MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2778, 12 June 1907, Page 67

MULTUM IN PARVO.

He serves all- who dares be true. — Emerson. — Marriage is mans afterthought, but Woman's intention. — Nickolin. — What we like in writers is their refcemblance to 1 ourselves. — Edouard Rod. —It would not be so bad if our sins merely- found us out, but they find us in. —To criticise is to tell everything that passes through one's head.— Sainte Beuve. — In men, as in soils, sometimes there is «. vein of .gold which the owner knows not of.— Swift. — Ravena and «jrows are regarded in an lands as birds of evil omen. — White deal is the wood of the Noway •pruoe-fir; yellow deal that of the Scottish fir.

— The report of a gun which is shot a. lirile away takes folly five seconds to reach v the ear. . . — Sake, the rice-wine of Japan, is tne " oldest alcoholic beverage known to man with the exception of grape wine. — Zoologists aver that in 100 years the lion will be extinct. > , — Holland has nine miles of canal tor every 100 square miles of surface. -Norwegians and Lapps, the tallest and -the shortest peoples of the world, live side by side. — Sweden's waterways are on an average open ior 210 days in each year, and frozen *->4. horse always rises from a lying pcsi iion on to its forelegs first, and a cow on to its hindlegs. —In the United States there are 30 towns or villages named Berlin, 21 Hamburgs, 23 bearing the name Paris, and " L ondons. — There are seven different styles ot English architecture. There are Anglo«axon, Norman. Early English, Decorated, Perpendicular, Tudor, and Jacobean. The total number of stars exceeding the seventh magnitude is 5900. Therefore the naked eye can never see from any one " spot of the earth's surface more than 3000 ■tars. —In March, 18*7, there was such an enormous accumulation of ice at the lower end of Lake Erie that the Niagara River ran nearly dry, and people were able to walk part of the way across the falls dry- — Any literature which hae not for its object perfection,* morality, the ideal, the useful is an unhealthy literature and stillborn. — Alexandra Dumas, fils. — Barbarians are necessary overy four or five hundred: years, in order that the world maY be vivified. Otherwise the world would die of civilisation.— Jules Michelet. — Belief in progress is a doctrine of lasy people. There can be no true— that is, moral— progress except in individuals and by individuals themselves.— Charles Boude- — Into the. ohildhood of most of us comes an influence 'which few succeed in throwing off— the sound oi the church bellß. It touches us still more deeply than we care to think.— Country Life. ' —He who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a dragged class, so you are faithful. The faithfulness, is all.— George Macdonald. — The' electric street cars of Syracuse, N.Y., are operated by power generated at Niagara Falls. 160 miles away. Eighty-two cars are operated, ÜBing 3000 horse-power. The old power-house will be reserved for use in case of emergencies. — Since • the foundation of the German Empire her population has increased by 20,100,000. The birth-rate is at present 6 per 1000 higher in Germany than in Eng- — The natives have conferred the title of "King of the Rain" on Sir Walter HelyHutchinson, the Governor of Cape Colony, because' his recent visit to Herschel happened to coincide with a heavy and muchneeded rainfall in that district. — Three good washes are received by an Abyssinian during his car,eer— at his birth, on his marriage morn, and at , his death. At all other times he shuns soap and water. —On the State railways in Germany the carriages are painted according to the colours of the tickets of their respective classes. First class carriages are painted yellow, second class green, and third class white. . — For a bet of 10s Henry Parish, of Princeton, Maine, undertook to count a million peas and place them in quart cans. It took him four weeks. The man with whom he made the bet took another four weeks to prove that they were counted correctly. —In hotfour of the jubilee of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, which is being celebrated in. Bremen, the board of directors of that company have decided to vote £25,000 to their Seamen's Fund, and £15,000 for division among the staff employed afloat and the workmen in Bremerhaven. — Sir Henry Burstow, of Horsham, who is 81 years of age, has a marvellous memory for songs. His repertory comprises no fewer than 412. He remembers both melody and words of any song he hears once.

