MULTUM IN PARVO.
—The Austrian Government lias arranged for a course of lectures at Vienna for the benefit of young merchants and commercial travellers who wish to become acquainted with the requirements of foreign trade, especially with British India, the United States, and Africa. —A Boston man, who makes raspberry jam for a living, is authority for the statement that "we don't use any raspberries at all in making the jam." What "we" do use, it appears, are tomatoes and glucos.e and bay seed, and a "little prepared raspberry flavour."
—Of 45 notices of death in a recent ntraw ber of the London Times 19 were of persona upwards of 70 years of age, the oldest being 89 years and the youngest 72 years. Their united ages amounted to 1513 years, showing an average age of nearly 79| years. ' Among the treasures of antiquity in charge of the custodian of the British Museum is a chair that is authentically reported to have been the throne of Queen Hatsee, who lived 1600 years before the birth of Christ. It is said to be the oldest piece of furniture in existence, or rather fragment of furniture, of ancient royal Egyptian manufacture. —Pope Leo XIII is very fond of agriculture, and has a passion for planting trees, One of his first works after his election was , to plant the garden of the Vatican with fruit trees and vines ; and this year for the first time the grapes of the Vatican garden aro turned into wine. His Holiness superintends i the operation and gives the necessary orders. —A well-known East Kent agriculturist has just taken a large farm in Essex at a rental of Is an acre. The land is considered among the best for corn growing in Essex. The Bishop of London has recently made public some interesting statistics on the religious life of the great city. According to his figures, the average number of communicants at communion services of the Established Church during the year was 47,714. At Easter the number rose to 99,000. The average attendance at Sunday morning services was 200,890 ; at Sunday evening ser. vices, 205,496. —A lady making purchases in a jNevr York store fainted and fell. When taken into the room her face and head were found to be bloody, and upon examination it was found that her huge hat pin had been driven through the skull and into the brain, and death soon followed. —A peculiar feature of Long Lake, in Wexford County, Mich., is that it gradually rises and subsides once every few yeaTS. B has been rising for the past four or five years, and the Grand Eapids and Indiana railway has been obliged to abandon its old roadway along the shore. —A useful invention has just been patented by Mr Andrew ' Maclure. This is a ladder stirrup, which will enable the shortest of cavalrymen to mount the tallest charged The moment the soldier is mounted, and his foot in the stirrup, the ladder, which has only one rung, springs back, and the stirrop resumes its ordinary appearance. Tigers have been encountered this autumn in parts of Asiatic and European Kussia where they have never been before. Some have been captured and sent to bl. Petersburg alive. —The cypress shingle is rapidly coming into favour in the Western States, this wooa being among the most desirable known. * l is almost, if not quite, equal to redwoodGrave slabs of this wood may be seen in toe cemeteries of Delaware, which are in god preservation after the lapse of 100 years,_ The Congo people have some curioM notions about witches. They believe a wiWJ can draw the spirit from anyone, and id* this is actually done, the spirits being »» u * up in elephants' tusks and sent to the cowj where the English buy them and take tft»J to their own land to wk for them as mw
—Eleven officers of the Moscow detective force have just been sentenced— five of them to deportation in Siberia and six to imprisonment for various periods— for conniving at the crimes of notorious robbers and other offenders against the law. —Coffee has been used as a beverage from very ancient times. It was first used in Arabia about 1420, at Cairo in 1530, Constantinople in 1551, Venice in 1015, Paris in 164 i, and London in 1652. It seems to have taken its way westward like the Star of Empire. —Of the 36 Christian sovereigns m the world, 24 are Protestants, 10 Roman Catholics, and two belong to the Greek Church. —An ingenious individual who has no fondness for hard work is travelling through Pennsylvania selling "a valuable preparation" warranted to polish tinware, .ft is simply wood ashes, which he begs at the farmhouses along his route. All he does is to sift it and put it in the tin boxes. —Wealth accumulates at the rate of about £400,000 a day £that is, 3d per inhabitant. —Members of Parliament were at one time paid by their constituents, usually at the rate of 5s a day. —Silver coin wears much faster than gold ; it loses 1 per cent, of its weight in 20 years, gold 1 per cent, in 50 years. —A richly cut solid glass bedstead was recently made at a Birmingham, England, factory for a Calcutta millionaire. The King of Burmah also has one. —A full-grown elephant of average size is capable of carrying