MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2051, 15 June 1893, Page 38

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— The great driving rope which pulls the cars across the new Brooklyn bridge is l^in in diameter, 11,700 ft long, and weighs 19 tons. — Seventy per cent, of the people of Ceylon live by agriculture. The percentage in Britain is 15.4*. — The theatres in London employ over 12,000 people. . A guard in charge of an express train from Edinburgh to London was recently offered drink by passengers 32 times in the course of the journey ! More murders are committed in Italy than in any other European country. — Prince Bismarck owns £12,500 worth of Btock in the street car lines of Milwaukee. — The total recorded immigration to the United States is 16,004,093, almost as many as the entire population of Spain. — In Germany and Hungary magic qualities are attached to the lime or linden tree. In Borne villages it is usual to plant one before a house to prevent a witch from entering. The lime tree was sacred to Venus among the Greeks, as it was to Lada among the Slavonians. This, it is said, was due to its leaves being of the shape of a heart. — The horseshoe superstition has been conBiderably modified in the mind of a certain well-known man. He found a horseshoe, and nailed it over his door. A week later, as he was entering the house, lightning passed through the horseshoe and knocked him sense- — Thsre is serious talk in France of building a canal from the sea to the Mediterranean, so that Mediterranean trade for other countries need not be carried within range of the English guns at Gibraltar. — The compass plant of Madagascar is a flowering lichen, growing only on a species of fir tree, and always on the east side. Curious scientiats who have transplanted this wonderful lichen in the great botanical gardens of Europe say that it changes its position to the north side of trees as soon as it becomes acclimatised. . — In Holland it is customary, when there is infectious disease in the house, to notify the fact to intending visitors and the public generally by tying a piece of white rag round the bell-handle. In many parts of the United States a red card with the word " fever upon it in the case of scarlet fever, and a yellow flag in the case of smallpox, is displayed. . . , . , — There are 28 American cities having each more than 100,000 population. il No living germ of disease can resist the antiseptic power of essence of cinnamon for more than a few hours," is the conclusion announced by M. Chamberland as the result of prolonged research and experiment in M. Pasteur's laboratory. Ib is said to destroy microbes as effectively, if not as rspidly, as corrosive sublimate. The biggest clock in the world is to be that in the tower of a public building in Philadelphia. It will be 351 ft from the pavement. Its bell will weigh over 20,0001b. The dial will be 25ft in diameter. The minute hand will be 12ft long, and the hour hand 9ft, the numerals on the face being 2ft Bin in length. A threehorse power engine will wind the clock. During the last 20 years the area of land in England under the plough has diminished by very nearly 2,000,000 acres, or over 14 per cent. — Champagne owes its quality to the soil, a mixture of chalk, silica, light clay, and oxide of iron, and to the great care and delicate manipulation in manufacture. — It has just been confessed by a burglar that, though dogs interfere with housebreaking, babies are, of all living things, most dreaded. No sooner does a burglar get inside a house than the infant wakes up, and that rouses at least one slumberer. Six London hospitals have come into £20,000 each from the estate of the late Henry Spicer, almost three-fourths of his entire property. Mr Spicer was known as the author of " Sights and Sounds," a history of spiritualism in America. — The cutting of hair as a mourning observance is of very great antiquity, and among the ancients whole cities and countries were ehaved when a great man died. The Persians not only shave themselves on such occasions, but extend the same process to their domestic animals. — The deaths of 45 centenarians were reported in England last year, 22 men and 23 women. In 1891, according to this record, 48 centenarians died, and 36 in each of the three preceding years. — There is a project on foot to build eight tunnels under London, 31 miles and a-quarter in length, and to cost £8,000,000. — Bees never store honey in the light, because honey thus exposed granulates, and is thus useless to the bees. — There are 30 kinds