— Ealing is the fortunate possessor of a brown retriever named Buller, which in the past two years has collected over £40 in the cause of charity. In recognition of this feat, Lord Oeorpe Hamilton has presented Buller with a silver collar.

— The lime or linden tree is accredited with magic qualities in Hungary and Germany. In some villages it is usual to plant one before a house to prevent witches from entering. —In East Indian schools mental arithmetic is a vastly more serious matter than it is in the schools of this country. Catch questions are numerous in the Orient, and the multiplication table is swollen into a mountain of difficulty by native teachers Pupils of 10 years are expected to know the multiplication table up to 40 times 40. — The New York Herald tells a tall story of a Manhattan man who, after letting the nail of his forefinger grow for more than a year, until now it is nearly an inch long, has had it cut and shaped ' like the nib of a goose-quill pen. Whenever he wishes to use pen and ink he dips his finger into the ink and scribbles along at a very rapid rate.

—To test the qualities of a submarine electric light a diver at Aberdeen descended 20ft in muddy water, taking a newspaper and the light down with him. While seated on en anchor at the bottom Of the harbour he read aloud for 10 minutes to the men above, the words being conveyed through the telephone in his helmet. The paper was held 18in from the lamp.

— The weight of a growing child is the most important index to its general health. A child of five years, for instance, should weigh about as many pounds as it is inches high. When a child is rather heavier in proportion to its height it "is a sign of good health. A deficiency of weight in proportion to height is always an unfavourable sign. Any interruption in the increase of weight, especially during the continuance of growth, must be a danger signal that should not be neglected. — Crowland Abbey, in the Lincolnshire Fens, can furnish a notable record in the family of sextons who have done duty there for nearly two hundred years. At the present time Mi-.s S. 0- Bill, a lady sexton, holds the office, and her brother, father, and grandfather are her direct predecessors in the office. Her grandfather, James Hill, who was 50 yeare sexton, and died at the age of 74; her father, Mr John Hill, was for 2* years sexton, and died at the age of 71; her brother, Mr William James Hill, was three years sexton, and lost his life through an accident in 1900 at the age of 3*; and at a special vestry meeting Miss S. J. Hill was appointed sexton, and has accordingly for over six years carried out the duties of the office. This carries the record back to 182*. A table in the church shows the first member of the family to hold office was William Hill, from 1760-1792, since when it has been held by members of the family without a break. — Professor Parker and Wood, of Columbia University, have discovered a new filament which they have called helion. It magnifies the efficiency of electrio light 45 times as compared with the carbon filament. The lamp also burns twice as long, and will sustain an overcharge of electricity without breaking. — A daring outrage was discovered recently to have been committed at the Commercial Mill, Great Harwood, near Blackburn. The beams on 750 looms were discovered to have been slashed from end to end with a knife. The looms were rendered useless, and 200 weavers were thrown out of work. It took three or four days to repair the damage. — Bishop Thornton teld the Preston people that a neighbouring town raised £1400 at a single football match, while its year's contributions to foreign missions was only £212, and that the United States spent £11,000,000 a year in chewing gum, and only £300,000 in evangelising the world. — Posted in Preston last December, a Christmas card has now safely reached the person to whom it was addressed at Bolton. At .Preston it somehow got into a large unsealed envelope, and was extracted therefrom by a lady at Kingston, Jamaica, to whom it was delivered just an hour before the earthquake. Some time after the disaster the card was found under a pile of bricks by the lady, who has sent it to the addressee with an explanatory note. — The most wonderful bird flight noted is the migratory achievement of the Virginia plover, which leaves its haunts in North America, and, taking a course down the Atlantic, usually from 400 to 500 miles east of the Bermudas, reaches the coast of Brazil in one unbroken flight of 15 hours, covering a distance of over 3000 milee at the rate of four miles a minute.

— The police at Cleveland, Ohio, have trained a bulldog to help them in trapping the 1 " scorching motorist. The dog has a great turn of speed, of which a test was made the other day. * A course was laid out and the animal was sent in pursuit of a passing motor car. It was found that the dog had a running average of 33 miles an hour. The next day the dog was 6ent after speed-defying motorists, and those he could not overtake were arrected.