MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2045, 4 May 1893, Page 38

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— Among the wilder tribes of the Caucasus every child is taught to use the dagger almost as soon as he can walk. The children first learn to stab water without making a splash, and by incessant practice acquire an extraordinary command over the weapon. — A single firm of photographers have already taken the Countess of Clancarty in no fewer than 180 different poses. — Divers in the clear waters of the tropical seas find that fish of different colours when frightened do not all dart in the same direction, but that each different kind takes shelter in that portion of the submarine growth nearest to its colour. — Last year 29 members of the legal profession in England died, leaving the large sum of £1,906,977, or an average of £65,000 each. — To display a crest on stationery and plate in England costs each family a tax of a guinea a year. About 40,000 people pay it. — The proportion of under-age marriages in England is steadily on the decline. In the year 1874 they stood at 84 in 1000 for men, and 226 in 1000 for women. Last year the figures •stood at 59 for the males and 190 for females. This, as a social factor, is very satisfactory. — Fifteen hundred years 8.C., an Egyptian ; king sent to the King of Babylon for another 1 wife, and at the same time took occasion to refer ito some details of a domestic scandal. The 'letter was written on a tablet and the British .'Museum has it. — Spaniels, of which there are many breeds, wre supposed to have first come from Spain, ■from which circumstance is derived their distinctive name. Charles I was an ardent admirer of a small variety of this animal, and from .that aro*e the designation of his pets known the world over as the King Charles. — The oyster at the commencement of its career is so small that 2,000,000 would only j occupy a square inch. In six months each individual oyster is large enough to cover iialf-a-crown, and in 12.months a crown piece. — The Lord Mayor of London's badge of •office contains diamonds of the value of J8120,000, and the temporary owner has to give a bond for it before he is sworn in.

— It has been estimated that in the United Kingdom over 400,000 pheasants are killed every season, of which about half find their way into the London market— a supply that could never have been approached by the old system of wild pheasant shooting, or any other than that of careful preservation and rearing for large shooting parties. — The dog tax was first imposed in 1796. Up to 1860 it was 12s per annum. — In 1504- ale was sold in England at 3d per gallon, and it was about 20 years after that hops were introduced. When the word " beer " was first used is uncertain.

— Officers and soldiers of the French army will henceforward have a numbered metallic plate fastened on their collars for identification. A similar scheme is being considered for the benefit of miners.

— Chinese women do their hair once a month, and sleep with their heads in boxes. — The Dean of Windsor suggests thafc all archbishops, bishops, deans, and canons, when their income exceeds £500 a year, should contribute annually 5 per cent, of their stipends to increase the means of the less fortunate clergy. — la her advertisement the lady principal of a school mentioned her lady assistant and the ■*♦ reputation for teaching which she bears," but the printer left out the " which," so the advertisement went forth commending the lady's ••reputation for teaching she bears." — The superiority of tea over brandy in many cases xb beyond question. The idea still lingers that alcohol keeps out the cold. As a matter of fact, mountaineers have found by repeated experience that the opposite of this holds true.

. — Mr Gladstone has always shown a curious inability to grasp historical facts. — Spectator. — A peculiar Siamese twin pair of pheasants was shot on the wing by a sportsman near Beliefonte, Pennsylvania, s\ few days ago. Both birds were perfectly developed, and were connected by a fleshy link, half an inch thick, just in front of the wings. — The substance known as pepsine, now most extensively prescribed as a remedy in all forms of dyspepsia, is nothing more than the gastric juice of the pig, and prepared, according to the directions of the British Pharmacopoeia, by scraping ij; from the stomach of the newiykilled hog with a blunt knife. — The British Museum possesses a small square of yellow jasper bearing the figure of ahorse and the name and titles of Amenophis 11. believed to date back to about the year 1450 33 C.

— During the past 20 years 328,000 divorces have been granted by the courts of the United States, 90 per cent, of them to women. The beaver yields a secretion known as castor or oa/jtoreum, a powerful antispasmodic medicine commonly used in cases of hysteria. The Mikado's Government has come to the conclusion that both the stature and physique of the Japanese people are unsatisfactory and in need of improvement. A Parliamentary commission appointed to investigate the causes of this lack of stamina has, after prolonged investigation, ascribed it to the vegetable diet to which the Japanese have hitherto mainly confined themselves. — Eighty of the Popes are honoured as saints, 31 as martyrs, and fyZ as confessors. — The number of pledged articles at the Mont de Piete, the national pawnshop in Paris, that have been renewed during the year is 307,319. The term renewed indicates that a small sum has been paid in order that the objects may not be sold, but remain in pawn for a further term. — The statistics of life insurance people show that in the last 25 years the average of man's life has increased 5 per cent., or two whole years, from 4-I*9 to 43 9 years. — There are 28,000 peasant schools m France in which the people are taught garden and fruit culture through Stats aid. — The most carious of all class journals is surely the Beggars' Journal, of Paris, which is published daily, and gives its subscribers a complete list of baptisms, weddings, and funerals to take place the same day, which may be assumed to afford a good "pitch." Beggingletter writers are provided for by a special section, which gives the arrivals and departures of persons of known charitable tendencies. — The speed of the camel when on a ]ourney of considerable length rarely exceeds three miles an hour, and the swiftest dromedaries are rarely known to go faster than a 10-mile gait, but this can be kept up for 20 hours in the day, and for six or seven days at a time. — Major John H. Gilbert, who "set up" the Mormon Bible from the original manuscript, is Btill living in. Palmyra, where the book was printed in 1829-30. Major Gilbert is about 90 years old, and remarkably well preserved. — Twenty-one peers died last year. Taking their ages at death, the average life of a peer seems to be 65 years and nine months. Of the 21, four died at or above the ago of 80, and five died under tbat of 60,

