MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1916, 10 August 1888, Page 6

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— A young Brahmin, lately returned to India from England, has applied for readmission to his caste, which he lost by foreign travel. If he is readmitted it will" open the gate.to many breaches of caste. If he is not readmitted, rebellion against the folly of the rule debarring him will be sure to follow. — Light penetrates water to a depth of between 400 yds and 500 yds. —Count Moltke - Huitfeldt, Minister Plenipotentiary of Denmark in Paris, has been received into the Catholic Church. The conversion of the head of the Chapter of the Lutheran Cathedral at Copenhagen is also announced. — Statistics show that there are at present 870,000 adult converts from the heathen world in full communion with various Protestant Churches as the result of missionary labour. These, with their families and dependents in Christian communities, aggregate at least 2,800,000 souls. — The highest cliff in England is Beachy Head (564 ft ); but if the Isle of Wight is considered as part of England, St. Catherine's, on its southern coast (830 ft), takes the first place. — Twenty-five years ago there was not a professing Christian in Shantung, China. Now there are 300 places where Christians meet regularly on the Sabbath. — The secret of fire-eaters consists in washing out the mouth and rubbing the skin with pure spirit of sulphur, which" cauterises the outer skin. — Under the laws of lowa a passenger who Sticks his head out of a car window and has it knocked off by a switch bar is guilty of a misdemeanour and can be sent togaolf or three months. — The channel of the Congo can be traced for 100 miles out to sea as a remagkable submarine valley, having a depth of 1432 ft just at the river's mouth. —Hair ropes used in building 1 A ton of ropes made from the hair of the women of Japan has been used in building the 3,000,000d0l Buddhist temple at Kioto. — Both Julius Caesar, when he invaded Britain, and Cortes, when he invaded Mexico, destroyed their ships on landing. — The estimated Koman Catholic population of the United Kingdom is : England and Wales, 1,354,000; Scotland, 310,000; Ireland, 3,961,000—; total, 5,641,000. — The North American Indians have, as a race, the longest hair in the world, and it is said that one chief of the Crow tribe had hair that reached the phenomenal length of lOfb. — A physician has discovered that the older a man grows the smaller his brain becomes. This explains why the young man knows everything and the old man knows nothing. — It is estimated that since the Crimean war not less than £500,000,000 have been granted by Parliament to maintain British armaments. — There are many excellent people who fondly yearn for the reconciliation of science and religion, and find it soothing sweet to follow Professor Henry Drummond. — Saturday Beview. — Holy water was found to disappear from a Parisian church. A watch was set, and a milkman on his rounds was scon to stealthily enter and scoop out some, as was his habit, to adulterate his milk. — Sir William Armstrong, the famous English gunmaker, has bought the secret of the manufacture of the French explosive, melenite. — The London and North-western Railway Company employs over 60,000 persons, and spends an annual budget of £10,000,000. — A figure of an eagle which was placed on a New Orleans building some days ago is said to be the largest in the world. Its weight is 24001b, the distance from tip to tip of wings 12ft, and its height is 7ft. — Mr Edison has so much faith in his new phonograph that he has just constructed works for its manufacture on a very extensive scale. The factory is 600 ft long by 75ft in width. — It is proposed to organise the French people into a national standing army, as a protection against monarchical aggression. — Overcrowding is sadly rampant in Dublin. Of the 54,000 families residing in the Irish capital, 32,000 lived in 7000 houses, containing 48,000 rooms; so these 32,000 families had on an average only a room and a-half each. — Half-and-half of soda and milk is the drink now in vogue in London. They say it was introduced by John Ruskin, who vouches for its being wholesome for the stomach. — There is salt enough in the sea to cover 7,000,000 square miles of land with a layer a mile in thickness. — European ualions have already appropriated about 6,500,000 of the 11,000,000 square miles of Africa. As for the United States, it has. its share of Afiica in the negro race. — When Jenny Lind was at the height of her fame, an enterprising speculator managed to obtain possession of a pair of her gloves, and then allowed people to kiss them, charging Idol for a kiss on the outside and 2dol for a kiss on the inner side of the glove. — Chris >Aherns, who has just died near Clinton, lowa, was near 7ft high, and wore a