MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Volume 23, Issue 2684, 23 August 1905, Page 61

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— Organ-grinders in Verviers, Belgium, are by law compelled to appear every morning befora the police superintendent and play iheir instrument*.. The organs whicu chance to be out of tune most be set in order before a license to play on the stre-ets will be granted.

—At Vassar College, New York, where nearly 200 girls are in the graduating class, a curious custom prevails. Every year, on the evening of Commencement Day, the class lines together and there is a roll-call. As the names are called in alphabetical order each girl is required on her honour to answer "Guilty" if she is engaged to be married and "Not guilty" if she be still fancy-free.

— Ireland is the one country wbich has a musical instrument for its national emblem. On her green flag gleams a golden harp. The system of iaw m ancient liclond was a poetic composition set to music. — A linen collar has been put to a strange us© by a resident in Gloucester. Upon clearing the letter-box at the post office there recently it was discovered that a letter had been written upon me side of a collar. It being properly stamped, the missive reached its destination. For Norway to cut the painter is rather a «eWous matter for King Oscar from th-3 civil ser\ice point of -view. It means a loss of some £30,0G0 a year. — Out of 77£ millions of acres of land in the United Kingdom only 28 millions are under permanent pasture. — London and Liverpool are both at th« level of the sea. Glasgow is 30ft above it, Manchester 50ft, and Birmingham 300 ft. — A watch taken to the top of Mont Blanc will gain 36sec in 24 hours. Four shillings per annum was therpnt of a five-roomed house :n: n Henry VlH's time. , — Germany is able to feed about niuetenths of her nearly 60,000,000 inhabitants on the products of her own soil. — London for the supply of its meat market has now a very powerful petrol locomotive, hauling fotir waggons, each charged with 50 tons of meat. -The population of the 18 ?«£«£«■ ' « China, including Manchuria, is 0 ,. 7 000 000 more than that of tne British Empire. The people inhabit an area smaller than Europe, less Russia and Gteat Britain. The density of population is on the whole, much the same as fcnat ot E-°ThereE -°There is a record that Roger Bacon, the friar who devoted more of his time to science than to religion was the fire* man to make spectacles, in the year 1280. ¥et, on ri in Fran^. dated 1290 there is«. inscription which awards the honour to another in these words : -"Here lies Salvino degli Armati, inventor of spectacles. May God pardon his sins." By 1500 spectacles were'not at all uncommon in Holland and Germany. — The balance sheet of the Everton Foolball Club, England, shows total receipts for the past season of £15,669, oj which £12.500 was from the gates and £2500 prop c-eeds of matches played away. The total expenditure was £10,500, including £374« fo- players' wages and transfer fe ;? s > *^ uu paid for benefit matches, and £1200 for travelling expenses. The balance in hand is now over £14,000, the profit for the year being £5200. J _, —At Knole, Stevenoaks, Kent, the residence of Lord Sackville, there is a room called the King's Bedroom, «>?*™ffi J bed made for James I that cost iBUWJ, a solid silver table, a toilet service of silver valued at £1000. and many other treasures that entailed the expenditure of much gold (£2O 000, in point of fact) when the apartment was furnished in the precious white m - a Spain boasts probably the longest lawsuit in the world's history. It began m ?517, and is still sub judice. The case, which concerns a pension, is between tr.e Marquis de Vian* a-nd the Count Torres do Cabrera and the accumulated sum in dispute would have readied fabulous millions had not four centuries of attorneys, barristers, suid court officials taken con-, siderate measure? of appropriation to prevent the sum becoming unwieldy. — Spanish bull-fighters get salaries as large as those of exceptionally good actors. "First swords" like Mazzantini or Guernta are among the richest men in Spain. Guerrita, who is not -ret 30, earns an mcomo which is never less than £8000 m one year and owns near Canz a villa and part, where in the winter he entertains his friends with lavish hospitality Mazzantini has £50,000 invested., and it is a bad year when he does not earn £10,000. Reverte once, after a triumphant corrida m San Sebastian, lighted a cigarette with a spill rolled out of a French bank note for lOOOfr to show his contempt for money in general and French money in particular. — For all the admitted improvements in the Revised Version published nearly three-and-twenty years ago. the Bible of our childhood' still sells 10 times as many as the modern edition. Seme of the objections have a distinctly quaint aspect. One such was that advanced by a Government official who complained to Gladstone that the Revised Version was "distinctly inferior to the old one." Asked his reason, ho pointed out that the verse, "There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." was changed into "that the world should be_ enrolleci. Here was a pretty substitution. ihe original form was a brilliant idea, the whole world taxed by a single act— a measure worthy a great empire ; but the enrolling was a mere census-taking: the sort of thing that a Local Government Board would csrrv out!

'Catevincr I\i -mimah voquir-p-plentiful and - ariod supply of ' can bo se^n from this report oJ v.'od at the London Zoological t-Jatti last year. For the flesh-eating aninwls there" were supplied 144 tons of horse-floJi. nearly nine tons of goat-flesh, and 9030 chicken heads. Fourteen and a-half tons of fish, in addition to 1260 pints of shrimps, furnished the waterfowl Tvir.h their daily fare, while 297 loads of hay and 6030 bunches of green; srppliod the r«™ii-v.vite. Other it emu on tV list were ?"°." ' Srapos. 493 : b of susar 6262 loaves of bn\ ('. 50?6 qnarf nf milk. 3031!' of era eke i 5. ar.l more than 33 "-GO esgs Tie chicken hoad^ wei'e for the members of the ral fawly, the cssrs for the birch, ana fr* «luimpsj fornipd tho easiest way u> fc*_e afTee.ions ot\ ths flaminD-nap.