MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3335, 13 February 1918, Page 47

MULTUM IN PARVO

I —Nearly one-seventh of tho population of tho United States are foreign born. London Hospitals use, annually 21 miles of catgut in sewing up wounds, and oiro mile and a-half of kangaroos' tails for other purposes. —ln one week recently the British sent into the German lines over a quarter of a million Bhells (weighing over 10,000 tons) a day. —"I know a man," said Sir J. Walter, M.P., "whoso Scotch pine forest before tho war was valued at £25,000. The Government are now giving him £700,000 for it." Although millions of peoplo have racked their brains to discover a weak spot, ho one has ever yet succeeded in obtaining any decisive advantago over the bank at tho Monte Carlo casino. Potatoes being in over-supply in Scotland this season, it is proposed to make a "butter" from them which can be sold at 7d per lb. For the fourth year Miss Margaret Owens has won the international typewriting championship and a £2OO trophy cup at the New York annual business show. Her new record was 143 words a minute for one hour-. Some 320,000 men, representing of themselves an immense army, have already been discharged from the army in Great Britain. The Employment Exchanges have ulaced more than half these men in situations, and the others had returned to tho berths they left to join the army. The Sunday Observer declares that an astonishingly large- number of eligible men have fled across the Irish Sea, and who, adopting Irish names and a bogus Irish nationality, are now masquerading as Sinn Feiners and' stimulating revolutionary ideas for their own selfish ends. One" of the most costly varieties of fur coat last season was made of Persian lambskins. A number of Persian lamb-' skins recently changed hands in London at more than £4- each. A coat made of such skins would cost £250. The Otira tunnel will be 'the sixth longest in the world. The five longest: Simplori, 12| miles; St. Gothard, Hoetschburg. %; Mont Cenis, 7£; Arlberg, 6s; Otira, 5 miles 25 chains 18 ljnks. There is every reason to believe that the total death-rate per annum in this war does not exceed 5 per cent, of the total number of individuals engaged. The cost of taking life is greater in this war than in any other war, It takes somewhere between three and' four tons of projectiles and explosives to kill a single individual. Napoleon was sft. 6in high in his silk stockings, if we are to believe that his existing clothes afford a means of measurement. A waistcoat which he wore at St. Helena shows him to have had a chest measurement of 39J*in and a waist of 40|in. His hat is a 7 l-Bin size. —An Edinburgh gentleman nas left a sum of about £250,000, vested in trustees, for the care and cure of cancer. The bequest is so framed that tho money can be used either for research or hospital work. The money will be available after certain life interests are exhausted. George Koshter, a German prisoner of war, and William Cannell, a Manx labourer, while working, on a farm near Douglas recently, ate some hemlock, being under the impression it was watercress. They were taken violently ill and died soon after. ances given to 9,000,000 dependents of soldiers, the majority children, are not enough for bare subsistence; This.will not conduce to the health and vigour of the child population, ©lie of the main objects of the Government at the present time." — Dr Buqhan, in the Observer. • Edison began inventing at an early age At seven he induced a youthful companion to swallow a large number of dry Seidlitz powders and drink a glass of water. When the gas thus generated in the youth's inside did not enable him to rise like a balloon young Edison was sorely" disappointed. History fails to record the state of mind of the qther boy. tain Tuko station. Amazonian young factory girls plunged into the place just about alien-swarming time, seized upon a number of fit but sallow young men, pulled them out like terriers after rats, and sent them home through the Sti'eets—minus a somewhat important portion of their attire." —Daily Sketch. There is great rejoicing in a wellknown London club over a lucky discovery. In the course of alterations to provide increased accommodation, the builders had to knock through a cellar wall, when to their amazement they came upon a small vault, with no entrance, containing over ICO cases of brandy. Many years ago, it appears, a now staircase was constructed, and it had been built over the door of the vault. Describing tho conditions in Russia since the revolution. Mr C. E. Russell, writing in Land and Water, says: —"Every party, every faction, every group, and every man with a hobby got a press and began to issue a journal on it, so that Petrograd has now moro newspapers, so called, than any other city in the world. In most cases tho name is grotesquely misapplied. There is no news. The thing is made up with a capable paste-pot, a pair of overworked scissors, and one longhandled pen 'that produces (at inordinate length) the thoughts of some beetle-browed intellect on street paving, for instance. But peoplo rend it, and seem to like it. Heaven help them! William Kinnaird Rose., a Civil Liabilities Commissioner at Glasgow, was ordered to pay £2O damages and expenses for slapping the face of tho wife of a soldier." Tho woman rather resented _ tho manner in which he put some questions, and when ho wanted to know why she was not working, putting it in an offensive way and wanting to know what she married for, sho retaliated by asking if his own wife was working. With that he stood up and slapned her face hard, the marks being visible 10 minutes afterwards. All fishes which sleep do so with, their eyes open, as they are not provided with ovelids"! and cannot therefore close their eyes. From experiments made it was discovered that some fishes have no prefer-, enco for the night time, but sleep equally well during the day. Tho hare also sleeps with its eyes open, for tho simple reason that its eyes are unprovided with eyelids. Instead of theso there is a thin membrano which covers the eye when asleep. This membrane, as in tho oaso of certain birds, folds liko a curtain in the corner of tho eye. and, by an instantaneous action, flies back when sight is required, leaving the eyo immediately and fully open for tho exerciso of sight.