MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2258, 10 June 1897, Page 40

MULTUM IN PARVO.

*— The modern shark is, deteriorating. In agei gone by there were ferocious sharks, such as would make a mouthful ot you without blinking, 70ft in length. Plenty of their teeth have been found which are bin long, whereas the biggest of the teeth belonging to sharks that exist at the present day are l£in long. — It is said that some extraordinary revelations of wife abandonment are being made in New York. Fifteen thousand men are under bonds to support their wives. The magistrates ascribe this state of things partly to the bard jbimes, still more to lax morals, but most of all to premature marri&gei. Fifty per cent, of the deserted wives were married while in their teens. — The railways of the United Kingdom posBens nearly 20,000 locomotives. — London West End tradesmen, having laid {n immense stocks in expectation of a brilliant Reason in connection with the royal celebration, have insured- the Queen's life to guard against loss in the event of her death before i?une 22. Some shopkeepers were almost ruined by the death of the Duke of Clarence ; Jience the reason for this new precaution. ' —In the little Pembrokeshire town of N*rberth there are 25 publichouses to a population of 1200 — that is, one publichouse to every ,48 persons, or, excluding children, at least one to every score of people. — According to the latest report of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, there is an average of 10 fires a day in London. One hundred and Bix lives were lost by fire daring the 12 months Which have just been brought to a clost, and no less than 400 instances of false alarms maliciously given are recorded, in only seven cases the offenders being arrested and brought to punishment. — In the Argentine Republic a law for the taxation of bachelors comes into force on and after January 18, 1898. Every male citizen of ]fche Republic, from the age of 20 to the age of 80, who remains unmarried is to pay a monthly assessment to the State. The payment oeasts on the day of marriage. Such a law, except for wealthy men, will amount to nothing less jkhan a compulsory marriage act. — Ten years ago 64-,000 people spoke nothing but pare Irish.' In 1891 there were 38,000. Jn 1881 there were 885,000 who could speak Irish and English, and last year there were only 642,000. — A strip of land to extend the Liverpool j3tock Exchange was recently purchased at the >ate of £1,000,000 sterling per acre. — One foundling asylum in Moscow receives 12,000 infants every year. The boyi are trained for the navy ; the girls receive manual training, are taught to read, and are married to peasants 6r artisans. ' — There are about 2000 persons in France iwhe are set down as Anarchists, and are under jthe constant watch of the police of the various European countries. — The morning the anti-cigarette bill came np in the Indiana Legislature the galleries Were full of interested people. When the bill was called one member arose and unrolled his petition for the prohibitory law, 13ft long. In quick succession 60 members followed his .example, the longest petition being 79ft. This Dreated much excitement. The bill wai then pub on its passage and passed by a vote of 85 to 3. ) — A writer lays that the Glasgow water from Loch Katrine is very soft, and on that 'account it is computed that the annual saving to the city in so»p alone amounts to some £36,000. — The Indian Government pays a bounty on Bnake heads, and every year payment -is made «n from 500,000 to 1,000,000 slain snakes. — Much regret is caused by the sad accident to the Hon. Frederick Roberts, Royal Fusiliers, only son of Lord Roberts, who had his eyeglass broken while playing polo, the sight of the right optic being completely destroyed. — The rent of a good deer forest in Scotland often runs into some thousands of pounds. A Very heavy expenditure is entailed in the necessity of keeping fences in order, re-stocking, •nd maintaining large numbers of keepers, ■beatera, and other dependants. — Mr E. Vaslet gives in Le Bien Sooial a ghastly account of the outrageous drunkenness permitted and practised in Belgium on "Lost Monday." According to his account the most deplorable license prevails, and men and women Abandon themselves for the day to unrestrained drinking and excess. — The prison population of India, large as it is, is only 38 per 100,000 inhabitants, or less than half the proportion in Great Britain. — At a luncheon given recently by a Russian prince on comiDg of age, he and half a dozen friends remained at table for 17 hours without moving. The bill for this sumptuous repaib amounted to 11,200 roubles. — There are fully 1000 tons of piping of various kinds in a big Atlantic liner. The condensers will pump up at least 50,000 tons of cool water a day. The furnaces will consume no less than 7,500,000 cubic feet of air an hour. JEhe boiler tubes, if placed in a straight line, Would stretch nearly 10 milei, and the concenter tubes more than 25 miles. — A well-known specialist on ear diseases b.»s made the announcement that half the deafness prevalent at the present time can be Sfcraced to the practice of boxing the ears oJ children. — The largest farm in England is on< situated near the Cheviot Hills, in the northeri part of Northumberland, between Wooler ant Coldstream, the extent of which is from 5001 to 6000 acres*

