MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2288, 6 January 1898, Page 40

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— - On the outskirts of a town in Bedfordshire is a litfcle wood, the owner of which clears at least £50 a year by the sale of the hazel nuts growing in it. It contains some thousands of bushes.

— Although one of his earliest compositions, the incidental music to " A Midsummer Night's Dream." contains the most brilliantly musical work Mendelssohn ever accompl-shed. — Pall Mall Gazette.

— Ihe English as a nation write the most legible band of any people in the world. — Scotland Yard has accommodation for 3000 police officers. — When a Frenchman runs across the Chancel to London his every aelioa ebows that he thinks himself a traveller and explorer of the first magnitude. An Englishman throws a few things into a bag, tells his friends he i-s going on the Continent, and makes no fu i s about it; in fact, he would go across the globe with less trepidation than aFienchrnan thinko the necessary accompaniment of cresting the Channel. — Morning.

— Is has been always said that to eit fish was to encourage intellectuality. It wae Mark Twain, I think, \vhr, being asked by a dull fellow whether this was true, snd for his advico a3 to diet, replied : " Well, in your caeo I should recorr-mend whalep." Humourists are intelligent persons, bufc they should not be consulted atout diet.— Jamec Payn.

— More than 30.0C0 spfcimens of. fossil in&ecta have been collected from all parts of the world, of which only "20 are butterflies.

— The average attendance at places of worship iv England tnd W»ks is computed to be between 10,000,000 and 11.000,000 persons. There is a place of worship for every 500 individuals, taking the country all through, and a stated minister for every 700. About 80,000 Bermocs are preached every Sunday.

— I can quite urderstand now bow men who have ence for some cause or another given up bobacco never want to take to it ag?.in. The more you smoke the more you want to ; the less jou smoke the less you want to. It is a gratifying thought that when the fire of youth is past and one is apptoachir g the embers and ashes period of life, one may, with a little selfdiscipline,' become a model of all the virtues. — G. R. Sims.

— Only about two minutes are required for Hie blood to course through the heatt, thence to the Itmgs, back to the heart, and then through the entire body and return to the heart.

— Durißg the bull-fighting season 1896 there were 478 fights in Spain, and 1218 bulls, valued at £60,000, and 5730 faorues, valued at £40,000, were killed. The number of matadors (the principal fighters who killed the bull-) was 23, and they were paid for their services in all about £44,500.

— The people of the United Statis are more heavily taxed ill an any other nation in the world.

— The Winter Palace, which is the principal official residence of the Cz^re, is on fete banks of

the Neva, and, with the Hermitage, which is connected with it, 'Contains ihe great Russian collections of works of art, jfW€la, and antiquities. -_ Each of its four sides Is 700 ft long, and when the Czar is in residence ifcns inhabited by some 7000 persons. — The Norwegians of all classes are the beetbehaved people in Europe. It is often argued

that an arist.ocracy is . necessary to give by _ example a high tone to society ; "but Norway is : almost the only country in Europe without an

aristocracy or "any pretensions to one. — A man of science reports in a certain scientific journal ihe cmious ref ulfes obtained by h;m last summer -while experimenting with the light of glowworms. He operated with 300 glowworms, and he sajs that the light vrhich they emitted, when filtered through cardboard or copper plates, showed the properties of X rajs. — It is calculated that the yearly amount of food, water, and air which a man receives in the aggregate comes to about a ton and a-half . — A species of balocn iahabitating the colony of the C*pe of Good Hope bas become a pest to the tanners by destroying (heir lambs. It is asserted that they have taken note of the fact that women do not carry firearms, aud bherc-fore need not be feared. But as soon as a man appears the baboons take to their heel?. On this sccount the farmers have lately devised the plan of dressing in women's appaiel vrhen they set out to shoot these animals. — The railways of the United Kingdom give employment to nearly 5,000,000 men. — By the death or a cat the Temple quarter in Paris receives a legacy of 10,OOOFr for its elementary schools. The cat's miafcwsa, who died in 1892, left ihe money for the maintenance of her pet cat, with the reversion at its <leath to the district municipslity if it would , look after the cat. — Roumania .carries great weight with her in the Eagt. No -one who' travels much in the Balkan Peninsula can .help being struck with ■ the great material progress made by th^se descendants- of Traja,u'-6 Dacian colonists. If

one wishes for good tteamsra, fast trains, and tie luxuries" oT Western civilisation one will - -find them in Gouuaania alone of all the young States carved out of the Turkish Empire. ■"Possibly the Roumanians may not poesess ■the moie solid and tomely qualities of their Bulgarian neighbours ; but they are far more advanced in the grac3B of civilisation, — Speaker.

— Matthias Settler died near Decatur, TJ.S A., after fastinjr for eight month". He lad selected his buiial place and designated bis tombs! one. He left word that phonographs of .him were to bs taken after death and distributed among his friendf, and this was done. — A remarkable engineering feat was accomplished recently. The Pennsylvania Railway Company removed the old bridge over the Schuylkill River, and simultaneously replaced it with a heavier steel structure 242 ft long and 25ft wide. The moving operation was completed in 2min 28£ ec, and a train crossed the new bridge within 12min of the starting of the work.

