MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2295, 24 February 1898, Page 40

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— Heligoland is gradually sinking into the iea. — The money invented in English railways exceeds the National Debt by £120,000,000. — An experienced miner b:\>> sssn-ted that there is a fair supply of gold within 3:fc oi the purface on a small eetate in Kirkcudbright, ficotland. — The Norway rat, instead of migrating annually, only does so once in every 11 years. Naturalists, attribute this movement to some inherited memory of a flight to escape an expected cataclysm, but this seems somewhat farfetched. — Coins of low denominations circulate very tapidlj' ; thus it is calculated thai every penny in circulation changes hands a doz;n times a week. — The mo3fc fashionable street of Berlin, the famous Uuter den Linden, is said to bs now the beat -lighted thoroughfare iv the world. It has three lines or elee'ric arc lamps, which are separated by two rows of lime trees. — The palace of Vcrsail'es, ia Paris, is supposed to be the costliest ever built. Ifc is said tisat Louis the Fourteenth, to prevent the vast sums which he spent upon this wonderful palace being known", threw all the documents relating to it into the fire. —In Japan, instead of " christening " a Vessel about to be launched, a large cage fall of birds is hung over the prow. Directly the ship is afloat the birds are released, the idea beiDg thafe the birds in this way welcome the ship as she brgins her life. — In the island ot Java is a small State which is entirely controlled by women, with the 6iug*!e exception that the sovereign is a man. He is, however, entirely dependent; on liis State Council of three women. —It seems tbafc a public man cannot bo buried in Westminster Abbuy without the payment of fees amounting to something like £91. | — In Dresden there in a daily newspaper ! which is owned and worked by the city. It | was bequeathed by the former proprietor on j condition that ali the profits should be spent upon the public parks. „ I — The Roman barber, besides cutting the ! hair and shaving the face, trimmed the nails and kept the fingers in order. The Roman i philosopher?, with a scorn of fashion's man- j dates still common to their kind in the nineteenth century, affected beards of enormous ■ leDgth, which became known as the badge of j thtir profvpsiou. i — The Pullman palace saloon cars were first j nsed in England hy tho Midland Railway Compmy on March 21, 1874-, and were opened to the public on June 1 of the same year. I — A naturaiisfi of eminence finds that land I birds make their journeys in the d&y time and tracer birds by night. — Nearly 5,000,000 persons are employed on ihe world's railroads. ] — The bed of the Atlantic from 400 to 2000 ! fathoms is covered with an ocze, or very fine j chalky deposit, consisting to a great extent of ' zuinute broken shells. j — No trustee may legally inve3t niorey in j ■bonds of the City of London, since the set; of ; 1893, while permitting trustees te invenfc in the • debt of any borough having 50,000 inhabitants, does not specifically mention London, and as the census takes iuto account only the ni^ht population, the city has fewer than the 50,000 inhabitants required. — It is estimated that the whole coal pupply of our planet would barely suffice to produce Jueat equal to that which the sun dissipates in j one-tenth of a second. | — The calf; cf the beard, according to the ancient Jewish writers, started in the Gordon of Eden (says Francis J. Ziegler in Lippiucotfe). Adam, they tell us, was several miles in height, and was furnished with a prodigious beard which reached co his middle. — The first steam vessel to engage ia a naval battle wss manned by the Spanish in the Don Carlos Civil War of 1836. — The last total eclipse of the sun obserw&ble in England was ceeu near Salisbury ou IVTay 22, 172*. The nexb will be on August 12, 1&99. — An ingenious hatter of Paris constructed i house of felt made out of 24,000 old hats. *Xl\\s house consisted of pirlour, dining room, ] and bedroom, also a kitchen. It was erected j apon a platform upon the plaiu of St. Denis, ! at.d could be transported from place to place. j — Queen Victoria ib said to possess some very old watches. Among them are two little gold ones, by Breguet, supposed to be 100 \ years old. One is a repeater, the ether a j felind man's watch. Both of these are ia con- ! Blank use and keep good time. They are about • the size of a two-shilling piece, and have silver \ dials. • i — The largest waves are seen off Cape Horn, j prising to 46ft in height and 765 ft long from j tfrest to crest. Waves in the North Atlantic i have been observed to rise 43it in height. In \ the German Oceac their height does not i t'iceed 13£ ft, and in the Mediterranean 14^-ffc. j — The sunshine of Southern California is 1 pub to pratical use by means of a solar waferbeater, which is now being largely used in that quarter. It warms water by the sun's rays, and by its use hot water may be had for a bath or other domestic purposes at all