MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2210, 9 July 1896, Page 52

MULTUM IN PARVO.

\ — The largest book in the world, according to a recent lecture by Professor Max Mullf r, of Oxford, is tbe "Kutho Daw ; or, The Religious Codex of the Buddhists." It is written on marble slabs, 729 in number, which it takes a city cf pagodas to house, for each slab has its own 6ep*ra*e house. — In the 29 years in which Dr Barnardo has been engagedjn his humane labours 22.000 waifs and etrayß have been rescued. Of these over 6000 have been gent to Canada. -— It is proposed to erect in Berljn smalt open pavilions in public Btreetfl an-1 places where wlieefmen miy store their bicycles 'for a trifle. Such paviliojis are to be erected' «t almost every street crossing and on all pnblic

squares. ■ ' ' ■ ' . ' - — The .lowest body of water on the globe is the Caspian Sea ; its level has been gradually lowering for centuries, and now it is 85ft below the level of its neighbour, the Black Sea. I- — There are 1425 characters in the boots* 1 that Charles Dickens •wrote. — Only 17 out of erery 100 Russians know how to read. For the 125,000,000 of Russiansthere are but 900 newspapers, and their circulation ii email. Most of the books read are translations of foreign authors, chiefly French. — The common house flea is covered with hard, over-lapping plates, something after the plan of fish scales. Each of these plates is set with a row of bristly spikes. — The office of postmaster of Vienna, which w.bs created by-the Empress Maria Theresa over 'a hundred years ago, has since remained hereditary and saleable. The postmaster of the' Austrian capital .has to furnish all the vehicles necessary for the service, and the drivers thereof ai'« in his personal employ. At present he employs 340 drivers, blacksmiths, &c, and 530 horses are under his whips. — Dr Cbantemisse, of Paris, thinka he has Ait oo vtred an anti-typhoid serum. He has already rxperiniented on tbree patients | after the first hypodermic injection tbey passed through the ordinary stages of the disease and then became convalescent. — At a low estimate the manufacture and* Bale ot dolls in Europe of all sizes exceeds £6,000,000 per annum. Jumeau, of Paris, alone waken 2000 dolls a day. — A chain of compressed cakes of gun cottou tied round the trunk of the largest sized' trees and erploded.will cut the tree down -ins fcai> My, as smoothly es. if it were done by an axe in the htnds of «n expert woodman. Furthermore this is declared to t be, the most economical method of felling trees yet devised. • — It is now claimed that sea water can be converted into a pleasant, wholesome, and palatable drink by citric acid, which precipi-" tktes cbl6ride of sodium. — A ruby of the best quality and more than three carats ir worth more than a diamond of the same size and weight. - — Oae conspicuous virtue of ths London cabman is his honesty. The property left in . cabs »»d restored to the owners during the past five years is shown by police statistic* to represent a va'ue of not less than £100,000, — Before a man can become a cab driver in London he is obliged to pass an examination at Scotland Yard in regard to his knowledge of London. This examination, like most others, is rapidly becoming more difficult, and is conducted in tiie following minuet : A commissioner sits with a map before him, and the "woulcT-be driver is a»ked through what streets he would pass if be weie to proceed from certain goiuts to others. . — In Chios' there is no copyright, and no one sntera literature as a career. No one writes a book until -he has gained, money in a Government office or in his profession, when, if be has au idea he wishes to communicate, he may write and publish a book. Anyone may uopy it ; aud the author's reward comes from the pleasure of being famous.' — Almost every Lowland, Scot, moi qu\ parle, for instance, has a Celtic strain somewhere ; but the strain is untraced'inCirlyleand Burns, and is very remote in Sir Waltor Scott. As a' BaU'our on one side, Mr Stevenson probably had Celtic blood ', the name, as somebody says ' in " Kidnapped," i* good Gaelic. — Andrew Lang, 'in the Illustrated ' London News.- , • — The.,oldest and; most curious herbarium in the w o:ld is in' the Egyptian museum at Cairo. It couMsts of crowns, garlands, wreaths, and bouquet* of flowers, all taken from the ancient tombs of Egypt, most of the examples being in uxoellent. condition, and nearly all the flowers hnve been identified. They cannot be less than 3000 years old. — England makes 15,000 artificial limbs Manually. ' — Tbero is a singular rustic superstition, founded, of course, on no jot of evidence, which prevails half over England. It is nothing less than Ihs motion that all field beans grow on the wrong fcide of the pod in leap year. In counties as far" apart as Lincolnshire, Worcester, »nd Northumberland there U a c.mmon saying—"ln leap year the bians grow upßide flown " — One of the strangest competitions ever heard of was decided lately in Birmingham. It was an oyster-opening competition. Experts at the business were invited to a trial of skill, the trial to last five minute?, and, the first prize, £10, was won by a cook in one of the leading restaurants. — " Familiarity breeds contempt " is a proverb found in one form or another in every European or Asiatic language having a .literature. Its earliest form ib believed to be the Sanskrit. ' — Professor Sully, in lecturing the other day upon the unsullied mind of infancy, declared that country children learu fay more quickly than town infaut-, t'C?ause their ideas aud faculties of pevcept'dn uave" been better trained] by the wealth of surrounding objects, which convey greater ide&s of forju, space, and motion. — In small hotel* in Russia each guest is expected to bring his own bed clothing. — - The largest gasometer in the world is at East Greenwich. When full it contains 12,000,000 cubic feet of gas. It. weighs 2220 tons, is 180 ft high, 300 ft in diameter, requires 1200 torn of coal to fill it with gal, and cost nearly £40.000.

