MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1901, 10 July 1890, Page 41

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— It is said that the mildest spot on the mainland of Britain is at Ledaig, six miles north of Oban. With towering sea cliffs above and below for walls, and the rolling billows of the Atlantio as its heating apparatus, it laughs at frosts, blooms in winter as in summer, and this spring, at the end of March, had the musk shrub covered with buds, and acacia linearis as golden with bloom as in its native Australia.

—A French officer writing home from Kotonou says there are men in |the army there who have- had 15 years' experience in the fauatical bravery of Mohammedan fighters, but they never saw anything equal to the reckless fearlessness of the Dahomey fighters. —There have only been three baptisms and two weddings in York Cathedral during the last 80 years. —The Rev. Dr Charles H. Parkhurst, of New York, thinks the world was never as good, as honest, as pure, as true as now. —Whether we like it or not, there is but one way of civilising East Africa, and that is to govern it, govern it regularly, resolutely, and avowedly for at least a century, exercising all taxing powers, all justice, and in all ways, the military way included, training its savages to become orderly men, and therefore men capable of a civilisation.— Spectator. —A Norwegian sailor named Sundswall is a lion of London society just now. He navigated a small boat from Christiania, in Norway, to the Thames, single-handed, and thinks of continuing his cruise to America. —A bundle of spider webs, not larger than a buckshot and weighing less than a dram, would, if straightened out and untangled, reach a distance of 350 miles.

— Armstrong and Co. have some new gun mountings that may be of great importance. They allow the gun to be fired at an angle of 40deg instead of 20deg, as formerly, a change which will enable ships to attack almost any coast battery from short range. — If there is one result of the human experience which is certain it is that the negro will do nothing alone, that he needs the strong discipline of a higher race, and that his choice lies between submission to the vivifying rule of the white man, and the destroying rule of the half-white Arab. — Spectator. —There are extensive deposits of petroleum in Northern Peru, and an American gentleman has purchased a tract ot land 12 miles wide and 20 miles long, covering the site of ancient oil works, and will develop the properly as an oil region. — It has often been stated that the British Premier is a large landowner. As a landowner, pure and simple, Lord Salisbury is not, for a marquis, "a very large one. He owns a little over 20,000 acres, with a rent roll of £30,000. Were it not for his London property he would be by no means remarkable for great wealth. —A correspondent of the Washington Star says the marbles of the United States and Mexico have driven the Cai-raia variety to the wall. Its most formidable foe is the Mexican onyx. — As Mr Bright saw long ago, the land is the only real question in Ireland. All the other ills from which that country suffers are but its shadows. Get rid of the agrarian difficulty, and you will have solved the whole problem. — Spectator. —The measurement of 2000 students at Cambridge, England, showed that success in literary examination is in no way connected with stature, strength, or breathing capacity. — In 1803 Sweden pawned, or pledged, the little seaport town of Wismar, on the Baltic, to the Duchy of Mecklenburg, for a round sum of money. It was stipulated that the town should be restored to Sweaden at the end of a century provided the sum lent, together with interest, were paid back to Mecklenburg. The sum now due is stated to amount to several hundred millions of maiks, which apparently there is little chance of being repaid at the date fixed.

— A large paper manufacturer in New York tells a press man that processes for the manufacture of chemical wood-pulp fiber have been discovered and perfected by which the paper on which daily papers are printed can be sold in quantity as low as a cent and a-half a pound and still yield a profit. —The statement is made that the Queen's stock of Indian shawls has been exhausted by her gracious gifts to young brides. The replenishing of that stock takes place at intervals, according to an agreement drawn up and signed by an Indian potentate. — The oldest piano in America is said to be now IH years old. It was made by Johances Christian Schreiber, of Amsterdam, in the year 1745 (which date is engraved on the name board). The case is of solid mahogany, inlaid with boxwood. Its compass is 4$ octaves. — It is stated that recently a cup of white rose tea provided for the Emperor of China was tasted by a favourite courtier, the son of a Manchu military officer, and a tew hours afterward the boy died in dreadful agon>, and with all the symptoms of poisoning. This frightened the boy emperor and he fell Bick and did not recover for a week.

— Few Englishmen realise how cheap living is in India, and how large the apparently small salaries of English missionaries really are. In 1888, in the neighbourhood of Negapatam, beef was l£d or 2d per lb, and mutton still cheaper— a quarter of a small sheep being sold for Is. Chickens cost from 2id to 4d each, eggs were only 2d per dozen. —The President of the Royal Geographical Society, in asking the Prince of Wales to present the medals to Mr Stanley and his companions, gracefully alluded to the fact that the leader's medal was made of British gold, which was given by Mr Pritchard Morgan, M.P. A Canton paper estimates that 75,000 people die every year in China by fire and flood —Natural gas in America was discovered in paying quantities and its " boom " began in 1885. At the end of three years its annual displacement of coal was 12,900,000 tons, estimated in value at 20,000,000d01, which is believed to be only half the rate of the present displacement. There are now more than 9000 miles of mains, exclusive of (smaller conveying pipes.

