MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3115, 26 November 1913, Page 59

MULTUM IN PARVO.

—ln Northern China many of the natives are dreesed in dogskin. Dogs of a peculiar breed are raised -in large numbers for their shaggy coats. Since 1885, when cremation was held to be legal, 11,947 cremations have been carried oat in England according to official figures supplied to the London City Corporation. Chicago recently passed a by-law requiring all windows in tall office buildings to be so adjusted as to bo washable from the inside. A new regulator, recently introduced in Swira watches, works, it is stated, so accurately that timepieces furnished with it ao not vary 10 seconds in a month. Venetian coins of 1570 and 1577, be-ar* ing the names of one of the Doges, have been found in Mashoualand, in the interior of South Africa. The driest place in the world is that portion of Egypt between the two lower falls of the Nile. Rain has never been known ho fall there. A gold engagement ring set with a diamond and containing an inscription was found tightly fixed round the neck of a partridge shot near Gaschowitz, Bohemia. The British Museum has books written on bricks, tiles, oyster shells, bones, and flat stones, together with manuscripts on bark, ivory, leather, parchment, papyrus, lead, iron, copper, and wood. —ln Siberia the snow and ice are melted not by the sun but by the south wind. Even up to the beginning of Juno the burning sun scarcely produces any thawing The Toulon police recently arrested a young woman in whose hair (which was beautifully dressed) a large pot of opium was found. Smaller quantities of the drug were concealed in each ot the high heels ot her shoes. - . Females, as well as males, smoke in Japan The girls usually when they are about 10 years of age. When a lady desires to show a gentleman a special mark of favour she lights her pipe, takes a few whiffs, and then poiitely passes it to him. —ln Brittany and the Lower Pyrenees fairs are held annually, at which the peasant girls assemble and sell their hair. Parisian dealers are the chief customers, purchasing very largo quantities. Stanislaus Wogreuther, an actor who turned burglar and who has escaped from 25 prisons in various parts of Germany, was sentenced in Berlin to five years imprisonment, which brings his total sentences to 124 years. A station nine miles out from a great city on one of the oldest railway lines in the United States bears*thc name “Relay.” This was because the horses, by which the railway traffic was first operated, vvere changed there. . The whisper of the wired skirt is all abroad, and already, one has seen weird flounces on gowns, but the silhouette is not attractive alter the graceful flowing lines of the Empire and Dircctoire, modelled on the Greek. . t> The ancient custom or “horn dancing took place at Abbots Bromley, Burton-on-Trent, recently, when costumed dancers carrying reindeer horns, which have been stored in the church for four centuries, and astride hobby-horses, went through the countryside to the strains of rag-time music. A German analyst finds that the commercial value of the constituents of a human body weighing 1501 b is £1 lie 3d. The report of the Swedish Bible Society for last year shows a circulation of 92,000 books, and that the British and Foreign Bible Society for last year 7,899,522 books or portions. A venerable lobster has been presented to the New York Aquarium by a wholesale fish dealer. It weighs 221 b, measures 35in long, has a claw 19in long and 16in in circumference, and is estimated to be at least 50 years old. —An ingenious working man in Carnarvonshire has invented a new form of pillar letter-box intended to defeat the mal.ee of militant' Suffragettes. It is claimed that while letters can be posted in the ordinary way, neither liquids nor lire put into the box can reach the letters deposited. Marie Seliginan, the wile of a labourer at Trouvillc, France, was so indignant on discovering that her husband, who was believed to nave committed suicide, had only fired a blank cartridge at his heart in order to frighten her that she stabbed him with a knife. When a Chinaman consults a doctor ho expects the proscribed irpdicine to take elfcct at once. Consequently, many of the medical practitioners give their patients, for a first dose, some redhot mixture, such as tincture of cayenne, which makes the invalids feel as if a torchlight procession was coursing down their throats. —An unexpected windfall for the British Treasury is provided by the estate of Mr Anthom Nicholas Brady, of Albany, New York, U.S A., who, apart from American property, has left estate in the United Kingdom valued for probate as of the not value of £1,315.328. The duties on the property at this valuation will amount to over £216.000. The largest ostrich farm in New South Wales, that at Coonamble, now has over 400 birds, and these returned for the feathers £4 per bird per annum, and this was done without irrigation or hand-feed-ing. Artificial wool made from turf fibre is now employed at Dusscldorf, in Germany, for manufacturing cloth, bandages, hate, ruga, and so fo th. Ton years have elapsed since the first attempts to make turf wool, and it is. said that recent improvements in the processes have resulted in the production of a soft, fibrous material, which can be spun as readily as sheep’s wool. The auil is not a very bird, considering its length and the breadth of its wings. The weights of the more generally seen gulls are about the following—Blackheaded, lOoz; common, lib; lesser blackbacked, 360 z; greater blackbacked, s!b; herring, 30oz to 330 z. Those arc for male specimens. The females in the gull tribe rule less in size and weight, but not mors than a sixth in either case. telephones, arc to be provided for patients recovering from infectious diseases in a new isolation hospital in Chicago. Instead of being grouped together in a genera! ward, the patients will have private rooms, separated by an airtight glass partition from a public corridor, so that their friends can see them and talk with them by telephone without exposing themselves to infection. This is an advance over the present system, which prohibits friends from seeing or receiving letters from convalescing patients.