MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2955, 2 November 1910, Page 67

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— " Noiseless paper" for theatre programmes is being manufactured in Ger- . many. A railway line being constructed in South America will reach a height of over 16,000 ft above the level of the sea. The motor car industry is so rapidly using up the supply of hickory that a new wood must won be found for spokes, rims, etc. A new halfpenny London evening paper, backed by large capital, is said to be on its way —Mr W. Thompson Brown, California, has bequeathed to Musselburgh, Scotland, a sum estimated at £.10,000 for the establishment of a free dental parlour for the .poor. The telegraph line at Attitete, Gold Ooast, is interrupted from time to time by the gymnastic exercises of the largo monkeys who haunt the neighbourhood. The next generation (says a writer in, the Morning Post) will be as familiar with the handling of aeroplanes as this one is with the management of bicj-cles andi of motor cars. Lcr.don is leading the world in the matter of women's clubs. Twenty-one years ago there was not a single institution of the kind.; now there are 30, with a total membership of over 30,000. —An elderly man who was one of Stanley's party in the expedition for the discovery of Livingstone, and who watnecsed tho famous meeting at Ujiji, was recently destitute at Scarborough, and had to sleep on the sands.

Tax-as on bachelors and old maids, pianos, bathrooms, pictures, toys, and sold fish are suggested to the French Finance Minister, who has to find an additional £20,000,000 in his next Budget. there are 326 miles of tramways in operation, or three time 3 the mileage of the London County Council tramway system. The yearly revenue from passengers is over two million, sterling. Abraham Shornas, a, leading merchant of Palestine, is visiting New York to study the department store system, for the purpose of introducing up-to-date methods in his series of 6tores in the Holy Land The Chinese have a flower which is white at night or in the shade, and red' in the sunlight. Switzerland reecives nearly £6,000,000 per annum from its visitors; while twice that amount is spent every year in Italy. Great Britain consumes 47,000,000 cwt of meat a year, or 1201 b per head of the population. Of this 54- per cent, is produced- at Heme. The cblo'xr of French official books (equivalent to the British blue books) is vellow ; Spain, red ; Germany, white ; Italy, green; Portugal, white; and Austria, red. King Alfonso of Spain has a unique museum, consisting of a collection, of articles by which his life lias been endangered. Amongst them is to be found tho skin of a horse which was killed by a bomb flung at his Majesty. are very popular among the. working classes. The cocks are ranged in cases, -'and markers note the number cf crows. The chanticleer who has sounded his shrill clarioin tho most times in an hour carried loff ithe prize. In a. competition recently held a-t Potdseur a cock gave voice 234times. The great bell of St. Paul's is never tolled excepting at the death and funeral of anv member of tho Royal Family, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dean of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Dean df St. Paul's, and the Lord Mayor, should he di-? durinar his mayoralty. Oaiiythe olapp?.- and not the bell is moved when it is tolled. shops planted in the back streets of most of tho small towns in England are kept up by large London firms, who, from a prolon g-ed stud y of human nature, have discovered that people who are shy of buying old furniture or old silver in the Wes£ E-nc 1 of London, arc ready and eager purchasers of precisely the fame objects at a rather higher price when they come upon them in the back streets of a country town. ' .»,.»,.!. Englishman display such a lack of originality as in tho choice of a name for his house. In Holland they co this thing much better. A leoent traveller in that land cf dykes asid windmills has noted the names bestowed by the Dutch merchants upon their country houses. Here are a few examples translated: "Oar Contentment," "Joy and Peace," "Leisure and Happiness," "My Desire, is Satisfied," "Fa-fends and Quiet," "My Wife and I. '.'Not so Bad." , Both Italy and Switzerland are fortityLng the entrances of the Simpion Tunnel, while in, the tunnel itself engineers arc engaged in constructing mines and strengthening those already in place to order to blow up tho tunnel at a moment'a notice in the event of .war. Near the middle of the tunnel, a few yards from, the Swiss frontier, Italian, engineers have put in place a double iron door which can resist tho rush of an express train travelling at 60 miles an hour. The iron door is worked by electricity from Iselle, the station at the Italian end of the tunnel, and under ordinary conditions it is hidden in the reeky side of the tunnel. The dcor is carefull-° tested once a week, The mines are connected with Brigue and Iselle by electricity also, and by simply pressing a button the Simpion Tunnel would be destroyed in a second. corded mention of rubber occurs in connection with the game of ball. The historion of the second voyage of Columbu". states that the Indians were in the habit of playing- with balls "made cf the gum of a tree." These, although large, were lighter and bounced better than the wind balls of Castile. Long confined to America., and particularly Peru, the rubber plant has travelled via Kew Gardens to Ceylon and British Malaya, and now promises to become the mainstay of our Eastern tropical colonies and dependencies. This good service to Ceylon was undertaken by Kew at the request of the Indian Government, who ordered some 2000 seedlings of tne Para rubbsr tree. Here they have growra and flourished exceedingly. Some of the original trees are still yielding, and from them thousands of cut-tings have been distributed all over the tropics. It is in Ceylon, however, perhaps more than elsewhere, that many improvements in the cultivation and collection of rubber have taken place. the London Guildhall suffered disaster. Tho fire of 1665, which destroyed so much of

incalculable, wealth, did not spare the Guildhall. On the night of the fire "the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood the whole body _of it together in view for several hours together after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid oak) in a, bright shining coalc, as if it had been) a pal lace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass." The roof was so much injured that it had to be removed, and its place was taken by a flat ceiling. At the same time the walls were raised to a much greater height. The principal front was also much damaged l . The flat ceiling remained as late as 1864, when it was replaced by the present timber roof, which is not unworthy of the rest of the building. The fate of the front has been less happy. The stately porch that once stood out from the main" building has been obscured by the structures on either side, which, however, •pleasing to the taste of the eighteenth century, have no charm for us. The zeal of 1729 in architecture was without understanding. The memory of that should be instructive to all those who in this year of grace are tempted to improve upon the work of the past.