MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2528, 27 August 1902, Page 58

MULTUM IN PARVO.

•w Eleven experts have worked for five months on a Wilton carpet intended for the Goldsmiths' Company's Court drawing room. .The carpet >s an inch deep, comprises five •nd a-half million knots, weighs about 12cwt, ♦nd contains 46 shades of wool.

— A Nebraska man has invented a machine for automatically measuring soft goods. You stick the cloth under a wheel and draw it through, and the ya-.ds and f«et are indicated on a dial. It is a. light affair, and may be easily moved about. — A wooden chimney-stack 160 ft high is in operation at Mapiini, in the province of Durango, Mexico. The interior is lined with corrugated iron, and there are platforms at intervals to throw water on the wood if it catches fire. — Both eyes of a wolf in a menagerie at lyone have been operated on for cataract. After the operation the animal's eyelids were sewn together to prevent it opening them for several days. — The average reign of English monarchs has been 23 years; of Russian only-16. — More oases of consumption appear among needle-makers and file-makers than

any other class of workers. | — A remarkable innovation is about to be made in Paris. The policemen on night duty are to have electric lights on various parts of their uniforms, and at the extremities of their batons. These will be worked by pressing a waietcoat button, and be used In the regulation of the street traffic

— The Mian-tsz, a tribe in Asia, will not

bury a man until they have first tested the (round with an egg. The male relatives of the deceased go out to the appointed ppot, bearing a large basket of eggs. Stooping 1 down, one of the natives lets an egg drop softly on the ground. Its breaking is considered an ill-omen, and another spot is ■elected. In this way the party often wanders about for hours, dropping eggs antil one falls without cracking the shell. — A portrait by Hoppner of Lady Mary Arundel, which realised 7830(?s at auction recently, was sold in 1848 for £26 16s 6d — The University of Calcutta is said to be the largest educational corporation in the world. Every year it examines over 10,000 students. — The Bay of Naples, between the city of that name and the famous Island of Capri, has a bed whioh furnishes about £250,000

worth of coral every year. The fishermen uk old nets, untwisted rope ends and other things of that sort, which are dragged across the bottom of the sea. The coral branches become entangled in them, break off, and are pulled up. — In Havana there is a device for protecting passengers from being over-charged by cabmen. The lamp-posts are painted Tarious colours, red for the central district, bine for the eecond circle, green for the third, etc., and thus the "fare" knows immediately when he has pawed a legal boun'ctary, ana pays accordingly. * — What is claimed to be the largest iron cable in the world is now being made at Ijebanon, Connecticut. It is to be more

than a mile long, each link weighing 931b. - ft 1 — The oldest royal dynasty in the woald is tha( of Japan, which goes back unbroken for 2600 years. 1 —An enormous block of granite was recently removed from a quarry in Cornwall. It was 55ft by 26ft by 20ft, and weighed «bout 2043 tons.

- — One of the most beautiful sights in the world is the annual migration of butterflies a0r036 the Isthmus of Panama. To.ward the end of June a fow scattered specimens arc discovered flitting 1 out to eea, and mg the days go by the number increases, •until about July 14 or 15 the sky is occasionally almost obscured by myriads of these frail insects.

— A singular illustration of the persistence with which the Japanese adhere to the family vocations is seen in an announcement in a Japanese newspaper that a 'celebrated dancing-master was to hold W service in honour of the one-thousandth anniversary of the death of his ancestor, who was the first of the family to take up the profession. — A man of 70 has eaten in his lifetime •bout 584 tons of food. — Ecuador has a record in volcanoes — three active, five dormant, and 12 extinct. Eleven of these peaks have never been climbed. — Three-tenths of the earnings of a Belgian convict are given to him on the expiration of his. term of imprisonment. Some of ■ them thus rave more money in gaol than -they have ever saved before. — A long and vigorous breath at frequent intervals is the preventive of sea-sickness ' that Professor Heinz, of Erlingen, regards

■■» infallible &* it is simple. The cxplana- ' tion is that the extra oxygen added to the ■ blood lessens the sensitiveness of the lobe of the brain that produces sea-sickness by re- ' aoting on the stomach. — The English walnut is said to be tlie '■most profitable of all nut-Hearing trees. When in full vigour, they will yield about 3001b of nuts to the tree. The nuts sell, on an average, at about 4d per pound. If only 27 trees are planted on an acre, the income would be about £135 per acre.

— Six thousand is t3ie record number of roses produced by one tree at a time. This was in Holland, on Mme. Retmew's land. A Marechal Niel at Whitby *as had 3500 blooms on. it at the same time.

— Mice cannot exist on Papa Little, an island in St. Magnus Bay, on the West of Shetland. To test fch« truth of this statement, several mice at various times wore taken there, but the coil proved so uncongenial that they soon died. — According to the Tribune de Geneve, **» there has recently died in Albania one Ismail Hudgo, who was born in 1741, having' reached, at the time of his death, the extraordinary age of 160 years. The old man up to the last was in full possession of all his 6enses ; in fact, his vigour was so great that at the age of 158 he had been known to walk 11 miles without being tired. He had a splendid set of teeth at the time of his death, liis general appearance being that of a healthy, middle-aged man. — The uses to which electricity can be put are well illustrated by. a. discovery - which the New York police have just made. - It seems that some of the Rambling dens in. New York are protected by an extraordi- - nary network of electrical attachments to provide asrainat an unexpected raid on the part of the police. All' the passages and entries are lined with secret push-buttons, , and there are even cross-wires, by which . the -entrance of anyone could at once be signalled to the gambling rooms. B u t most clever of all is the fact that the rooms aye» lit, no£ by electricity, but by cas. and tho connections are co arranged that, should any unauthorised person enter, the ga» would at once be cut off and tlie lights cxtinguithed*