MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3024, 28 February 1912, Page 66

MULTUM IN PARVO.

The "life tree" of Jamaica is harder to kill than any other species of vegetable growth known. It cuntmues to grow and thrive for months after being uprooted and exposed to the sun. Ships will be towed through the Panama Canal by electric locomotives running on either side of the waterway. —To build a battleship on the Thames would cost more than £30,000 in excess of the expense at other shipbuilding centres. Europe s oldest sovereign is the Emperor of Austria, born in 1830; the youngest the King of Spain, born in ISB6. A. novel means of preventing drunkenness has been devised by the Copenhagen police, who convev any person found intoxicated in the street to his home in a cab, the fare being charged to the establishment where the liquor was served. Notice boards have a literature of thenown. On tho sands at Scullercoats, near Tvnemouth. there used to be a board inscribed :—" Notice Any person passing beyond this point will be drowned. By order of the migistrates." During the nast year his Holiness the Pope has received nearly 50,000 persons. The cccoanut palm has one peculiarity —it never stands upright. A Malayan staying has it that, "Ho who hath beheld a straight cocoanut palm will surely live for ever." age yearly rainfall is not more than lOin, a square mile of land will support only eight or nine sheep. In Buenos Aires, the same area, with 34in of rain, supports 2560 sheep. Quaker guns—that is, the trunks of trees made to look like cannon—have often been uead to deceive the enemy; but in the Chinese civil wars some years ago actual cannon made of wood were used. Thev were made from the trunks of hardwood trees, shaped, bored by means of red-hot pipes from come sugar mills, dried in hot air draughts, and bound with strong oxhides. They made fairly serviceable artillorv, one piece being fired more than a hundred times before showing signs of weakness The Mayor of Ealing and the nine past mayors of the borough have each promised to plant an oak tree in Walpolo Park, Ealing, in commemoration of a year of office. The number will be added to by each -succeeding mayor until what will be known as the Mayor's avenue is formed. Since 1873 more than 12,000 trees have been planted in Ealing, and at the present time there are 50 miles of avenues. • Cats make the most careful toilet of anv class of animals. The lion and the tiger wash themselves in exactly the same manner as the cat, wetting the dark india-rubber-like ball of the forefoot and inner toe, and oassing it over the face and behind the. "ears. The foot is thus at the same time a sponge and brush, and the rough tongue.combs tho rest of the body. A New York grocer has combined an advertising novelty and a source of profit in a butter churn, which is in almost constant operation in his store- Tho churn is driven by a small electric motor, and tho scheme 15 to sell a patron a quantity of cream, and then, for a small charge, churn it into butter. The operation takes but a few minutes, and in the meantime the patron is moving around the store and, in all probability, making more purchases. —An aviator, M. Deneau, who has a brother buried in a cemetery near Charti-es. followed tho general custom in France of visiting the graves of dead relatives on the eve of All Souls', but he did so in an aeroplane. Ho landed at a place a littlo outside the burial ground, and went to his brother's grave, where he left somo flowers. He then returned to his aeroplane and flew back to the aerodrome. Tho Lancet calls attention to tho licking of stamps as a " retrograde proceed ing," and says that any suggestion calculated materially to encourage or increase the - habit is open to strong condemnation. " The habit is opposed to a common sense of cleanliness, let alone what bacteriological requirements may teach. . . . The adhesive stamp is a. sanitary blunder, but it is a business convenience for which it is hard to suggest an alternative. No persons need lick a stamp if they seriously rr<iko tip their minds never to do so, but unfortunately tho use of stamps has created a habit which once contracted, is difficult to avoid." I The Paris smoker who recently kept a cigar alight for 2hr 17min desired to show how slowly one may smoke. Others have demonstrated how quickly they could burn the fragrant weed. Edwin Booth, tho American tragedian, smoked 25 cigars a day. Mr Edison and Mark Twain were • also great smokers. Some years ago a Cali- | fornian miner wagered that ho would j smoke six cigars, six cigarettes, and six pipefuls of strong tobacco within 60 j minutes. Ho achieved his object, but immediately afterwards he was seized with an attack of heart failure, and never smoked j nor smiled again. j French houses. Mr Edison declares, arc] abominable. They are built in a style : which might have been good enough centuries ago. Americans, ho added, would never be able to live within them. A Paris newspaper admits that Mr Edison is not far wrong. Windows and doors are badly constructed, and tho same may bo said as to the planning of tho apartments, for almost every room is dark and ill-ven-tilated But then the French paper points out Frenchmen do not live much in these houses. Their occupations take them out in the daytime, and "at night the Parisian is found at the cafe or theatre, and onlyuses his house for sleeping purposes. All (he world laughs, though the nations have different ways of showing mirth. The Chinese 'laugh is not as hearty or as expressive as the European or American.- It i.s more often a tittetf than <n arenoral burst of merriment. There is little character or force in it. As for the Arabian laugh, we hear littlo of its hilarious rina through tho aecs of mirth in the old world. The Arab is generally a stolid fellow, who must see good reason for a laugh or be surprised into it. In Persia a man who laughs is considered effeminate, but free licence is given to female merriment. One reads of the "grave Turk" and tho "sober Egyptian," but it is not recorded that they have never moments of mirth. An American traveller in Europe remarks the Italian mirth as languid, but musical; tho German as deliberate; the' French as spasmodic and- uncertain; the j upper class English as guarded and not j always genuine, the lower class English as explosive; the Scotch of nil classes' as hearty, and the Irish as rollicking. ■