— Yarn made of wood is getting into the market. It is smooth, flexible, elastic, and otherwise much like fibre yarns.

— In Iceland it is commonly said that, when an innocent person is put to death, the sorb or mountain ash will grow up ov« bis grave.

— Experiment has proved that if a delicate piece of Uce be placed bs f '.vt-n an iron plate and a disc of gunpowder, aud the latter exploded, the lace wi'l bs annihilated, but iti impref sion will by dearly stamped on the iron. — Mr Ocil J. Rbode* is the fourth son of the vicar of Bishop Stortford, Hertfordshire. , — There i« no public school . in Iceland, except a college id the capital. The laws of the country merely require 1 that the parents or guardians shall tewh the children reading, writing, and arithmetic. • — The Duke of Westminster is^the father of more children than any other individual whose name figures in the Peerage. There were 11" children born of the first Duchess, and there are six by the second. — A dwarf elephant was recently on exhibition in Berlin. Ib was three years old, 36in high, 3ft long, and weighed 1681b. Most elephants of that age weigh three tons. — It is stated that only one-fourth of her requirements are now imported by Japan, as against 67 per cent, six vpars sgo. — Excluding about 62,000 small craft, the commerce of the world is carried on by 45 000 vesrels, of 20,500,000 registered tons, with a carrying capacity of 48,000,000 tons. — No one feels an absolute confidence that the French Rspublic will survive to the end of the century. No one holds that the American Republic is any whit less secure than the English or the Russian monarchy. — World. — Wasps rank next to the highest olasses of ants in point of insect intelligence. — M'Culloch, one of the Irish political prisoners just released by Sir Matsbew White Ridley, and now a broken man after an incarceration of 13 yearn, hai told an interviewer that tho mosfc touching Bight he hat seen rince he got out was " a child, an innocent little mite of a child, toddliog by her mother's side. I had seeq p'eoty of men in prison, but never siuce I was first- locked up had I looked on a child."

— Aluminium has not proved to be of yery much value for surgical instruments, as it is deficient in elasticity. — In times of f*mine very good bread has been baked from wood, bran, and husks of corn. The "wood bread" is made by selecting the sawdust of the least resinoiii wood — the beech, for example— and washing it with water, to remove any soluble matter. It is then dried- in an oven, and reduced to fine powder. With the addition of a little flour, some yeast and water, it forms a dough, w&ich, when baked, constitutes a bread resembling iv appearance and taste our ordinary brown biva-. 1 .

— Mr George Mence Smith, who died tho otlm- day, left by his will £260,000 to be divided among those in his emp'oy at the time of his death.

— In Lincolnshire, in localities where the water is exceedingly soft, sheep will not thrive, and it is founjd necessary to remove them occasionally to other places where tho water is harder and impregnated with lime and other materials.

— Tne lord lieutenant of a county is a permanent provincial governor appointed by the Sovereign, whom ho diwebly represents. _ He ii at the head of the magistracy, the militia, and the yeomftnry, and is renponeible in cases of emergency for the presecvation of the public peace. He has the power of appointing deputy lieutenants.

— It used to be Baron Hirsoh's boast at one time that he could comfortably Jive on'lOs a day. There was one tjb.ing, by ths way, that the great millionaire coald never hope to master— the English tongue. Many j.eople foiudhis conversation mist difficult to follow owing to his faulty pronunciation. — In Japan the wealthy 'classes regard it as bad form to ride a horse faster, than a walk.

— A short time ago a representative of the Japanese Government secured in London an electric light plant for a palace in Japan. There now exist half a dozen facsimiles of the game plant in sc u«il use, perfect rnodela of the original sample, made in J&ptn by Japanese workmen, without outside aid.

— The pike ib the be*t known fish that eats birds. Digestion iv (hii uSh goes on very rapidly. It bwbllows small fhh voraciously, and, in default of these, moorhens, ducks, and even animals of small size, whether alive or dead. A curious instance oi a pike's gluttony took place in the canal at Trentham. While a swan was feeding under water a pike seized its head, and gorged so much of it as to result in the death of both the bird and the fish.

— An engineer on one of the Indian railways has introduced an ingenious apparatus for keeping passenger carriages cool, A self-re-volving fan, arranged to catch the air from all directions, it fitted beneath each carriage, and when the train is in motion it provides a cool and pleasant breeze. Even after the train has come to a stop tho arrangement will keep in motion for fully 15 minutes..

— This is very like a story invented by the New Woman, but it is said to be nothiug bat plain matter of fact. "If a gipsy girl wishes to know how soon she will rmrry, she whtsper3 into the car of the first donkey ehe meets, * Shall I soon have a husband ? ' And if, in reply, as it wero, the donkey moves its ears, the girl knows that she will nurry almost immediately." . . • — Slight tapping of fhs forehead over the nose and eyes with a rubber hummer is the remedy proposed by Dr Schnee for incipient colds, with he&^ier tapping in chronic c&tarrh. The fir&t contracts the blood-vessels, *ud the second dilates them and favours. a free secretion of mucu«.

. _ w. G. Gtace has never -been out for " a pair of spectacles" in all his long cricketing career, though he has often come perilously near them with such EOareu as 1 and 0, and 1 and 1.

Nimmo & Biaib's " Standard " Bonk M,anobe is acknowledged to be the most reliable manure offered in the market. Its effects are marvelOai,