MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1917, 17 August 1888, Page 6

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— A well known London firm of refreshment contractors recently advertised for 4000 additional waiters, and 10,000 applications were received in response, the whole of the candidates claiming to have had experience. — Max O'Rell on getting back to England declared that "in the higher classes of American society there is more culture and amiability than in any other country in the world." — In a recent French murder trial the bones of the murdered man were brought into court and placed before Ihe accused. The man turned pale, but over the ghastly relics reiterated his protestation of innocence ; nevertheless he was convisted. — Leprosy is said to be spreading at a rapid rate in Russia. The cause is the way the people live. They neglect the laws of sanitation. — The autographometer is the name of a newly devised instrument designed to autographically record the plan of the ground over which it is dragged. It can be carried about on a light vehicle, and when in use indicates the topography and difference of level of all places over which it passes. — English child-life is said to wither in the delta of the Ganges, one of the malarial tracts of India. There the British race cannot reproduce itself, if unmixed with Indian blood, beyond the third generation. — A doctor in Algeria stood before a guillotine and caught the head of a criminal as it fell from the axe and spoke to it. It is said that movements of the eyes and mouth showed that he was understood. — Vanderbilt paid Miss May Tillinghast 30,000d0l for inventing a new kind of tapestry hanging for his house. —A velvet-pile Persian carpet was recently sold at auction in Paris for £1532. Some fine old tapestries of the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries brought extraordinary prices. — The pin factories of England, Holland, France, and Germany are said to turn out 77,000,000 pins daily. — Nearly 35,000 people live at Portsmouth on wages earned in doing some kind of work on England's big guns. — There are 315 stove manufacturers in the United States, and their expenditures in the single item of patterns amounts to 1,317,500d0l per annum. More stoves are probably turned -out in the United States than in all the world besides. American stoves are to be found all over Europe. — The bandana factories of England and Scotland are overrun with American orders. — Herr Tepper, of Berlin, has invented a new material for theatre scenes which is said to be incombustible. He applies to very fine wire cloth a fire-proof insoluble yellow plaster, which soon becomes firm, and upon which the scene painters can apply their pigments with ease. The plaster is not heavy, but very tough and flexible. — Sulfonal is the name of a new hypnotic used to produce sleep. The average dose in the beginning is 15gr, which may be gradually increased to GOgr. It promises to be especially useful in the treatment of mental disorders. — Claus Spreckles states that his sugar refinery at Philadelphia will be going within a year, with a daily capacity of 1000 tons, which will be a much larger capacity than any other refinery in the country. The work will be rapidly pushed. — London has at least five flourishing and well-housed clubs for women. The most fashionable of these is the Alexandra; the most literary, or Bohemian, the University. — The smallest electric plant in the world is what is claimed for the one at the Morton House, New York. It consists of a Corliss engine, Edison dynamo, shafting, pulleys, incandescent lights, &c. It is inclosed in a glass case 3ft long, l£ft wide, and 2ft high. — The omnipresent microbe has been detected in boils. This discovery shows that the method of poulticing is wrong, as the heat and moisture aid the development of the microbe. An antiseptic treatment is best. — A few years ago there was considerable stir in the direction of steam street-car motors but the (then) coming electric motor put them in the shade. Now it looks as if the steam car was to have its day again. As a matter of fact, the steam car has never had a fair trial, and there are many who thinu it is yet to be the popular surface motor. — American Mechanic. — A workman in the Carson Mint has discovered that drill points heated to a cherry red and tempered by being driven into a bar of lead will bore through the hardest steel or plate glass without perceptibly blunting. — The Buenos Ayres Standard announces that 300,000 negroes from the United States, with a capital of 2,000,000d01, are about to emigrate to that republic and form an agricultural colony in the Chaco. — Ihe price of diamonds has fallen. It was over 22s per carat in October 1887, and it is now less than 18s. — The Magicienne, which was launched in England recently, is one of a series of five cruisers whose construction was ordered by the Admiralty last year. She is timed for 19 or 20 knots, but is smaller than any of her rivals in the French, Russian, or United States navies, her displacement being 2950 tons. — Pearls have been discovered, it is just announced, in several of the Irish rivers. Some of these pearls are said to be of very fair size, measuring over a quarter of an inch in diameter, while others range downwards to the size of small gun shot.