MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3332, 23 January 1918, Page 53

MULTUM IN PARVO

Electric sky signs in Broadway ("the Great White Way") and other New York streets are to be stopped to save fuel. The British Board of Trade, in a statement on the match shortage, says it is the duty of every citizen to confine his consumption to an average of" six matches a day. . , ' New furniture being entirely unobtainable and second-hand stuff almost as scarce, the Prussian Minister of Commerce has aeked town councils to devise means of letting young newly married couples get furniture in order to establish' a home. The largest brick kiln in the world, at Fletton, Peterborough (Eng.), which has been closed for two years, is being reopened with women labour. —To compel the wealthy classes to gixe up to war work the horses they have been using in carriages owing to shortage of petrol, the British Government will henceforth allow no hay or fodder to horses that are not employed for "important industrial purposes." A manufacturers' agent named Hoepstrin, who after the war changed his business name to Lancaster, was fined £IOO at the Mansion House, London, for trading in a namo other than his own. Owing to the lack of raw tobacco in Germany, regulations have been issued permitting the introduction of 15 substitutes into tobacco for the market. _ Hops are used on a large scale for smoking. Never before has there been such a boom in rabbits as is now experienced in the Isle of Wight. Many thousands are being sent out of the island, wholesalers offering as much as one guinea per dozen. The Cafe Florian, in St. Mark's square, was noted to all visitors to Venice as the cafe which had not closed its doors day or night for 300 years. The news that this famous resort is now shut up will bring home to many the fact that "Venice is now in the war zone. Tuberculosis has increased so much in Berlin during the war owing to food conditions that the authorities have found it necessary, with the aid of private charity, to open a special public kitchen for sufferers. At present it provides 100 persons with a special diet daily. The death has occurred at Strood. Kent, at the age of 59, of Mr Edward George Hutchings. Mr Hutchings was the discoverer of the unique foesil of the ganoid, a fish belonging to early geological times, and now treasured in one of the national museums. Germany has now introduced standard boots, which will be of three qualities only and be sold at a fixed scale of maximum prices. The qualities will bo known as rough, medium, and better-class. The medium grade will be made of paper-fibre, with leather uppers and wooden soles, while the other sorts will be of sailcloth, linen, or odd felt, with leather uppers and ordinary wooden soles. Boots for both men and women will be standardised and no other kinds will be obtainable. I gather in letters from Holland that the Dtitch now letiro to rest earlier than any other people on, earth (saye a correspondent of the Daily Dispatch). They are only allowed to burn gas for two hours in the middle of the day for cooking purposes, and one hour after dark for lighting purposos. When that hour is up there is nothing for them to do but to go to bed. The Netherlands have no coalmines, and all the coal they use has to be imported. A somewhat similar eta'te of things prevails in Denmark.