MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2913, 12 January 1910, Page 70

MULTUM IN PARVO.

The average life of a mouse is three years. ; —The British Board of Agriculture and Fisheries last year made grants of £12,480 for agricultural education. Candidates for the Cape Mounted Rifles must be not less than 33£i-n round the chest at 18 years old. During last year the earnings of persons confined in prison in Britain showed an increase of nearly £20,000. The United Kingdom last year imported from foreign countries 101,921 cwt of currants. Canada, during 1908, sent the United Kingdom 1,454,663 cwt of apples. the London metropolitan police area. Only 348 soldiers were "billeted" in London last year, as against 820 in 1904. About 12,000 persons a year are- conveyed to hospitals by the London police. Last year 1043 persons were killed on the railways of the United Kingdom. A registered medical practitioner's license in the Orange River Colony costs £ls a year. —At the beginning of last year there were 288,681 indoor paupers in England and Wales. The record price of £ls was recently given for a butterfly at a London auction room.

The average depth of the Pacific is 2500 fathoms, of the Atlantic 2200. _ —The English national debt originated in the reign of William 111, whoso first loan was obtained in 1694.

—lt requires 501 b of tallow candles to give the same l amount of light as is given by 1000 ft of coal gas. During the course of a year about 27,000 doors and windows', arc discovered insecurely fastened in London. The percentage of applicants desiring to purchase small holdings is much greater in Wales than in England. There are 23,000 children in the workhouse infirmaries and district sick asylums of England and Wales. Out of 4069 men tested by Scotland Yard on their ability to drive a motor cab only 2327 passed. The quill pen which Dickens used at the Villa Les Montineaux, where he wrote part of "Hard Times," "Bleak House." and "Little Dorrit," has been sold for £3 10s

A complete library of Italian _ and foreign newspapers from the earliest times is to be instituted in Rome, and more than 200,000 collections have already been secured. . Owing a money-lender £lB. a dairyman was ordered in the Lincolnshire County Court to pay instalments of Id a month, at which rate it will require 360 years to liquidate the debt. A bee, unladen, will fly at the rate of 40 miles an hour; but one returning to the hive laden with honey does not travel faster than 12 miles an horn. —No country has ever benefitted more from British rule than Egypt. A yearly deficit of two millions has been changed to a large surplus, and the population, in 25 y.sa.rs has increased 50 per cent. This secret of how to give gold the temper of fine steel is reported to have been discovered at Los Angelos, California where the first, complete set of tempered gold surgical instruments is being •manufactured. " , . . , The Bank of England note is not ot the same thickness all through. The paper is thicker in the left-hand corner to enable it, to take a better and sharper impression of the vignette there, and is also considerably thick©* in the dark shadows of the centre letters and under the figures at the ends. Counterfeit notes are invariably of one thickness. _ A.t Vicksburg, Mississmoi. a millionaire planter, named David Baker, who died recentlv. has left to three of his children equal divisions of his fortune, arid has cut off a fourth with the sum of hi. because this son did not beilieve in the Bible as a divinely-inspired book. According to an official return, the net rateable value of city property in the "narish of the City of London is £5 479 579 In addition, the net rateable values'of the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple are respectively £14,399 and £25 243 The area is only a square mile. —lt in estimated that a woman who has iust died at the Hackney Union Infirmary, Ea;-t London, where she had been an inmate for 29 years, cost the eruarduMOS nearly £ISOO 'She suffered from delusions one ot which' was that she owned the workhouse _ A new method of raising money for foreign missions has been, tried withisucceLs bv a lady who resides n- the far North of Scotland. She travelled during the summer in Austria. Germany, and Holland, and had kept a journal during her teavelj. On returning home, she invited her friends to hear the diary read aloud, charging 6d to each person for admission. -One of the Quaintest railway stations in the kingdom is Langford on the Witham and Maldon (Essex) branch line The sole staff consists of an aged widow, who has Performed the duties of "station master for many years. Her cottage, situated m a oarden, is also the booking-office; a small wooden shed on the single narrow platform represents the waiting-room; and trains stop only when there are passengers to take up or set down.

Last year over 17 million pounds of tobacco and snuff, manufactured in the United Kingdom, were exported. —■ A movement is in progress in America to effect the beatification cf Chrlstophe/ Columbus. A similar effort was made athe tercentenary in 1892, but, says ou: authority, Columbus has many enemies a: the Vatican, both as a discoverer and a; a man. Some of the American newsoapers

cite the case of Joan cf Arc, and draw a parallel between the discoverer and the Pucclle. The genius cf the two was equal. Both displayed a heroic courage 'n attaining their end; both were marked with the 'scoau divin," and, according to the expression of the time, both fought for their King and for God.

A London novelist has just had a stroke of luck. He was poring over the boxes arranged along the walls by the side ot the heme, and decided to buy for a couple of francs a "Henriede," in quaint type, published last century, in which there were a number of engravings. He went off with his prize, and in the eveningbegan reading it. He found two of the pages of Scene 3 stuck together, and on opening them with a knife found three bank-notes of IOOOfr (£4O) each. —-A soldier with only one leg would seem to be an anomaly, but the French town of Roubaix can boast of one in the person of Alexandre Murth, a Reservist of the 161st Infantry Regiment. Murth broke his leg some months ago owing to an accident whilst digging a well. The limb was amputated, and replaced by a wooden substitute. Recently Murth was called upon to undergo the usual 17 days of training at St. Mihiel. He duly presented himself, expecting to be discharged, but, to his surprise, was detained at the barracks, and set to mending shoes, despite his ignoraaca of the craft. The colonel even threatened him once with eight days' "cells" because lie was not prompt enough in rising to the salute.

The monkeys of Gibraltar are familiar objects of interest to visitors to the Rock, and hold official recognition in connection with the garrison. How they first got into occupation of the stronghold is unknown, though they are undoubtedly descended from an ancestry brought by man from the Barbary coast opposite. They are a great' and protected community. The guards on the highest point —the signal station—have strict orders to chronicle the monkeys' movements, and to register their births and deatha. When their numbers have so greatly increased as to need thinning, special warrants ?rom high home authorities are received ere an official may have it in command to give the quietus to a small percentage of the community. —The extraordinary precautions jaken to prevent the infection of wounds at surgical operations were described by a doctor from St. Bartholomew's Hospital, at an inquest in London. He said that under the Lister system—invented by the celebrated surgeon of that name —the doctor, before going into the operating theatre, was enveloped in a white gown which had been sterilised, and he wore over his head a cap which had been similarly treated. The instruments were boiled, which killed all microbes, and then placed in an antiseptic solution, which- kept other microbes away. All the sponges and dressings were sterilised. If the -doctor had a cold he placed a bandage over his mouth to prevent infecting the wounds by that means. Within the last 20 ye&ra the tonic properties of the cola »nut, grown in Western Africa, have become widely known, and the dried nuts have been much used in medicine. But a question has always been left undecided concerning the source of the tonic. It has generally been ascribed to the caffein, in the nut, but recently a substance called colatine has been discovered, which seems to be the really characteristic element in the nut and the source of_ its tonic power. This is destroyed by drying, although the caffein remains unaffected. Accoi-dingly, the physiological effects of dried cola are different from those of the fresh nut. The negroes understand the difference, and always use the fresh nuts, which possess a wonderful power of eliminating the effects of fatigue. The cola nuts grow in clusters of five on a stem, and each nut contains about eight seeds.