of fleas in England. — Etna has been a living volcano for 250,000 years. — The oldest coin in the world is an iEgean piece of the year 700 be. It is not dated, of course, the dating system being a modern invention, datiDg back less than 500 years. — Mediaeval medical men considered chips from the gallows on which somebody had been hanged a good remedy for ague. — The missionaries attached to the Mendi Mission on the West Coast of Africa have discovered an immense deposit of plumbago of the richest quality, and an extraordinary deposit of quicksilver. — A census of the great trees of California (the "giant redwoods") reveals the fact that there is even 2675 of them left, the average diameter of the lot being 33ft. — Intoxicating 1 iquors have been made from the sap of the birch, the willow, the poplar, and the sjcamore. — There are more than 20,000 varieties of apples raised ia the United States. — All .the glaciers in the Alps would not equal one of the largest in the territory of Alaska, — To be told that we are separated from the molten liquid with which the earth is filled by a crust only 18 miles in thickness is at first thought a little alarming. That, however, is the view to which 6cionti3ts lend the weight of their authority. «&•; — Frenchmen must regard their celebrated liqueurs as something almost sacred. Two men named Duchensin aud Damont were convicted recently of having fired the factory of the Benedictine liqueur at Fecamp, which was destroyed last year, and the aentenco on each of them was penal servitude for life. The Mexican authorities arrested Jesusa Lopez, daughter of a prominent merchant of the City of Mexico, while she was on her way to the United Stfites to enter a convent. The reform laws of Mexico prohibit convent', and the charge is made tha,t the lady was aUempLiug to violate the laws. — Steel caskeis for the bodies of those who die suddenly on shipboard are baing carried on many of the transatlantic liners. The remains are placed in them and hermetically sealed. Europe consumes upwards of £4,800,000 worth of gold and silver annually for plate, jewellery and ornaments.

— I always say to Americans who come to Europe : " When you go to England, don't see our towns, but see our country. Oar country is something unequalled in the world ; while our towns— well, anyway, keep away from London." —Grant Allen.

— Centuries ago the colouv of a hat or cap had its significance. Cardinals first began to wear red hats in 1253. In Italy, for ages, the members of the Hebrew race were known by the yellow caps they wore, it being compulsory for them to wear them. — Edison has had to spend over 1,000,000d0l in defending his patents, which have almost been of as much benefit to the lawyers as' to their inventor. — The correspondence of the rope is carried on in Latin. — Paper is now used in Germany for a new kind of stocking, supposed to have various hygienic advantages, among others that of keeping off cold 3. — There are in the United States 22 revolutionary widows still drawing pensions. — There are'said to be 200 women in New York who go to Europe twice a year to buy their dresses. The number of men who cross the water for their new wardrobß is much greater, as many men take the opportunity of. running over to Europe for rest, recreation, and business all combined. — Henry Munson, who died in New Haven a short time ago, was the inventor of the device universally employed for boring gun barrels. He neglected to patent ib, and thus let slip a fortune that would have made him a millionaire. — Robert Welsh was the first man to get a medal for bravery in battle. Charles lin 1643 ordered a gold medal to be struck for him for recovering the colours at Edgehill. — Paris looks like the capital of a worldwide empire. London looks like a shapeless neglected suburb, allowed to grow up by accidenb anyhow. Acd that's jusi the plain truth of it. 'Tis a fortuitous concourse of haphazard house3.