MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2934, 8 June 1910, Page 86

MULTUM IN PARVO.

There are over 291,900 indoor paupers in England and Wales. There is a prospect of the cabling rates from England to Canada being reduced to 6d a word. Members of the Russian Duma are elected for five years. Naval salute to the British flag began in Alfred's reign. A horse can live 25 days without food, but must have water. '—At one time among the Greeks the wearing of breeches indicated slavery. The average amount of illness in human life is nine days out of the \ear The eel has two separate hearts. One beats 60 and the other 160 times a minute. '— There are 16 cables across the North Atlantic Ocean. , The Hindoos have no word ■ for "friend," but use the word "brother" instead. —ln Japan dancing plays a very important part in the education of boys and girls. . , , Over 260,250 marriages were performed iri England and Wales, last year. Last year 20,000,000 passengers crossed the ferry between Liverpool and Wallasey. were 18,757 more boys than girls born. A new breakwater 900 ft long, which is to be constructed at Cowes, is to cost £SOOO. Fred Archer, the jockey, twice rode six winners in one day, a feat eS oalled in England only by George Fordham. The Jockey Club Stakes of 1894, won by Isinglass, constituted the richest pri/.e ever run for on the English turf—£ll,3o2. The salaries of members of the British Cabinet amount to £75.425 a year; those of the United States Cabinet to £20,600. Since it was founded jn 1849 the Commercial Travellers' Benevolent Institution, England, has paid upwards of £334,820 in »anuitios. —-The total cost to police authorities in „ England and Wales outside London, to give policemen a day's rest tper week would be about £250,000 a year. jugar amounts to 851 b, for each individual, and in the United States to 61b. —ln the Kamyshin district of Russia a jnifcor has to buy his sweetheart from her father. A oretty girl.of. good family costs about £2O. —At a golf match played at Kilkeel, County Down, the third hole, measuring 120 yards, was holed out twice in the coarse of the match in one stroke. A petroleum well has been known in Zante, one of the lonian Islands, for nearly 5000 years. It is mentioned by Herodotus, woo was born 484 years before the Christian ara. Out of 15,000 ratepayers in Hastings (England) 1500 wei*e recently summoned for the non-payment of rates. Almost all the defendants pleaded poverty and mnemployjnent. A carved oak Jacobean cabinet which tad been used as a medicine-chest in a oow-pen and as .a nest-box in a (poultry ran realised' £76 at a farm sale at Ansley, North Warwickshire. Esperanto is beginning to take a serious place in the life of the world. France and Austria are taking it up as ant ioxiliary language for use in ■ war and among' the doctors, nurses, and attendants of the Red Cross. At present Great Britain has not taken any official movement in the same direction. The American pension list last year totalled- close upon 1,000,000 persons, who 'jeoeived among them over £30,000,000. There is still on the roll one daughter of & soldier of the War of the Revolution, which closed in 1782; and the last surviving widow of a Revolutionary soldier died less than three and a-half yearn, ago. A collection of Imperial and royal Bntographs on a pane of glass has been jgiien by King Haakon to the museum at Copenhagen. The pane originally belonged to a window of the Royal Danish • express, nod a great many years ago the femperor Alexander 111 engraved his name on 't with his diamond ring. His example wasi •followed by the present Czar, the late King Christian, King- Edward, Queen Alexandra. King Haakon, King George of Greece, and Queen Victoria of Spain. ''-., — A Frenchman has invented a recording attachment for the piano ,for the use of composers by, which each key when ■track leaves a mark on a str:r> of slowlymoving paper. By means of this contriv- . ance improvised music may be transcribed and fleeting ideas caught that perhaps it would be impossible for the 'composer to recall and commit to paper. —West Lcdige', on the edge of Lower Putfusj Common, London, which is about to be Idernolished in order to make room for a bew hospital, has some interesting literary associations. For eight or nine years it was the home of Douglas Jerrold, and a j-ecognised rendezvous of many famous >nen, including Dickens, Macready, Forater, and Maclise. In the garden of the lodge is an ancient mulberry tree, which toossibly may be one of the many planted at Putney by command of Oliver Cromwell. It was during his tenancy of West Lodge i hat Uerrold wrote " Mrsi Caudle's Curtain Lectures.".

Swiss funeral customs are most peculiar. At the death of a person the family inserts a formal, black-edged) rntaOTinoemfn+. in the papers asking for sympathy, and stating that " the mourning torn " will be exhibited during certain hours ton- a special day. In front of the house {where the person diedi there is placed a Jifctle black table covered with, a black cloth, 'ton 'Wihioh stands a black ja,r. Into this the ifrierwfc and acquaintances of the family •drop little black-margined visiting cards, tmetimes with a few words of sympathy on em. The urn is put on the table on e day of the fume rial. Only men ever go 'jjo the churchyard, and they generally follow the hearse on foot. rC,—Perhaps the most curious- regimental 'feet on record was Peter, the goose of the jpoldstream Guards. Peter served with the gegiraent throughout the rebellion ini .(Canada, and was a rare favourite with the Soldiers. When the guard was mounted eicb morning Peter always marched off iWith them. One of the most novel sights •Sn London, when the Guards came home, wias to see Peter strutting at the head of the regiment on parade. Unfortunately, Peter was run over and killed by a cab while doing "sentry-go," as was his. custom, in front of the guard-houa?. ITi- is-,-pains are still pretsrved, the neck being

decorated with a collar oearins the words, " Died on duty." The- Shire horse owes its name and much of its breeding to Henry VIII, who not only established a royal stud, but enacted laws to promote- the breeding of strong horses in certain. English shires, a faofc which explains the name. The law which displayed its zeal for the horse did not err on the side of consideration of the animal's owner. No horse below a certain height was allowed to pasture on any common, and anyone who found one there was at liberty to seize it. Within 15 days o£ Michaelmas all commons _ were to be "driven," and all unpromising colts killed. Henry is said to have imported horses from Turkey, Naples, and Spain to improve the English breed. Poets have told how the wind made music in the trees, and recently-returned visitors from the West Indies have adduced facts to show that the poetic fancy L actually a thing of undisputed fact in Barbadoes. It is the musical or whistling tree, having a peculiar-shaped leaf and pods with a split open edge. The wind (passing through these sends out the sounds which gave the tree its peculiar name. In Barbadoes there is a valley filled with the trees, and when the trade winds blow across the island a constant, "moaning, deep-toned whistle is heard from it, which in the still hours of the night has a very weird and unpleasant effect. A species of acacia which grows very abundantly in the Soudan is also called the whistling treeby the natives. Its shoots are frequently, by the agency of the larvae of insects, distorted in shape and swollen into a globular bladder from one to two inohes in diameter. After the insect has emerged from a circular hole in the side of this swelling the opening, played upon by the wind, becomes a musical instrument equal in sound to a sweet-toned flute.