MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 1892, 15 May 1890, Page 41

MULTUM IN PARVO

— A serious epidemic of smallpox has broken out in the villages of Cressing and Notley, England, among a community of 11 Peculiar People," whose faith forbids them calling in medical aid. The disease has spread from house to house. The rural sanitary authorities are taking steps to isolate cases.

— Three times as many natives of the United Kingdom are living in the United States as in the whole of the colonies put together

—The blue ageratum, which is cherished in England as a border flower, was introduced into Ceylon by an English lady, where it spread so rapidly, running wild in the island, that it now costs more than £250,000 annually to keep it down in the coffee plantations.

— The weight of the great Greenland or right whale is said to be 100 tons, or 220,0001b— equal to that of 88 elephants or 440 bears. The whalebone in such a whale may be taken at 33601b, and the oil at from 140 to 170 tuns.

— There are, it appears, an average of about 30,000 women always to be found in the asylums of England and Wales alone.

— The construction of the Suez Canal has made a free passage for the sharks from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Previous to the construction of that work the only sharks observed in that sea was when some specially enterprising specimen of this fish followed the wake of some vessel around the Cape of Good Hope and through the Straits of Gibraltar.

— Over 14,000 miles of railway track are now under construction or projected in the United States.

— There are hardly a dozen Jews in the British army.

— There are at present in Europe over 1300 beet factories, consuming annually 24,000,000 tons of beets, from which are extracted 2,000,000 tons of sugar. Over £16,000,000 are expended for labour and fuel, and more than £20,000,000 ace paid to the farmers for beets.

— Watch spring, pinao strings, and similar articles are being successfully tempered by electricity. The steel is wound on a spool, placed in an oil bath, and by the electric current kept at the exact degree of redness necessary for the temper required.

— Germans are horrified to find that the delicious Dutch hams they have been eating are American hams smoked in Holland.

— Phonograph closets are very common now in the offices of New York business men. A man goes in and talks to his machine, and after a while the typewriter goos in and the machine talks to her.

— Scotchmen banqueting in London are aow entertained with music of real northern bagpipes played into a phonograph and sent down to London by express.

— The phonograph is expected to prove a valuable aid in the study of languages. The pupil can take home a piece of tin-foil on which is recorded his teacher's correct accent, and practice with it in his own room as much as he pleases.

— One hundred and sixty-nine members of the present United States Congress have seen service in the War of the Rebellion.

— There is talk in France of utilising water courses as a railway motive power. It is proposed that the track shall be laid on an embankment in the middle of the current, and that the locomotives shall have two paddle-wheels dipping into the water and revolved by it.

— Mars varies very much in brightness; sometimes he is five times as bright as at other times. When nearest to us he is within 36,000,000 miles, when farthest from us he is not within 620 000,000 miles, so oval is his orbit. He was closest to us of late years in 1877 ; he will be close again in 1892.

— It is expected that the Manchester ship canal will be completed before the time stipulated, the end of 1891. The work goes on night and day, 12,000 men and 96 steam navvies being employed. The locks will be large enough to accommodate the largest steamers.

— February 14 is the anniversary of the death, in a.d. 270, of Valentine, a Romish priest, who befriended the martyrs in the persecution of Claudius 11, and was consequently beaten with clubs and beheaded. He ■was canonised by Pope J ulius, and a festival in his honour was appointed to take the place of the heathen celebration sacred to Februta Juno.

— A doctor of Cremona, with a large band of peasants from its neighbourhood, has just started for Uruguay, where he proposes to establish them as an exclusively socialist colony.

— One firm alone of London drapers sells 12^ million pair of gloves per annum.

— The present winter has become one of the most remarkable known in Russia for many years. The capital has experiencsd such mild weather that it is difficult to believe it is a Russian winter. The ice on the canals lias melted, and it has been as warm in St. Petersburg as in London or Paris.

— The gentiles of Salt Lake City are doing some good work, but upon the whole, they are not using their newly-acquired power as wisely and as well as ihe outside world could wish. They arc creating too many offices^ preparing for extravagant expenditures, relaxing the vigilant police control of the city, and generally failing to give as moral, as economical, and as beneficial results as did the hated Mormons, who are boasting that the Lord intends them to rule Zion again.

— Volapuk is now 11 years old, and it is asserted that 5,000,000 persons are able to use it.

— The Highland train from Perth to the North, while crossing the Grampians, has, on more than one occasion, been brought to a standstill by the force of the wind.

—It is stated by Dr Singer, of the University of Vienna, that in the five principal manufacturing countries of the Old World there are no les3 than 20£ million of women regularly employed in industrial labour, either in factories, shops, the open air, at home, or elsewhere. Of these workwomen there are four and a-half millions in England, three and three-quarters in France, three and a-half in Italy, five in Germany, and three and a-half millions in Austria.

— The largest parish in England is Helmsley, Yoikshire, which covers pn area of 36 square miles.