a load of two tons. —In Sweden* the stumps and roots of trees remaining after a wood has been cut down are being used for the production of illuminating gas by dry distillation. Other products, such as turpentine, creosote, acetic acid, and tar, are also obtained. It is reported that this new industiy promises to become very important. — During the recent bother in Trafalgar square, London, a conscientious constable took a deaf and dumb man into custody for "creating a disturbance." When the case was inquired into, it was found that this reboubtable officer had "collared" the poor fellow because " he wouldn't go away." —The greatest height ever reached by a balloon was 2G,160ft. — Tonquin is reported to possess extensive marble quarries, containing marble of the most exceptional beauty and of the most varied colours. They are being worked by a French company, —Colonial France, or, at all events, its recent expansion, is a source of weakness, not of strength, to the mother country. Tunis has cost her the friendship of Italy, her doubtful successes in Madagascar have alienated the sympathies o£ Eugland, and in Anara and , Tonquin she has hardly done more than earn the persistent hatred of the most stubborn and powerful people of the far East.— Spectator. — It is not generally known that in Ethiopia a people numbering about 200,000 have the Old Testament in the Ethiopic version, and still adhere rigidly to the Mosaic ceremonies Jand laws. They are the children of Hebrew immigrants who, in the time of the great dispersion, settled in Abyssinia and married wives of that nation. — Dr Schliemann is to begin excavations on the island of Cerigo, where the Phoenicians are supposed to have introduced for the first time oil Greek soil the worship of Astarte, a goddess who became Aphrodite among the Greeks. The island is of some size, and lies directly south of the Greek peninsula. —Several of the French railway companies have resolved on having their printing done on green paper instead of white. Their reason for the change is that black letters jon white paper have proved trying to the (eyesight of their workpeople. —An ancient casket filled with relics of saints is being sent by the Austrian Archdukes to the pope, as a joint present on the occasion of his jubilee. It is a beautiful and costly piece of workmanship, and is contained in a box of ruby plush, on which is a ■scroll of silver, with the names of the 32 donors, surrounded by the collar of the Golden Fleece, worked in gold and richly jewelled, and above is an Imperial crown. —The largest Sunday school in the world is said to be the one in connection with the North Side Central Church, Chicago. It has 5000 scholars, with an average attendance of 0000. The kindergartens, conducted every week-day morning, have a daily attendance of 500 ; a sewing class for girls of 800 ; aud a class on Mondays of boys for manual training has a large attendance. —The Boston Transcript tells of a hotel at a health resort in which the following rules are displayed :—": — " Do not ask servants to do anything you can do yourself. Go elsewhere if you are not suited here, as there are others wanting your room. Any disagreement between gUesU will be settled by the request of both to leave." '—The House of Lords comprises 5 peers pf the blood royal, 2 archbishopr, 22 dukes, 20 marquesses, 120 earls, 2i) viscounts, 24 bishops, and 292 barons— in all, 514. There are 10 representative peers for Scotland elected every new Parliament, and,2t> representative peers for Ireland elected for life. —The river which has tho greatest number of tributaries is the Orinoco, of South America. During a main course of about 2000 miles the river is joined by nearly 500 streams oEa considerable size, and 2000 more of small volume. 'It is possible to almost cross the continent of South America by this stream and its tributaries. —The fortune of the late Baron Wolverton amounts to £7,000,000. —During the last century 100 lakes in the Tyrol have subsided and disappeared, according to Dr A. Bohm, of the Geographical Society of Vienna. . —The acreage of the landed estate of the Duke of Westminster amounts to 19,809 acres, but this does not include the metropolitan area, where the Duke has au enormous property. He is, according to Batemau's " Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland," her Majesty's richest subject.
Working Mkn.— Before you begin your heavy spring work after a winter of relaxation, your sy«tem needs cleansing and strengthening to prevent au Uttuck of Ague, BUimw or Spring Fever, or some other Spring sickness that will unfit you for a season's work. You will save time, much stckneas, toil Rrea 1 ; expense If yon will use ono bottle of Dr Soule't American Hop Mittere in your family tuil Hwntij, Doc'fc wa}t,— " Purlington I-Jawkeye, ]
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Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 1890, 10 February 1888, Page 6
Word Count
1,724MULTUM IN PARVO. Otago Witness, Issue 1890, 10 February 1888, Page 6
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