MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2728, 27 June 1906, Page 69

MULTUM IN PARVO.

| — Th© congregation of Christ Churoh, Coventry— not at all a wealthy body of people — one Sunday gave in the collections , £455 4s 3d, the object in view "being the church renovation fund. The largest offertory on record --is that of £11,375, at a Glasgow "tJnited Presbyterian churoh, in 1884. But there is another story — or rather there are many stories — of church collections. A Welsh country rector, writing some years ago, stated that at a harvest thanksgiving in his church, the church being full, the offertory -came to the handsome sum of 2e 3d. At Norwich Cathedral musical service, December 26, 1903, 1000 persons gave between them only £6 7s ; in 1903, at an Essex church, Is lid wa6 all that was given at three Sunday services. — They are evidently anxious to secure sound legal judgments in France. A school for judges has been opened in Paris. Makebelieve trials are held by pupils of the Law School under the direction of distinguished attorneys. The whole procedure, from the issuing of a warrant for arrest to the pronouncing of judgment, is gone through. One pupil acts as judge, another as advocate for the defence, a third as prosecuting attorney, and so on. The mock trials held in all earnestness, and no outsiders are allowed to attend. —Of all the curioua things collected as hobbies, none oould be more so than that of a London fruit importer, who possesses more than 12C0 little squares of variouslycoloured tissue paper in which oranges and 1 lemons are generally packed, each one of which bears a quaint inscription or device. The fruit wrappers in the collection are contained ih an album, each one being labelled with the date and the name of the town from which it came. It has taken upwards of 25 years to make the collection. — The house in which Robert Burns spent the last years of his life, and which was occupied by his widow until her death, is now held on lease by the Town Council of Dumfries, and placed under the charge of Mrs and Miss Brown, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of the poet. To the relics preserved in the house a number of important additions have juet been made. These include two volumes which belonged in the Dumfries Public Library, of which Burns «»-as made an honorary member, both bearing his autograph. — M.Ttoussel Geo has completed the largest picture ever painted. It measures exactly 807 square feet. The artist had to beg the loan of a studio of suitable size from the State, and ho and his easels, some 20ft high, were accommodated in the Galerie- dcs Machines, the largest onespanned building in the world. The picture represents the Paris crowd of 1789 ruehing to tho ,Hotel de Vilte. led by Lafayette, ', after the .taking- of the Bastille, and contains over 1000 life-size figures. It will De .hung in. a suburban town hall, that of Ivry. ' —It has alwayß been a moot point in Austria as "to how an officer ought to salute a brother-officer when he has a lady , on hie arm.- -Tbis^elicat© point, however, has now been settled by the issue of an official army order. In 'future, if the lady is taking the arm of the officer, then he can, and must, give the salute with his left. But if, as a favourite custom is, the officer is taking the lady under his arm, he has to disengage himself and salute regularly with his right. — A wonderful jewel, called a plastron, has been fashioned in London for a Turkish potentate, suppoted to be the Sultan. It measures 2ft 4in in length and is made to buckle round the neck by a circle of diamonds. It spreads on the breaet, showing butterflies of jewels poised on diamond flowers, surrounded by the Turkish crescent in pearls. It is described aa a "plaster" of gems, and contains 8000 brilliants besides emeralds and rubies. It ■ is valued at £30,000. The jewel waa taken I to Buckingham Palace for the King's mii spection, and on picking it up his Majesty remarked that he was glad he was not obliged to wear anything so gorgeous or heavy. — The royal waiting-room on the Great Western Company's Windsor Station contains quite a gallery of photographs of royalties, mostly signed by themselves. Qu«en Victoria, King Edward, and Queen Alexandra, tho Prince and! Piincess of Wales, the Duke of Connaught (m full Ma6onio regalia), Princess Christian., and Princess Henry of Battenberg have long adorned the walls. One of the latest additions to this fine collection is a, splendid picture of the late Empress Frederick of Germany. — Few people are aware of the fact that the Orkney and Shetland- Islands, stiictly speaking, belong to the kingdom of Norway, a circumstance which has been recalled by the recent events at Christiania. Towards the close of tho fifteenth century King Christian of Norway pledged the Orkneys and the Shetland*, over which his rule was undisputed, to King James 111 of Scotland for the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, who became Queen of Scotland. The pledge has not yet been, redeemed. — No one ever sees a bed in any of Mme. Patti's private rooms until the evening, when what might be taken to be a handsome wardrobe with a mirror becomes a. i bedstead. Tho housemaids, after making | the bed in the morning, touch a spring, which causes the bed to sink down into the frame of the bedstead, and it is then drawn up so as to give it the appearance of a wardrobe. — The works of a clock made for the cathedral of St. Gervais d'Avranehes weigh two tons; there aro five sets of wheels, and the hours are struck on a bell weighing over six tons by a clapper of 2201b. For the quarters and the carillon there are 22 other bells, the weight of the quarter bells ranging from 13cwt to two tons. There are four faces to this clock, which is tho largest in France. —Mr Frank Shooter, who has just resigned his post as superintendent of the Exeter bathing-gTound, has in the past quarter of a century saved over 300 lives. Shooter holds all the premier awards of the Royal Humane Society. Shooter once swam a hundred jarde along a mill stream under a road in complete darkness and snatched a boy from death, just as he had reached a large water-wheel. — The world's greatest animal food producer is the ox, including, of course, the female of his species. It is impossible to get at exact figures for the whole world, but it is generally believed to be about 15,000,000 tons a year, and of this moro than half is beef. " In England we each eat between 401b and 501b of beef a year, out of a x>tal of perhatss, 1201b of various kinds of meat and Doultry jjer head.

— Forest sanatoria for weakly school children have been established by the. Berlin municipality. They are open all the year round, and the first object is to restore the delicate pupils to health. They are taught only as muoh as they can assimilate without strain upon their minds and bodies. — Until 1757, when it was demolished, there stood on London Bridge a house built entirely without nails. Its name was Nonsuch House, and it was constructed entirely of wood. No iron was used, all the fastenings being effected by skilful dovetailing, jointing, and wooden negs in place of naile. It was four storeys high, and splendidly ornamented both inside and out. — One of the best-known houses in Northamptonshire was designed to represent the days, weeks, and quarters of the year. It has four wings facing the . four quarters of the heavens to represent tha four quarters of the year; 365 windows, one for each day; 53 chimneys, one for each week; and seven entrances to represent the se\en days of the week. — A doctor in the North of Scotland finds carrier pigeons of much use to him. He has a scattered practice, and when on long rounds takes several pigeons with him. If one of his patients needs medicine immediately, he writes out 1 pr*scT : v>'.ioii. and by means of the birds forwards it to his surgery. Here an assistant gets the message, prepares tho prescription, and despatches the medicine. If, after visiting a patient, the doctor thinks he will be required later on in the day he simply leaves a pigeon, with which he can be called if Jiecessary.