MULTUM IS PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2574, 15 July 1903, Page 65

MULTUM IS PARVO.

— A skipping rope lias bean presented by a fcod Pittsburg millionaire to hie six-year-old daughter. The handles are gold, studded v?i-& an odd jowel, while the cord, the finest procurable, cost mere than a dollar per inch. "Wlran. the child grows a little older £be wSJ be able fully to appreciate Irer papa's gift. At present she treats it as if it were an ordinary sixpeimy rope.

—It is said to be a-n ill wind that blows nobody good. The trsmencrous {rales which raged recently did -he inhabitants of some of the village's on tlie eoutheiin Baltic coast a very good turn, large quantities of amber being washed a^iore by tlie waves. At Hothenen, for instance, amber worth 24.000 marks {.£1200) was picked Tip, while at other places there were satisfactory harvests of this valuable £üb=tano2.

— Although you wear a revolver as a •watch chain charm, you must take out a license for it. A Brightlingsea yachtsman was educated irp to this the other day. when the stern Oolcliesfcsr magistrates fined him £2 for "carrying a firearm without a license." The weapon was a silver revolver, half an inch in length, which de--fendffiut wore on his watch chain. It was stated that he loaded: it with powder and fired -at c young lady of Brightlrngs&a. The girl's hand was injured and a man's eye*wa« hurt.

— Tke boys at the High School of Syracuse have a •gri&vaffloa which they feel should be ventilated by means of a etrike. Their meals comprif-ed, too rotny tarts and milk puddings and too little variety. Failing to f*et satisfaction, they declared themselves on strike, and paraded the streets of Syracuse •with fifes and tambourines. They declare that they have brought the director of the school to hie eensea, for that great man has invited t&ens to » palaver.

— The Ainus, the- arison-al inhabitants of Japan, live in the Itiaud of Yezzo. The race has become *o reduced that there are now not more than 15,000 or 17,000 of them left in the country. The most notice- . able peculiarity about Ainu women is that , they have tattooed upon their upper and ' lower lips what resembles a monrtache. The : women are not considered afcbi active and : ibeir matrimonial prospecte are quite in- : jured without this curious decoration. * — A doctor advocates die frequent tak- '. ing of hot baths. These, he vrgee, axe much more healthful than the cold plunge, which, he thiats few systems can stand. The water , should be at a temperature in the beginning of lSGdeg Fahr., this to b-3 increased until tSie wate-r is as hob as can be borne. The length of tho first bath should be not more than five minutes, and at no time should it be longer than is ajrreeable, with no teto&b of discomfort apparent. The writer cites in support of im theory the practice common among Japanese fighters. — Quite a wonderful feat of daring ha* just been performed by a party of eight Japanese sportsmen in British Columbia. They wanted to catch a bear alive without wounding by firearms or shackling by traps, aad this is how they set about it.' Hiding themselves in a forest in the track of a bear they' waited till Bruin oame pounding along, and i&ten one of the little Japg spran/ suddenly out from his ambush, and flinging hi* arms round Bruin's neck brought the astonished bear sprawling to th« groundAfter that it was more or less easy for the other ceven Japs to grapple with the beast aad pinion irirn. — The carrier pigeon, when travelling, never feeds. If the distance be long, it flies on without stopping to take nutriment. and at last arrives thin, exhausted, and, almost dying. If corn be presented to it, it refuse*, contenting itself with a little water aad then deeping. Two or three hours later it begins to eat wibh great moderation, and sleeps again immediately afterwards. If its flight has been very prolonged, Use pigeon will proceed ia this manner for 48 hours before recovering it* normal mode of feeding.

Teeth of all kinds have been worshipped, and are, in fact, t-til! venerated as relics in some religious sbi.me*. Buddha's tooth is preoervod in an Indian temple, the Cingalese maship the tooth of a monkey, while the elephant's aad shark's tooth serve a similar •purpose among the ilalabar and Tonga islanders respectively. TliO Siamese were formerly the possessors of the tooth of a. eacred monkey, which they vslued very highly, but in a war with the Portuguese they lost it and had to pay £700,000 to get it back again. It is now kept in a small gold box enclosed in six other boxes in one of the many temples of the Siamese capital.

— The lady typkt does not mean to go under in the fierce competition with her clerical brothers for a livelihood. She has plenty of energy- and wonderful resource. Thus, an example set at Blackpool by a lady tyjnst last year will bo followed at many popular seaside resorts this summer. The Blackpool "attraction" was a tent containing a young girl, a shorthand note book, a typewriting in* chine, and a table. The fair "operator was prepared to take letters from dictation and tyna them aoatly for a small fee. Large numtera of viskora availed themselves of this opportunity of communicating with their friend* at homo, and it is said that the typist's earnings amounted to between £* and £5 ocr week.

— Some curious statistics have just been pu-biishod upon what an insurance actuary would deseiibe as the "expectation of life" in. animals. Among the larger species of oattlc there is some approach to uniformity. Thus*, for the horse and the a«s the estreino limit is about 35 years, and for horned cattle about 30. For the dog it is given as 25, wliile eltesp, goata, pigs, and oats are grouped at 15. But there are stranger disparities among birds. While a goope may livo 30 yean*, r sparrow 25. and a crow as nrany as 100, ducks, poultiy. and turkeys di& of old agre_ at 12 years. The palm for longevity is divided beiwee-i elephant and parrot. Both pass the century. — The gcod sexton who boiled the be-U at the little ehurc-h of CHapel-on-le-Frith when Oliver Cromwell was farming at Huntingdon could never have imagined that all through the unfolding hutory of England until now hi« children end his children's children would toll those belfe in the Derbyshire hilla. Yet from 1631 until the other day it was a Brainwell who was eexton at Chapel-en-le-Frith, and a tablet in the church tells the world of this faithful service. The last Bramwell died aot long ago, and the taUet has been put up which-re-oords the fact that eight predecessors of the same family, all of whom were sextons at the church, lie beneath the stones. The average length of the Branuvell sextonships was more than a quarter of a century, and one of them held the office for more than £0 years.