—There are in Europe several knots of fanatics who would be perfectly capable of repeating the crimes of the Anabaptists, or the worst of tbe French revolutionary leaders, if they were allowed the opportunity. If government were to break down in France or Austria as it did 100 years ago and in 1848, it would be more difficult to find Septembriseurs now than it was then. — Spectator.

A somewhat remarkable circumstance occurred in connection with the burial of Mr Handel Cossham, MP., the other day. When digging the grave at St. George's Cemetery, East Bristol, the excavators came across a seam of coal, so that Mr Cossham, who was a large coal-owner, and delighted in making fresh discoveries of " black diamonds," nut only lived among them but was buried among them.

- In January last, it is stated, on American railway lines there were no fewer than 76 collisions, 89 " derailments," and 6 other accidents— a terrible total of 171, in which 67 people were killed and 227 injured.

— Six boys and two electric carpet sewing machines (recently invented) can do the work of 30 girls. The machine is mounted on wheels) moves along as it works, sewing Byds a minute. The work is claimed to be superior to that done by hand.

— Dr Pentecost contemplates an evangelistic campaign in India next winter, with the help of 20 Christian ladies and gentlemen, who will bear their own expenses and co-operate with him,

— The latest invention of musical Germany is a mechanical conductor, a figure that beats with the greatest accuracy and desired time.

— At a sale of autographs in London a letter of Queen Victoria, dated 1854, and telling what charming skating parties they had at Christmas, fetched £4 Bs.

— There are over 3000 postmen in London, and only about 1000 of them can reach 32s weekly; the others can only reach 28s weekly.

— The Trafalgar, about which so much cackling has lately been heard, is the latest type of Admiralty blundering. Built in an incredibly short space of time, and no alterations in the specifications being allowed, she was a marvel of constructive ingenuity ; but now that she is commissioned it has been found necessary, in order to keep her bows sufficiently out of the water, to send her to sea irith 200 tons of coal short of her bunker capacity. — The Baptist denomination in Liberia is the only self-supporting religious body in that country. There are 31 churches, with 3000 members. They have a mission among the aborigines.

— In Captain Nares' " Voyage to the Polar Seas " instances are mentioned in which ice has collected round the beards and moustaches of the explorers so thickly that they could not drink without the greatest difficulty. So it was with the eyelashes. If not removed, the ice gradually united at the coiners of the eyes, ande ventually sealed up the eyelids. Cases have occurred of travellers being temporarily blinded and unable to see their way

—German papers contain notices referring to the steady decrease of the population of Iceland, and the emigration to Canada and the United States. Report has it that this year the exodus will be protentous, amounting to over 20,000, or nearly the quarter of the whole population of the island. This emigration to America has been going on during the last seven or eight years, growing every year. — An interesting feature of the Washington Medical Museum is said to be a pair of shattered skulls. They look as though they had interfered in a locomotive collision. They originally belonged to a couple of plucky darkies who loved the same dusky Venus. They agreed to fight a duel with their heads and the survivor take the girl. Neither of. them remembered anything after the first butt.

—The Copts are a sect in Egypt professing a form of Christianity. They are held to be direct descendants of the Monophysites, who seceded from tho Catholic Church in 451, when their tenets were condemned by the Council of Ohalcedon, and are the only living representatives of the people who occupied Egypt before the Arabian conquest. — The useful metal aluminium will now be extracted, or rather eliminated, from its containing clay soil by means of the infinitely fine fingers of electricity, and its price may now be expected to fall greatly, and give another most valuable metal to man's use.

— There are persistent rumours that amongst the international congresses of the season will be one of the leading representative Jews of England and the Continent. It is to be called together chiefly with a view of discussion as to the measures which may best be taken to dissipate the antiSemitic prejudices which have been so industriously fostered of late at Paris, at Berlin, and at St. Petersburg.

— The "woolsack" is not merely a figurative title for the seat occupied by the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords, but is the designation of the large cushion of wool, covered with red cloth, on which that dignitary sits. It was first introduced in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to commemorate an act forbidding the exportation of wool. — A new industry in Germany is the utilisation of the young leaves of the strawberry plant as a beverage. Having been carefully dried, they are used instead of Chinese tea, which they closely approach in taste. — Four ladies of the community of the Sisters of Bethany left London in April for Persia, where they will enter upon work in connection with the Archbishop of Canterbury's mission to the Assyrian Christians at Urmi. The Sisters were escorted to their destination by the Rev. A. S. Jervis, late of St. Andrew's, Worthing, who goes outas a new mission priest, and as chaplain to the Sisters.

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