— Paper tranko are made of sheets of paper "pasted together, dried, and pressed in moulds, after which they are coated with oil, dried, varnished, and baked, when they become as Strong as wood.

— To encourage the destitute to attend public worship the clergy of the Church of the Sacre Cocur, on Montmarfcre, Paris, give away loaves of bread after each service. The daily number of applicants averages 2000. — Many of the fruits and vegetables now eaten were almost unknown to our forefathers. Hot until Henry VIII's time were there either raspberries, strawberries, or cherries grown in England.

— Any human being who will have the. preSEnce of mind to clasp the hands behind the back and turn the face towards the zenith may float at ease and in perEecfc safety in tolerably Btill water.

— Numerous experiments to determine the best fire-resisting material for the construction of doors have proved that wood covered with tin resists fire better than an iron doo%

— Chicago is a cifcy of millionaires, and the following list of fortune's favourites there, with their beginningi, will be doubtless interesting : — J. "W, Doane, one of the wealthiest men in Chicago, began life as a very small dealer in peanuts ; W. T. Hoyt, who has an immense tea trade between China and Chicago, was, when a boy, tie keeper of a little applo stall ; the feuaous Libby Brothers, whose iiaued meats are known all over the world, were once working butchers ; Jacob Rosenberg and Levi Rosenfeld, the famons capifcalitts, were pedlars; Jerome Beeeher w<s a labcurar ; and Tjebmann, the EaiSFonaire brewer, b'gan life as a werking carpenter.

— A.n eminent London pby<.ic>an has obtained good results in dressirg burns -with milt. Bondages aie staked with m \k &nd laid on the burn, to be removed nigh 1 ; aud morning.

— The summer coat of the Polar fox is dark, almost black. In winter it is so v.hifce that the animal can hardly ba seen as it runs over the snow.

— The wonderful part of the Maxim gun is that it has only one barrel, and jet ifc can discharge 600 shots in one minute.

— A church bas bjon built from a single reels at Waterloo, lowa. Before bf-irtfr sp'il by <-x-plosiv-cs the boulder webbed 2500 tons. At Sinfca Eosa, California, there is s chinch which was built from a single tree, one of the enormous redwoods which flourish in that State.

— If we moved our legs proportionately aa fast as an ant, it is calculated we could travel nearly 800 miles an hour.

— A woman in Tennessep, on being separated from her husband as the result of a quarrel, declared that she would nob eat until he returned. He did not come b.<ck, and she kept her word, dying of starvation after fasting 58 days.

— The idea entertained by some people that violin-playing is injurious to Iho he?l r .h ia not wholly without four.d*tion. Unless care is taken that the instrument is held in a proper position the chent may be contracted, and a young girl may even become humpbacked.

• — Naturalists consider it a woud«rful fact that Bermuda islands have only seven native species of land birds, while no fewer than 128 other species pay visits to the islands. Many of these visitors are birds which vass the sumaier in Europe and utilise the Bermudas as a convenient winter resort.

— The oldest Frenchman bas jutt di(d. He was M. Lonia Couerbe, a farmer livir g at Castf x, near Condom. He was born on January 1, 1786, and was therefore nearly 112 years of age. Recently an effort was made in P.-arsce to ascertain the number of centenarians living. It was found that thf re were persons who had reached th.i ages of 102, 105, and 107 > ear 3 respectively. The age of M. Couerbe had just besn proved, Red it was a matter of satisfaction to his friends that he held the record for X ngevity. He did not hold it long. The rejoicings were cut short by his death.

— Mr Sims Reeves, who ia now 75, was far in the twenties before his voice developed its power, and lie didiaot always get along smoothly with his teacher, an able but rather brusqnematnered man. Once while he was ringing a song the teacher abruptly interrupt cd. " Stop, sir, yoa are very flat, very flat." "Aud you, eir, aie eb&rp, very sharp," retorted the indignant Rsevep, as he picked up his music and dashed from the room.

— Curiously, the Zulu, bravest of his raca in the Se.ld, is, the timidest in the diamond mine. He has too much imagination a he peoplea its darkness, its silence, its echoes with spiritual belng<>. One of these f«-llrws, d^scribiag a mud rush, said : " Baas, there came a wind beast, then the silence of de*tli, then the whole mine cried out like a woman in travail, and I turned and fled from the assegai of tho destroyer." A strange thing, courage ; s>. man who would throw himself away on British bayonets or before Boer rifbs trembles at a witch finder, and fears to be underground in a mine. — Daily Telegraph.

— When a South American cowboy wishes to catch a bull or cow, he rides alongside it, and fetoops down from his saddle, grasps the creature's tail, and, with a sharp, peculiar twist, sends the animal rollirg on its back. From the force with which it f*lls, the creature's horns almost invariably pin its head to the ground, giving tho v&quero time to diemaunt and sit on ifes head, holding the animal helpless to rise, while a companion ties its legs.