MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3029, 3 April 1912, Page 67

MULTUM IN PARVO.

One-fifteenth of the inhabitants of Spain are nobles.. Eight cubic feet of snow make one cubic foot of water. Metal pins were not known in England until the sixteenth century. The right hand is less sensible to the effect of heat or cold than the left. Man is said to be subject to over 1200 different diseases. White cats, with blue eyes, when old, arc almost invariably deaf. Rich year 3000 foreign waiters find situations in England. There are over 60,000 motor cycles in use in the United Kingdom. One thousand pounds has recently been paid '"or a copy of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," printed by Caxton. Astroaomical observations in China were carried on as far back as 2353 B.C. New York Citv has a Jewish population of 805,000, one-thirteenth of the entire race. T.vo of the largest meat-carrying ships in tho world have 420,000 cubic feet of refrigerated space. —ln England the only absolute owner of tho land is the King, since an estate is a recognised freehold interest in land. No fewer than 10,000 copies of a document per hour can be produced by a combined "typewriting and duplicating machine. There are more than 200 species of silk-producing insects, though very few of these are of" any practical value to mankind. —lt has been estimated that ail the houses in London and New York could bo built with the lava thrown out by Vesuvius since the first recorded eruption in a.d. 79. Arundel Castle, the seat of the Duke of Norfolk, is the only tenure the possession of which carries with it a seat in the House of Lords. while it may cost anything up to £SO; and if a combatant is killed his adversary and seconds are liable to penal servitude. Sperm whales are the richest prizes of tho ocei.n, yielding spermaceti from their brain-cases, ivory from their lower jaws, and rich yellow oil from their sides. The natives from the Andaman Islands. the smallest people in tho world, average 3ft llin in height and less than 701 b in weight. Compulsory domestic service for girls and women as an equivalent to the universal military service incumbent upon men is a novel proposal put forward by Fraulein Pauline Worner, a leading Gernian woman reformer. M irken, in the Zuyder Zee, is one of the most curious islands in the world. Horses and trees are unknown. The island produces one crop —hay,—and of this the women manage the growing and harvesting. The first petrol-propelled tram cars used in England on a track have just been inaugurated at Moreeambe, when a large number of experts gathered to witness the trial of the new system. The cost of fuel is stated to be only Id per mile —ln Vienna the servant girl is not permitted to climb out on the window-sill to clean windows without a safety-belt and a rooo attached to it which fastens to tho( building, so that in case she should slip or lose her balance the is suspended in safety, and can be drawn back into the window. —lt is, of course, not easy to estimatethe amount of food consumed by each of us in a year, but one dietetic expert who kept a record of his meals during 12 months declares that he ate 180 loaves of bread. 1801 b of meat, drank 61gal of milk, and ate no fewer than 300 eggs, in addition to other things. —An institution in New York gets its name, "chair house," from the fact that human beings so poor that they cannot buy a lodging at tho cheapest resorts pay 5c for the right to occupy a chair for the night. Bv 11 o'clock the night's contingent is fast asleen in the chairs, the usual number being 25 to 50 men of all kinds and degrees of poverty. —ln some parts of Peru—for example, in the province of Jauja—hens' eggs are circulated as small coins, 10 to 12 being counted for Is. In the market places and in the shops the Indians make most of their purchases with this brittle sort of money. One will give two or three eggs for brandy, another for indigo, and a third for cigars. These eggs are packed in boxes by the shopkeepers and sent to Lima.

A prcttv custom attends a baptism in Heligoland. * While a psalm is being sung a procession of little bovs and girls troops in. passing in front of the altar. Each child carries a pannikin of water, the contents of which are poured into the baptismal font. Thus all tlio child's kindred and future playmates contribute the water with which the baby is admitted into the Church Tn a number of skin-grafting operations lie has recently carried out. a Philadelphia physician has used the lining of eggshells instead of human skin. One of the patients he is reported to have successfully treated in this way was a woman who had had the skin burned oft her hack. The physician declares that the suffering which lias been imposed on human donors of skin for such operations is unnecessary. Only fresh ocz* mav bo used. According to the new regulations, all airmen in France must he provided with navigation certificates and with permits for their air craft. Each machine must carry a visible registered number, and must come to land when invited to do so by signals which are to he arranged subsequently. Flights over cities or crowds are prohibited. No explosives, cameras, or wireless telegraphv apparatus n:av bo carried without special permission. In th-'' near future all air craft will be expected to carry three lights, a white one in front, a green one on the right and a. red one on the left. A horn must be carried for uso in foggy weather. Air craft arc expected never to pass within 400 ft of each other. The new cathedral at Khartoum will h/» the fifteenth English cathedral in Africa. The others are ;.t Capetown. Orahamstown. PiotemiarUzbnrg, Bloemfontein. St. John's (Kaffraria). Pretoria. Vryheid (Zululnnd), Salisbury (Mashonaland). Likoma, Zanzibar. Freetown, Mengo [Uganda), Mombasa. St. Helena. Some of these, the Pall Mall Gazette observes, would hardly be dignified by the name of "cathedral" in England, being little more than unpretentious parish churches. Many, on the other hand, are fine and costly buildings, such as that of white granite at Eikoma, on an island in Lake Xyassa. It stands on the site of the witches' burning place of former davs. The Cathedral of Zanzibar (which was, like that

at Likoma, built by the Universities Mission) occupies the position of the old slave market, and the altar stands where once the whipping-post did. The cathedrals at Capetown and Mengo (Uganda) are now being rebuilt. The Roman Catholic Church has also several fine cathedrals scattered over Africa, and a committee has just been formed in Paris for erecting one at Dakar in commemoration of the Frenchmen who died in the conquest of the African Continent. The places which possess bishops and cathedrals attached to Rome are Capetown, Durban Port Victoria, Port Louis, Carthage. Oonstantinc, Oran, Angola, Funchal, Ceuta, Reunion, and Canary Isles.