MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, 1 June 1910, Page 67

MULTUM IN PARVO.

Canada has an active militia of 54,097 men. No English prison governor's salaryis higher than £7OO a year. London consumes about 14,000,000 tons of coal yearly. About 40,000 enumerators will take next year's census in Britain. —Om its water supply from Lake Vyrnwy, Liverpool has spent nearly £3,000,000. flamts of working-class dwellings are about 25 per cent, lower in Belgium than in England. Sunday; April 2, 1911, has been fixed for the taking of the next census of Great Britain. Eighteen months are generally allowed by our Admiralty for the construction of a destroyer. Quebec's forest lands cover an area of over a hundred million acres. The estimated population of Canada a year ago last March was 7,185,000. —» Twenty-one years ago the Duke of Portland won £73,800 in stakes—a record for an English racing season. The stipendiary magistrate of Pittsburg has passed the remarkable sentence of "90 baths" upon a frowzy-looking man who -was brought before him on a charge of vagrancy. The daily pay of regimental officers of line infantry has remained practically unaltered for nearly a century. —ln France there is a society for the suppression of big game hunting called' "The Friends of the Elephant." Out of 16,000,000 tons of salt produced in the wona in a year, the British Empire provides 3,500,000 tons. During the next ten years or so France is to spend over £170,000,000 on her navy, according to her new naval programme. Foreign battleships are frequently commissioned before their steam and gunnery trials; British ships generally after■wards. The world's annual output of fine gold is worth 'B4 millions, and the British Empire supplies 61 per cent. Ordinarily, iiritisn big battleships take from 26 to 24 months to complete, but the Dreadnought was finished' in 14 months. Eighteen diamond" have been presented to the British Museum by the Premier (Transvaal) Diamond Mining Company. They weigh together about 28 carats. Members of the Hingham (Norfolk) Rat and Sparrow Club have destroyed 13,365 sparrows, 4726 rats, and 3204 yarrows' eggs in eight months. A oar load of babies from New York foundling and orphan asylums was distributed at New Orleans. Sc great was the demand for the children that only those who had applied in advance obtained them. A special peal of bells is being cast for the Pageant of London. They will be used in each of the 24 scenes, but the great occasion for the peal will be the scene showing Dick Whittington and his cat at Highgate Hill. Having crossed tho Atlantic by scrubbing the decks of a tramp steamer, a Chicago steeplejack, named Edwards, has now won a .£IOOO wager by travelling on foot through E urc (?e without money or a passport. \He has just reached Antwerp, after a 14 months' journey through France, Italy. Austria, and Germany. Sir John Chaa-les Bigham's peerage title of Lord Mersey of Toxteth is one of a curiously small number of peerage titles derived from rivers. The only other existing peerage titles derived from English rivers are those of Lord Derwent and'.Lord Medway. Titles derived from Scottish and "Irish rivers, however, number nearly a dozen. ■ —Mr Charles P. Talt, the American President's brother, is arranging for. the establishment of a private telephone line from his Cincinnati residence to the "White House in Washington. The wire, which will be 725 miles long, will only be at the complete disposal of the Taft family from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., but its rental will nun to £4BOO per annum. The unhappy United' States, which began by priding itself on having twodiscoverers of the North Pole, is now doubting whether the North Pole has been discovered at all. One trembles to think of what may happen with three rival explorers racing for the South Pole. The whole business has been a little uncanny. Is it that the spirits of the Poles are making one last effort to protect their solitude by striking every man who invades it with the curse of Cassandra? The people of Paris will know the Kaiser's double no more. M. Charles Franconi, the circus /proprietor, who died recently, was known to the Parisians as the Kaiser's double. Although 65 years of age, M. Franconi bore a striking resemblance to Germany's War Lord. M. Franconi was an Italian by extraction, his father having settled in France, and a clever horseman. He was a thorough Frenchman. When the war of. 1870 broke out M. Franconi joined a squadron of cavalry and served under General Ducrot. With the death of M. Franconi the family, as far as France is. concerned, becomes extinct. So seldom does the sale of a mountain take place that when such is even contemplated it is worthy of record. The Communal Council of Veytaux, in Switzerland, has under consideration a proposal for the purchase of a mountain in the neighbourhood. The mountain is valued at 275,000 francs, or £II,OOO. The mountain is difficult of access, so it is proposed to construct one of those wonderful railways to be seen at Pilatus or the Rigi, and then to establish hotels at the top. Of course, tho commune is poor, and' the "Conscript Fathers" think the purchase price would prove a windfall, hence their desire to realise their mountain. The offer to purchase oomes from a company. China is the great snuff-making country of the world, and there is a snuff there Worth the theoretically fancy price of £200,000 a pound, which is handed round at the great banquets. Its high value comes in this way. The rich Chinamen bay the bulk of their snuff from Portugal, where there ave families owning private old'time redpea who sell their snuff at. £rora £4O to £l5O a pound to the Chinese. Then the Chinaman keeps it many years, and the legal rate of interest being 32 per cent, per annum, ite theoretical value soon increases. The Chines* carry it in beautiful bottles of Porcelain and agate, miracles of art, which are worth from half a eovereiett *>» £?-00 BaftK "

"Blessed Oliver Plunkett," whose beatification has been approved of by the Vatican Council (according- to a Router's message recency/, is the famous Primate of Ireland who was executed at Tyburn, July 1, 16S1, on a charge of high treason. In 1679 he was arrested on the charge of conspiracy to bring 20,000 Frenchmen into Ireland', and of having- levied money from his clergy for the purpose of maintaining 70,000 men for an armed rebellion. The principal witnesses against him were some disreputable priests and friars whom he had suspended for bad conduct. His head is still "preserved in a convent at Drogbeda. , . . ._ Owing to the enormous profits derived by the South African farmer from ostrich feathers, increased attention is being paid to the industry in Queensland, where the soil and climate are considered quite, as suitable to the successful breeding of ostriches as at the Cape. An expert ostrich farmer supplies information that the natural grasses of Queensland would keep ostriches without other food, except occasionally, and in time of drought. As to the payable nature of the industry, a breeding pair of ostriches, which would cost about £SO, would' produce from £6 to £7 of feathers annually, j,nd on a conservative reckoning ten chicks per year, or 20 by the aid of an incubator. The feathers from these chicks at one year old would be worth £1 each bird, and at three years old would be worth about £5. In the fourth year it is estimated that the feathers and the chicks from one pair of breeding ostriches would amount to £4OO, equalling a gross return of 200 per cent, per annum on an investment of &50.