coat 70in about the chest and 80in about the waist. His weight was^ within a fraction of 4001b, and a special coffin had to be made for him in Chicago. — Philanthropists, perfectability - of - the - species men, giishers, and fa^mongers do a world of mischief. We hope we do not under-rate their noxiousness, but still we think on mature reflection that the chronic alarmist is the greatest pest of them all. — Saturday Review. — Sewing machines have led to great fortunes in the United States. Howe, the inventor, derived £100,000 a year from his chief invention ; Wheeler and Wilson are reputed to have divided for many years an income of £200,000 ; while the inventor of the Singer sewing machine left at his decease nearly £3,000,000. — The depression of the times is severely felt by the English aristocracy. Many families once opulent arc now glad to let their town residences in London to rich foreigners. — The largest salary paid to any of the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church

of the Unites States is £2000 a year. New York pays this to Bishop Potter, and provides him a house. The next largest amount is £1200, and only the Bishops of California, ' Chicago, Long Island, and Massachusetts receive that figure. Only eight receive £1000. - — Experiments have recently been made in Austro-Hungary with various kinds of quick fencing for railways, especially with a view to keeping out snowdrifts ; and it is stated that the choice has fallen on rose plants, the Rose of Provence, or more properly "Provins," being preferred. A fence 6£ft high and 3£ft thick is found sufficient to check snowdritts. — Kansas has a genuine philanthropist. Stephen Richardson, of Harvey County, has planted three miles of peach trees in the public highway for the benefit of travellers. — It, appears that there are in France at the present moment no fewer than 49,000 mountebanks — i.e., persons of both sexes who get their living out of learned pigs, guitarplaying, sea-lions, decapitated folks who talk, clever monkeys, somnambulists, men who swallow razors ; a class of people whom Horace in his time called, " Ambulajarum collegia}," or associations of Bohemians. — Mrs Maria E. Beasley, of Philadelphia, ! has made a fortune from the most remarkable ' invention which the mind of a woman ever conceived. In 1884 Mrs Beasley took out a patent'for a machine for the construction of barrels. . Up to that time barrels had been made almost altogether by hand. The machine is worked by three men, and turns out more than 600 completed barrels a day. —Britain gets about £600,000 worth of foreign toys every year. Most of these articles come from Germany, which sends to British dealers toys to the value of £320,000 ! a year. Holland is second with £125,000 worth ; France follows with £90,000 worth ; while Belgium is a fairly good fourth with £70,000 worth. — In Venezuela they are about to erect; a statue of the President. As that republic frequently changes its presidents there occurred to them the happy thought of fixing on the top of the statue a head which could be unscrewed. As often as a new president is elected the head of the old one is taken off and that of his successor put in its place. The body, uniform, and decorations remain as before. — The possibility of the transplantation of tissue from one human subject to another, from the lower animals to man, and even from man to the lower animals, has been repeatedly demonstrated. John Hunter transplanted the spur of a cock to its comb, where, under the influence of a more abundant blood supply, it flourished exceedingly. A tooth has also been made to grow in the comb of a cock; and freshly-drawn teeth have been transplanted from one human jaw to the other. — Accounts received bring an extraordinary story of an enormous aerolite over 100 ft in length, and nearly 30ft in diameter, and estimated to weigh 3000 tons, having struck the ground in Cochin China on the 29th of October. It ricochetted, after ploughing up a trench 100 ft long, 20ft wide, and about 6ft at its greatest depth, and struck a place called Than-duc. It was seen by French officers who were three miles from each other, and 13 miles from where the aerolite struck, to rebound, and it is calculated that it must have ultimately fallen about 440 miles from where it first touched the ground, or in the middle of the China Sea. — Life was harder on the north than it was on the south side of the Tweed 100 years ago, and this may account for the greater geniality of the Englishman, his hearty laughter, his comparative good humour. But the Scot had a harder struggle for existence, poorer fare, and a sour disposition. The Scotch gardener must have felt the essential difference between the countries when he wrote to his friends that " though God had not given the English over much wit or sense, yet they were braw bodies to live with."— Globe.