MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2862, 20 January 1909, Page 75

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— In the Bank of England are several silver ingots which have lain there for o^er 200 years. — The exhibition which will be hsld in Tokyo in 1912 an ill cover 292 acres. — Over 6. 000. G00 French -women earn their own living. Half of these aie married. — The factories of Japan close on the first and fifteenth of each month. — Ninety -six per cent, of the world's coal is produced north of the Equator. — Glass made into micro=ccpic objectives is more valuable than gold. — Nearly half the ?ohd crust of the earth is composed of the invisible gas oxygen. — French doctors are prohibited from receiving money bequeathed to them by patients. —Of the world's newspapers, 68 out ct every 1000 arc printed in the English language. — The Vatican has no less than 1000 rooms, and cover: 13 acres of ground — The "longest day"' in Norway lasts from May 21 to July 22 without interruption. — At least 80 per cent, of all cases of neuralgic headache are attributed to defects of tha eye*. — The first omnibus in London started on September 4, 1828, from Paddington to thte Bank of England. — Lake Huion ccntairif over 3000 islands — that is," more than any other lake in the •world. — The- wettest place is Grey town, NicaTagua, where the annual rainfall is 260 m. — According to the law of averages every sheet of plate-glass should get broken in 10 years. —In electric working of railways there is a less of 6 per cent., or more, of elec- , tricity through leakage. — The telephone is just beginning to find favour in China, there being now o^er 1700 subscribers in Peking. — The total value of eggs imported into England last rear from Russia, Denmark, and Germany "was £8,000.000. — In Persia, the dough for making bread is lolled out as thin as a pancake, and as loiig as an ordinary tov.-al. — A moderate wind mo\es at the rate of seven miles an hour, a storm at the rate of 80 miles. — A petition «-even and a«-half miles long, containing- 750,000 signature?, nas leeently presented to the Hou-e of Commons. It was so lor.g that it had to be split into 35 sections, and com eyed to the house on a lorry. I — The hottest place in the world is the interior of the Great Sahara Desert. Africa, where the thermometer rises to 122deg. ' —At a recent to'^acco exhibition in Londor were shown some Havana cigars which were quoted at £1 each. — Protection is afforded to inventions in 64 countries. To take out a patent in ea^h would c-osr you about £3000. — A icad of grapes weighs nearly a ton, en< yields something under 200 gal of wine. — At a ms-eting in Glasgow of the AnderBonian Naturalists there was exhibited a potato lft long by 9in high, and weighing 4±lb. — Prizes for Large Famili-e°. — The fir&t prize offer-ad by the North-eaet Hants Agricultural Association to tho labourers who have maintained tho largest families re- i sppc-tably was last, year wor by Harry j White, of Bentlcy, who has 12 children. Three tied for second prize, with 10 chil- | dren each. ' — Snakes are so shorl-svhted that they are unable to a distance of more than one quarter thoir own length. I — The most illiterate country in Europe j is Roumania. The last census show-? that, > out of a population of about 6.000,C00, j nearly 4.000.000 neither write nor read. I — Thanksgning Day in the United States i is nominally appointed each year by the President; but the same day is imariably chosen — the ls^t Thursday in November. ' — Si!k as fine as any from a cocoon is spun by the Prnna r.obilis. a shellfish iound in ttas Mediterranean Sea. ) — It would take a trench 2400 rnilc^. long I and 10ft clcop to hold the water coiisu.ned . in London ir. one year. j — Norwegian fir makes the best masts. I N^exc ccine. in cid«r. tho spruce fir, American white pine and Scottish pine. — During tho past .b0 jears there hire been 1139 earthquake shocks in the United j Kingdom, 10.305 in Greece, 27,526 in ' Japan, and 27.672 in Italy. j — The Bible ha- been u\m=lated into 400 j languages. Two men «pont 20 years loarning tho Tahitian language, and 20 more I translating tire Bible into it. j — The Mazza .separator rpvolvoe 2200, ■times a minute, and separates the oxygen j from the nitiogsn of the air. Used for . furnace^ of Cornioh boilers, it eavea one- ' fourth of the coal. — The speed of man's feeling impulse through his nerves is 120 ft a second. It ' your leg were so long as to place your tee 7200 ft from your brain, ar.tl if you were to thrust ycur toe into the fire, it would fee a minute after the toe's contact with the flams before your brain could foel tho pain. — Photographing, the Interior of the Stomach. — An improved apparatus has been made by Dr Fritz Lang, of Munich, by which the inside of the stomach can be clearly photographed. The camera is actually by the patient, and when :t reaches the stomach the walls thsreof can be illuminated by a small electric lamp attached to the apparatus. At the bottom of tho camera is wourd a photographic film 20in long and iin wide. — Dog's Lsg Grafted On. — There is a dog now in Philadelphia which was recently treated for an injured leg at the Rockefeller Institute. The surgeons decided that the entire leg must be taken off, and when this had been done they procured the leg of a dog, recently dead, and succeeded in grafting- the limb in its entirety upon the living animal, which is a fox terrier. Tho terrier is now quite well, and the surgeons i 6tate that such an operation in the case of j c human being is not beyond tho bounds of possibility. — The Beard of Agiiculture has just settled an eld dclu>ion about hedgehogs milking cows. In a circular the board informs Farmers that the notion is unfounded in fact. The dentition of the hedgehog marks it as insectivorous, feeding en insect* and small mauimale, including such harmful forms as mice. They cannot, however, be described as harmlew, as they have . been proved to take tho eggs of poultry and gams birds, sucli as paitridgcs and pheasants, while chickens and hens in coope «ure billed and worried, <

—Of tho world's asbestos suppiy nearly mne-tcnth-5 is mined in Canada, the mm» about Quebec producing 60,000 tone per annum.

— A man who lives in America has hit upon an unusual .scheme w hereby he always carries his writing pen with him. He ha» been letting the nail of his forefinger giow for rnora than a year, until now it is nearly an inch long, and it is cut and shaped like tha nib of a goose-quill pen. Whenever ho wishes to vse pen and ink he dips his finger into the ink and scribbles along- at a ■very rapid rate. Writing in this way was not so easy as it looked. "With no long holder to give the hand balance and with an entirely different pesition of the hand and fingers to master, this human penholder found that it required some practice and skill to do as well with hi.s no\el instrument n^ with the oi denary one.