— The Cunard line of steamers gives employment to 10,000 men. — The difference between colour-blind people and others is simply that, owing probably to some diversity of tint in the constituent portions of the eye, the ray* of light by which colours are recognised reach the retina in different individuals in a different condition. — The most valuable fur is that of the sea otter. Two hundred poundi has been paid for a single skin of this animal not more than 3yds long by three-quarters of a yard wide. — The Island of Malta has a language of its own, derived from the Carthaginian and Arabian tongues. The nobility of the island speak Italian. — The most thickly populated country in Europe is Belgium. — A fat men's club has been instituted in Paris, with the novel aim of increasing the weight of the members, the rules enjoining all the comrades to sleep, eat, and drink as much as possible. — A discharged soldier made an elaborate and groundless confession of (he Islington child murder, of which the lad Gamble was accused. In another case amm confessed to a murder for which a prisoner was on remand. His st&temenfc being refuted, he confessed that, being " weary of life," he meant to commit suicide, but " thought the prisoner, to whom life was probably sweeter than to him, might as well benefit by his death." — A new use has been found for diamonds, j in assisting marksmen in their shooting. The j cut stones are fixed in the front and back sights, and it is said that they enable the marksman to take a quick and correot aim, even when the light is bad. — The forget-me-not has at least two emblematic meanings. One is suggested by its name ; the other probably originated f com its colour. Blue among flowers is generally I associated with the tender passion. ! —Dr Nansen's ship, the Fram, was painted green, grey, scarlet, and white, picked out with I gold — a bright dash of colonr among the everlasting white of the Arctic seas. —In Worcester the glove-making trade is largely, if not entirely, dependent on female labour. In that city alone nearly 25,000 women are employed by the various firms. — English prison governors have recently arranged to supply a London firm with a large number of bead blinds, similar to those used in Japan. These are to be made by the female prisoners, and it is the most recent industry introduced with a view to the total abolition of oakum picking by women. — The Emperor of Austria is of the royal house of Hapsbnrg, which takes its name from i the Habichtsburg, or Hawk's Mountain, whereon ! Rudolph I, the founder of the family, elected ' to build his castle. ' — The important town of Bruex, in Bohemia, is beginning to tumble about the ears of its j inhabitants, owing to the faulty construction of the coal pits beneath it. The railway station has already disappeared, the Hue itself being transformed into a species of switchback. And curiouily enough, while the value of house property in Bcaex is declining at a rapid rate, the rents are increasing. — All of the mummy cats unearthed in Egyptian tombs hare red hair. | — If you look at the map you will find that the mountain chains of the Old World lie east and west, while those of the New World lie north and south. — There is in South America a race of oats to which "meowing" is an unknown accomplishment. — A man 6ft high standing on level ground can only see objects on the same level three and a-quarter miles distant. — There is only one man living who has sat in the House of Lord 6 since the beginning of the first Parliament of William IV, and he is the Earl of Mansfield, who is now 91 years of age. — Billiard balls are first roughly turned by a lathe from the tusk, then left from six months to a year in a room about the temperature of an ordinary billiard room. This length of time is necessary, because the ivory shrinks more in j one direction than another, and the seasoning j must be complete before the balls are finished ! and polished. — The kingdom of Persia was founded by Cyrus the Great, who reigned from B.C. 559 to b.c. 529. From his accession to the present time there have been four great dynasties, which have ruled the country during the inter- 1 vening time. '. — Electricity can travel faster than 200,000 j miles in a seoond — or, in other words, instead of requiring 20 minutes to go around the world once, like messages recently despatched from London, it can make the journey eight times in one second. — That the earth is solid right to the centre, with the exception of lakes and reservoirs- of molten matter below the crust, has been demonstrated by the recent researches of Lord Kelvin and other authorities. — Over 5,000,000 visits are paid every year to London pawnbrokers. The exact figures are on an average 20,300 a day. Throughout the whole country the number of pledges is said to amount to 130,000,000 per annum. j . — Curiously enough, the Roman Catholic j Bishop of Canea, the scene of the Cretan excitement, is an Irish parish priest. Dr Donnelly, parish priest of Bray, and Assistantbishop of Dublin, bears tho title, though he has no other connection with Crete. — The latest photographic invention takes the form of a complete miniature apparatus of aluminium for taking views in a rifle, the camera closing of itself every time a shot is fired. The photograph will show the object \ aimed at in a circular picture, in the centre of which the shot must have fallen. — One hundred and seventy different species of bees are natives of Great Britain. — Few people appear to be aware that a tooth can be extraoted, cleaned, and restored to its socket, and become again a useful and natural instrument. A Liverpool gentleman in a large Bhipping office had" a tooth taken out, cleaned, and restored some years ago, and it is at the present time a good serviceable tooth. — In London every week nearly four tons of deal is used in skewering the pieces of cat's meat, which v obtained from about 400 horses. — The gas engine, which in Europe has now supplanted the steam engine for moderate power, is being used in France for ships. A new gasboat on the Havre-Rouen-Paris line is 100 ft long, and attains a speed of seven knots. The engine is a two-cylinder one, and is of 40-horse power. — The secret of Sophocles lies in his language, inextricably interwoven with it : the English verse can give the general meaning and drift of his sentences, but not the subtlety of his magic, the elusive delicacy of his style, the artful grace of his ways. He sinks, in another language, from himself into a sorb of Attic Racine— fine, indeed, yet frigid, shorn of his mellow glory. — Academy. — It U said that no fewer than 7769 school gardens exist in Austria, not including the oiiter kingdom of Hungary. They are conneoted with both private and public schools, and are used for jpurposes of practical instruction in horticulture and tree-srowitnu