—Chicago, with a population of 1,100,000, has 450 churches.

— A return has just been issued, showing that 412,340 English women are entitled to vote in county council contests, this number including 65,161 women voters in London alone. The figures for Wales are 29,414. In municipal elections the total number of women entitled to vote in the boroughs cf England and Wales is 243,448.

— The Prussian Landtag has been considering the over-crowded condition of the Prussian schools and the pressing need of more teachers. The lack of teachers has caused a tremendous iucrease in the size of classes and a corresponding deterioration in the amount of instruction received by each child. In the last 10 years 1,500,000 Prussian children have been taught in classes of 70 to 100, and 600,000 in classes of 100 to 150. In 1886 almost 12.000 children had no teachers at all.

— An old lady in New Haven died the other day and left 2000dol "to James Brown, of Stonington," and when James was notified five of him appeared to claim the cash. As shedidnot particularise the James she wanted to make happy, they will have to divide the money between them.

— Twenty-five years ago the Primitive Methodists had only six stations in London ; now they have 31. Then they had 16 ministers, now 40. Their membership has increased from 2685 to 6877. Twenty-five years ago they had only eight chapels ; now they have 100, and tho value has increased from £5000 to £100,000. During that period the societies, composed chiefly of working men, have raised £60,000 for chapel building alone.

— Last year there were 3131 calls to fires in London. Of these 594 were false alarms, 199 were chimney fires, and 2338 for other fires, 153 of which resulted in serious damage. Forty-four persons were burned to death. To extinguish the fires 20,000,000ga1, or 93,000 tons, of water were used.

— England is very much further advanced than in any Continental country in the line of what is often called, by an absurd cant, Socialistic legislation. If we are to use formulas instead of good sense our poor laws, our factory legislation, our inspector system, free education, or (if Lord Salisbury prefers it) " assisted " education, crofter legislation, Ashbourne Acts, and above all, judicial rents, are rank Socialism. — Frederic Harrison.

— An amusing circumstance connected with the late heavy floods in Central Australia was told by a gentleman who has just returned from a trio in the interior. While

staying at a station on the Macquarie, he says that for three days there was an almost constant procession of pumpkins, pie melons, and marrows down the stream. Though never in large bodies, the pumpkins, &c, were scarcely ever out of view, and he calculated that some thousands must have passed by during his stay. The small landowners down the stream had a rare haul, many of them securing a very heavy crop without the trouble of growing it.

— A New York correspondent writes :—: — " The alleged manufacture of artificial eggs has often been treated as a joke, but the other day a man named Onderdonk, of Rock land County, New York, was fined SOdol and costs for selling to dealers a number of 1 fresh ' eggs at a very low price. On examination these eggs were found to be artificial, and to have been manufactured by a firm in New Jersey. The shells were made of a composition containing lime or chalk, the whites of some albuminous substance, and the yolks of ground carrots and saffron. The imposition was easily detected on boiling the eggs, as the yoke and white did not harden separately."

— Some remarkable statements have been made public in connection with the proceedings under tho bankruptcy of the Prince of Mantua and Montferrat, who resides in Elgin avenue, Maida Vale. Some time ago the Prince published a work in which he embodied some extraordinary documents. One of these was a statement to which the name of the late Sir George Jessel, Master of the Rolls, was signed, affirming that upon examination of pedigrees and old copies of Pentateuth the Prince and his mother, the Duchess of Mantua, were found to be lineally descended from David, and therefore entitled to the appellation of Prince and Princess of the House of David. — Jewish Chronicle.

— At the police courts of Glasgow no less than 467 persons, "out of a population of little more than 500,000 were charged with drunken and riotous behaviour, theft, assault, &c, on the Thursday after New Year's Day, an increase of 33 per cent, over the previous year ; though the police have special instructions not to interfere with ordinary " drunks " on the festive day. A Glasgow paper says : " Our city never got so drunk — so dreadfully, dirtily, degradingly drunk — as she has done this New Year ; and to those that had been sober to see it, the spectacle of reeling thousands affords an awful example, and a never-to-be-forgotten warning."

— One hundred thousand pounds worth of so-called old violins are exported from Germany yearly.

— The Dean of Wells remarks St.' James', has put the House of Convocation in the witness box and given them a mauvais quart, d'heure on the subject of brotherhoods. Among other pertinent questions, he asks, What is to be the punishment for disobedience or violation of vows, and who is to inflict it 1 Who is the dispenser, and what is to become of a fractious brother if dispensation is refused 7 Would an undispensed vow be a canonical bar to matrimony ? What is meant by a " vow of poverty " — an absolute surrender of all real and personal estate, or a temporary foregoing of the usufruct ? In the first case, is the property to devolve to .the brotherhood ; in the second, is the brotherhood to act as administrator and trustee ? If so, to whom will the brotherhood be accountable ? If otherwise, how are expenses to be met ? What an admirable examining counsel the Dean of Wells would have made !

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