dares not. Eussia longs to annex Bulgaria, but dares not.-r-Saturday Review, . — Another piece of good fortune has fallen to Wolverhampton. It had been assumed upon the bequest of the Sidney Cartwright collection of paintings, valued at £40,000, legacy duty of £4000 would have to be paid. It was proposed to raise a jubilee fund to defray this amount. The Town Clerk, however, has appealed to the Controller of Legacy Duties at Somerset House, asking that under Act 39 of George 111 the bequest should be declared exempt from duty, and' an official communication has been received granting the application. — In the antimony mine at Proutkovitz, in Bohemia; a vein carrying gold has been discovered which, in character is said to resemble some of the gold-bearing strata in California. Some of the gold extracted has been taken to the mint at Prague. In Transylvanian mines gold has also been discovered.

— In the superior civil court at Boston, last week a mother and her four children individually sued the landlord to recover damages for sickness contracted because of the poor sanitaiy condition of ths house, and in the care of the family during their sickness from diphtheria. Damages in each case were awarded, the mother receiving 1600dol, and the children 700dol' 300dol, 250d01, and 200dol, respectively. This is a unique case and is valuable as a precedent. — The total area of the Pinsk Marshes— the biggest bog in Europe— is about 25,000,000 acres. Of this, up to now, about one-fifth, has been reclaimed and during 13 years' operations over 1000 miles of ditches and canals have been cut, and hundreds of bridges erected. The Pinsk Marshes are situated on the Russo-Polish confines and have always been regarded as a bulwark to Eussia in the event of an invasion from Germany. The draining of the region and its cultivation has thereby weakened Eussian defence, and the weak spot having been detected by German strategists, fresh plans have had to be formed for covering it from, attack.

—The attention of Paris is at present fixed on a scheme of competition with Germany by means of another Alpine tunnel through the Simplon, as a rival of the successful St. Gothard. The latter furnishes a short cut for German goods into Italy, and has seriously diminished French trade with the peninsula. It is estimated that the Simplon tunnel would shorten the time between Paris and Central and Southern Italy by three hours as compared with the St. Gothard line, and the gain over the Mont Cenis route would be still greater. The length of the tunnel would be about 12 miles,and the whole work could be done in from four to six years.

— We had something to say • recently respecting the gradual recession of Niagara Falls. Our information is confirmed by an official report just made to the Commissioners of the State Eeservation at Niagara. Superintendent Welsh says that examinations show the average recession along the contour of the Horseshoe Fall since 1842 to have been 2-4 feet per year. At the point where the acute angle is formed the recession, from 1842 to 1875 was over 100 ft, and from 1875 to 1886, more than 200 ft. The wearing away of the American Fall since 1842 has been but slight. The heights of the Falls above the level of the water were determined by the engineers of the United States Geological Survey on August 17, 1886, as follows: — American Fall, 167 f t; Horseshoe Fall, 159 ft. —Pall Mall Budget.

— An officer of the — th was quartered, a few years ago, in the height of the Fenian disturbance, at Killarney, where the troops were accommodated, as is by no means unusual in Ireland, in the Workhouse. Being in search of a new sensation, he bethought himself of paying a tailor's bill, addressing, of course, from " The Workhouse, Killarney." Back came the answer by return of jpost' The tailor was pained to see so good a' cus, tomer reduced so low ; he could not think of accepting the amount due,to him, which he begged to return ; and, if a ' ten-pound note would be of any service, he would be most happy to send it.