hours of the day and night, the invention working automatically. When once fitted the apparatus occasions no expense, and it can be regulated an a fraction of time. — An Italian has recently made a boat of cement. The framework is of small steel bars covered with a wire netting, the latter being in turn covered with the cement. It is claimed that this boat is cheaper than a wooden one. — The shortest sitting of the English Parliament on record was one day. This happened on September 30, 1399, when Richard 11, who Shad resigned the crown on the day previous, was formally deposed, and Henry of Lancaster proclaimed Henry IV in his stead. — The population of England at the time j tf the Conquest did not exceed 2,000,000, all told. ; — Land in the City of London is worth over i jE2,00Q,000 an acre. — In tropical seas the hues of certain fish Bre too gorgeous to be reproduced on canvas. — Ifc is ftated that a remarkable submarine vessel is bc-iog equipped at Baltimore. She is designed to creep along the bottom of the ocean in order to find old wrecks, and, possibly, treasure. Egress from the hull is rendered Basy by means of the bow compartment being bo filled that the air pressure is equal to that cf the wat*r. 'During a recent tesb the door was kept open for half an hour, but no water entered. Of course, only divers go into this compartment. The vessel is named the Argonaut, and belongs to Simon Lake. The vessel lias remained for two hours ben^jJUfp water. — Nobody can nit down irTTOB Queen's presence without being requested to do so by he.-, and in the open air men must not come nearer than three paces to her person. The Queen must not be addressed unless she speaks first, and people may not &poak to each other w her presence.

— The latest thing in street paving is to put a layer of expanded iron on the ground and spread a layer cf concrete over it, and then asphalt over the concrete, The idea is that the expanded iron prevents the pavement from sinking. — Tne Channel Island? do not form part of the United Kiogdons, but come under the head of British possessions. — The whaier Pollux has been purchased for M. Borehgrevink's South Polar expedition. The chip will be ready to sail in July next. Her crew will be all Norwegians. — The recorded prediction of Dr Falb, the j German meteorological prophet, that, Tempel's I come! would collide with the earth in Novem1 ber 1899 has caused Dr l'Yedrich R<dschof, first assistant at the Vienna Observatory, to make a recalculation of the conties'g course, vyifch the reassuring rosulti that on the day in 1C99 when ifc will bo nearest to our earth the { distance will still be 11,000,000 miles, omitting i the odd figures. — It is interesting to nofce that the capital value of the British navy at the present time exceeds £84- 000,000. The fi.sb cost of the fleet; which led ti th« downfall of Napoleon was but £10,000,000 sterling. The fleet then comprised between 4-30 and 490 fighting vessels. — Accordiuff to ths Westminster Gazette the number of Jewish soldiers in the Imperial forces has shown a marked increase in the last few 5 ear?. It is interesting fco note that there ace 26 Jewish officers on the active list of her MajesDy's army, when the proportion to i population should be a nhade under 20, and in I tbo auxiliary forces there rue 52 Jewish officers instead of the proportionate quota I of 31. —An American inventor is said to have desigotd a, revolving railway train. As in the eas'^ of one of the roller boats, however, there ia a. central parb of the train which does not revolve, aud m the saloon carriages which make up tbis fentral pert; the passungera will Bit more comfortably than in ordinary trains. These saloons will b<s fii.ted up sumptuously ; there will be a smoking ioona, a reading room, and other luxuries of 'ncdern life. Is will be, in faci-, a rolJiny hotel. Th« inventor promises j that this train will roll smoothly along at the nice rate of 150 roilea an hour ; — A French inventor couverts grain into dough at one operation without milhug. The grain is soaked, and eutering one end of the i machine is crushed and disintegrated, the | paste passing on to the kneading machine at ! the other tnd of the apparatus, where it is aerated suid kneaded iuto dough, which can be ■ preserved isidelisiiiely without injury. Th« nutritive qualities of the grain, brau included, are kept. — At a meeting of the Sin Pranc'sco Microscopical Society Dr Harkness pre c enft'd a bottle i of red snow, which he had gathered on the i Wasateh Mountains. The red enow was found ! on the north side of a spur which rose about 10,000 ft above the sea level. When fresh the snow has the appearancs of baiiig drenched with blood, as though some large auiraal had been killed. The red enow is caused by the presence of a one-celled plant called Protococcus nivatis, which reproduces itself by subdivision — that is, the cell divides itself into j several new cells. This is done wish great '< rapidity, and a few cells lodged in she snow, ; ur.d'i' favourable conditions, soon will givs it ths appearajice of red snow.