—Westminster Gazette. — The average life of women in Prance for the last 32 years has been 38 years and of men 36 years. . Twenty-five ships of war of various kinds are now in course of construction for the French Government. — The Vienna Neve Freie Presse states that last year the Irish bishops, in the presence of their American colleagues, asked the Pope frankly why he did not renounce the temporal power and give up the friction of his captivity, and Leo replied, evasively: "It would not be seemly for me to do so." — Railway travelling is cheapest in Hungary. It is possible to go from Buda Pesth to Kronstadt, a distance of 500 miles, for 6s Bd, being at the rate of six miles a penny. — Three hundred women are employed by the British Bible Society to read the Scriptures to native women in Eastern lands. They have also taught in one year 1350 women to read the Bible for themselves. — The smallest book in the world is only half the size of a postage stamp. It is in the possession of the Earl of Dufterin, and is an edition of the sacred book oj tne Sikhs. — The Legislative Assembly of Quebec has just adoptsd a piece of rather unusual legislation for the restriction o£ Oie use o£ tobacco among minors. The sale of tobacco is absolutely forbidden to persons under 18 years of age, while boys under 15 years found using tobacco are to be punished by fine or imprisonment. — Men with grey and blue eyes are usually better marksmen than those with dark eyes. — Platinum can now be drawn into wire strands so fine that 27 twisted together can be inserted into the hollow of a hair. — A 10-ton yacht is being built on the Loire, which is said to be the first sea-going vessel made of aluminium. — It is hardly possible to overrate the importance which China may one day assume. _ It will be well if her activity is confined to colonisation, even if that activity involves the disappearance of the Dutch and the Spaniards from the Philipines and the Eastern Archipelago; but it is very far from impossible that, before the close of the next.century, England and Russia, instead of growling at each other, may have to make a defensive alliance against the Celestials on the continent of Asia. — Academy. — The Rev. Eugene Moutarde, pastor of tha parish of Saujon (Oharente-Inferieure), where Fontaine was educated, has just published a short history of the Protestant churches of t^ie ancient province of Saintonge. It is illustrated with many facsimiles of judicial sentences, MSS., and autographs, among the last being those of Fontaine and Sautrean, the father and brother-in-law respectively of the famous author of the "Memoirs of a Huguenot Family." — France is now, as in the last century, the chosen land of marvel. There appears to be something in the temperament of the Latin race which lends itself easily to neurotic disorder, to hysterical excitement, and to. the production of startling displays of mental eccentricity. We have never been celebrated in this country, even in the Middle Ages, for our demoniacs, our dancing hysterics, or par miraculous cures. We have nothing to rival the ancient histories of St. Medard and Port Royal, or the modern pilgrimages to Lourdes. — Nineteenth Century. —Dr Neilson, of Norway, states that the fisherfclk of Bergen have for over 500 years inoculated whales with bacteria in order to kill them. The whales enter a firth near the towo, and are driven into a narrow bay. A net is then fetretched acros3 its mouth, and the whales shot with poisoned arro >vs. After a day or two they become sickly, and are easily despatched. The arrows inoculate them with a disease like " sympathetic anthrax," and when pulled out cf the wound are fit for another hunt. — A man who was recently wrecked off the Cuban coast, and was for along time exposed in an open boat, tells of his recent experience with the sbrange hallucination known to sailors as the '•paradise craz?," brought on by the terrific heats of the tropical seas. He said: 'JThe sea appeared to be transformed into a mighty meadow, bright with flowers and musical with the songs o? birds. Cool springs bur6t from crystal rocks and trickled over golden sands, and men and maidens danced beneath the trees. They seemed beckoning me to join them, and I plunged over the side of the boat into 40 fathoms of brine. The bath brought me to my senses, aud I reached the Cuban coast more dead than alive." The mania is of frequent occurrence in tropical seas, and is often referred to by the poefcs.

Advice to Mothers I—Are you broken In your rest by a sick child suffering with the pain of cutting teetti ? Go ab once to a chemist and get a bottle of Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup. It will relieve the poor sufferer immediaely. Ifc is perfectly harmless, and pleasant to the tasto; It produces natural quiat sleep by relieving the child from paia, and the little caerub awakes "aa bright an a button." It soothes the child, It softens the gums, allays all pain, elievoa wind, w*gnl&t»s the bowels, fend la the beot kaowft j&xnacly for <fa3ejitory aud dlarrhcaa whether ariai&gfaojn teething oi fitlter causes. Mn Winslow's Soothing Syrup Is cold by modlolnjs dsalew everywhereat Is lid per botUe.--[Ai>vx.]