— It takes lOOgal of oil a year to keep a largesized locomotive in running order. — Scandinavian sailors are said to predominate on vessels of nearly all nationalities. — All the most expert Continental pickpockets have been trained in London. The rendezvous of the thief -trainers and their pupils are the dark thoroughfares of St. Giles and Whitechapel, and along the wharves of the Thames. They are there by the thousands — women and girls as well aa men and boys. — A citizen of Rome has offered King Humbert a novel instrument of warfare. This is a projectile which, on being shot from a cannon and striking an object, will produce a luminous disc of 100, 000-candle power, and thereby expose to view an enemy's position by night at a distance of from three to four miles. — The substitution of the State for the Church, the decay of the family, the equalisation of rights and privileges, the dominance of industrial organisations, the great increase of population, and- so forth, will destroy character, weaken the interest of life, kill genius, favour only the lower races and individuals, obliterate by degrees all that is noblest, most precious, rarest, best worth living for.— Saturday Review. — The keenest race in Asia, as all who know them assert, the strongest in character, the Chinese, is decidedly the ugliest of semi- cultivated mankind, while the Hindoo, if sufficiently fed, is, even when as ignorant as an animal, almost invariably handsome. The Circassians, who know nothing, and are rather stupid than exceptionally intelligent, are physically a faultless race.

— The death-rate of English soldiers stationed in India in 1859 was 69 per 1000. Since that time certain changes in housing, food, water, olothing, &c, have been adopted, with the result that in 1886 the rate was 1518 per 1000, and in 1888 it was 14*84 per 1000. — Not only Tennysor, but most of his pr ? decessors as Poet Laureate, lived to a ripe ageSpenser was an exception, dying at 47. Dryden -/as 70 years old when he died, Chaucer 72> vjuthey 69, Wordsworth 80. — The motto " / male sicker" had its origin in this way: — "I doubt," eaid Bruce on a ij aorable occasion, " I have slain the Red Comyn." "Doubtest thou ?" exclaimed Kirkpatrick, "I mak sicker." Hence the crest of Kirkpatrick is a hand grasping a dagger distilling drops of blood, with the motto " I mak sicker."

— The people living on Rue Panama, Paris, have petitioned to have the name changed. — France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany are to wage a joint war of extermination against wolves. During the past year 386 were killed in a half-dozen departments of France, and their scalps were paid for by the French Government.

— A company has been formed at Copenhagen with the object of building a permanent Eiffel tower in that city. The tower, which will be built of steel and iron, and lighted by electricity, is to be 1670 ft in height. — Dress is becoming more extravagant every year. Women dress to outshine one another. Costly details are thrown away on a man. He cannot appraise the value of a gown; he only likes what pleases him. — Westminster Gazette.

— A London confectioner says that he is sometimes called on to furnish wedding cakes weighing 10001b each, and puddings of a size sufficient for 500 hearty appetites. — In breaking up the Volta, an old wooden cruiser of the .French navy, a loaded shell was found in her timbers. It is believed the shell was fired into her at the bombardment of Foochow nine years ago. — Among the British nobility 19 per cent, are childless.

— Seven hundred languages are spoken in Africa.

— The steam ferryboat Robert Garrefct, which runs between Brooklyn and New York City, carries as many as 5000 passengers at a single trip. It is said to be the largest steam passenger ferryboat in existence. — Among the special features of Lord Robert's conversazione at Lahore will be the presence, in the Montgomery Hall, of two men from every regiment, European and native, and every battery in the Punjaub, as a guard of honour. Such a spectacle has, it is believed, never before been witnessed in India.

—In China, the year 1893 is the year 7,910,342.

— The largest barometer yet made has been put in working order at St. Jacques tower, in Paris. It is 41ft sin high.

— The first ship canal on the line of the present Suez Canal wa3 projected by Necho, an Egyptian king, about 600 b.c. The two seas were actually united 270 b c. p

— In the small hotels in Russia each visitor is expected to find his ownbedclothing. The rooms mostly] contain wooden benches, which act as seats and beds, and on \yhich there is a covering of straw. The bedclothing of poor travellers generally consists of but rugs and wraps. — Lepers in ladia were treated with shocking inhumanity before Christianity entered that country. Many of them were buried alive. The English rulers have put a stop to this custom, and for 14 years there has been a special Christian mission to the 135,000 lepers in India.

— The liqueurs of two centuries ago were, without exception, invented and manufactured jn monasteries.

— All German soldiers must learn 'to swim. Some of them are so expert that, with their clothing on their heads, and carrying guns and ammunition, they can swim streams several hundred yards in width. — M. Flammarion, the distinguished French astronomer, believes that great climatic changes are going on in Europe, and that France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and Germany have temporarily, at least, lost several degrees of temperature. — The Kentish plover, like the stone curlew or thick-knee, is being rapidly exterminated in the county from which it derives its name by collectors and so-called "naturalist?," who, with walking-stick guvs, in and out of season, destroy all they can approach. r-* Bell, book, and candle is a solemn form of excommunication belonging to the Somish Church. The formula is read from a book, which is then sharply closed, a lighted cand c i* thrown upon the ground and extinguished, and the bell is tolled, as for the dead. This mode of excommunication is of very early date and can be made fearfully impressive.