- They are asserted, moreover, to be of line quality, and to abound in the stretches of water where the pearl-bearing mussels have now been discovered. —It is stated that Sir JA. B. Walker, of Liverpool, a brewer, has offered to build a oathedral in that city at a cost of £250,000. Some of the religious papers object decidedly. They say he is not only a brewer but is owner of a large number of drink shops in Liverpool. The money he would put into the cathedral is, they say, " bloodmoney," and it ought not to be accepted. — The largest iron casting ever attempted in America was recently made at Bethlehem, Perm. It was the base for the steel compressor to be used in the new gun steel works, and 124 tons of molten metal were used. It will be some weeks before the huge casting Will be cool enough to examine,

— There are now 1240 Young Men's Christian Associations in America and 3804 in the world. The American associations have a membership of 175,000 ; they own buildings valued at 5,609,265d01, and have a total net property 7,261, 658d01 ; last year they expended 1,181,338 in local work and 104,949d0l in general work. — There are five degrees of nobility in China, for which approximate English titles are now used. These titles are conferred on deserving subjects, and are hereditary in the following limited sense : The eldest son of an official who has been made a duke becomes a marquess at his father's death ; the marquess' eldest son becomes an earl; the earl's eldest son a viscount; the viscount's eldest son a baron. On the baron's death the title becomes extinct, and his decendants cease to belong to the privileged classes. — Amongst the latest is a discovery in British India. It is in reference to the saccharine properties of the blossom of the mahwa, or moola, a tree of large size, which abounds in the south of Hindostan. This flower, it is claimed, will yield one-half its weight in sugar. According to the enthusiastic reports the blossoms of five mahwa trees will yield the same amount of sugar as the produce of one and a-quarter acres of the best West Indian plantations, and more than the same area on the French and German beet farms. From 200 to 250 trees can be grovrn upon one and a-quarter acres. — It is a long since ascertained fact that Russians, both official and non-official, hold I themselves to have obtained far too little for what they are pleased to call the sacrifices of the war of 1877-8 ; or, in other words, think that their last raid was not a sufficiently profitable raid. With a Czar of less curious temperament than Alexander III — a temperament which seems to unite good and bad characteristics in almost equal proportions — these convictions would long ago have broken out into action. 'It is simply "on the edge of a razor," to use the timehonoured phrase, whether- something will happen or not, and there would be much to be said for the assertion that if the Czar were wise he would either disarm at once and adopt a completely different course of policy, or else strike out at once for Constantinople and Calcutta. — Saturday Review. — Negroes were among the principal slaveowners of Brazil. One class of the negroes came from a locality in the Gulf of Benin, and are much superior to the debased tribes lof the Congo. These people were first ' brought over as slaves, but they soon came to be slaveowners. They also became shipowners and merchants, and drove a lucrative trade with Africa in negroes and merchandise. — For some time past builders in Germany have resorted to the use of a composition of cork, sand, and lime, moulded into bricks, for the construction of light partition walls. This is said to exclude sound better than ordinary brick work, while being light and a good non-conductor of heat. — The Ellenville Glass Company, near Albany, N.Y., has been experimenting with powdered granite as a substitute for sand in making glass, and finds that it is excellently adapted to such uses. Granite from the Shawangronk Mountains is used, and the company is fitting up its works to grind the flinty stone. Several of the bed-plate stones for the grinders weigh over 15 tons each. — The air "Yankee Doodle" is as old as the time of Cromwell, and it was then known as " Nankee Doodle," Oliver being Nankee. The British soldiers changed the title to " Yankee Doodle," in mockery of their foes, who were called Yankees by the Indians, this being the red man's honest attempt to pronounce English. But the turn of the Americans soon came, and the air was played by the victorious Yankees to arnoy their conquered opponents. — An American paper says : A new use for electricity has been developed. Water may be purified by electrical destruction of the infusoria that swarm in it. Possibly this is naturally brought about on a grand scale irj, the electrical energy displayed during sum mer rainstorms.