MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3395, 9 April 1919, Page 47

MULTUM IN PARVO

Northamptonshire has made 33,000,000 pairs of boots for the Allied armies. —Of £17,000,000 oolieoted in Custouas duties at Bristol last year, over £IS,OOO,\JjO was ixom tobacco. Only a millionaire could buy the two Sevres vases which were sold the other day for 3200 guineas, or the little tankard oin high whicn wont lor £37 10s per oz, and realised £667" 10s. "So far 1 have not heard of any member of Parliament who is willing to give up his seat to a lady; perhaps that will come later." —Mrs Lloyd George: —Over 200 blinded soldiers have been married from St. Dunstan's. Many of them married girls whose acquaintance they had made since they lost their sight. —Mr Leonard Oowell. of Ashford, Kent, who is flo, has 92 descendants living—ll children, 62 grandchildren, and 19 greatgrandchildren. The largest American flag in existence hangs in the main hall of the Grand Central Railway terminal in New York. It measures 80ft by 160 f t; the stripes are 6ft / wide, and each of the stars measures s£ft across from point to point. Sir William Moore Johnson, Bart., of Dublin, late a judge of the King's Bench Division, and of the Admiralty Court, Ireland, left £20,243 9s Bd. " Before my coffin is closed over me," he directs, "death shall be assured by a surgeon dislocating, my neck or otherwise breaking my spine." The Madras Zoological Garden3_ was the schene recently of a tragio accident. A woman, accompanied by a little child, approached too close to the bars of the lions' cage, and one of the animals, thrusting out a paw, dealt the child such a terrible blow that the child died soon afterwards in hospital. 7-* To roughly calculate the speed at which you are travelling on a railway, multiply by two the number of telegraph Soles you pass in a minute; the result will e the number of miles you are then travelling per hour, the posts being arranged 30 to a mile. —The weights of some famous diamonds are here given for comparison: Cullinan, 3032 carats; Excelsior, 969 carats; Koh-i----noor, 800 carats; Dutoitspan, 442£ carats; Regent, 410 carats. The Cullinan diamond was cut into two —one weighing 516 i carats and the other 309 carats—the gems being presented to the King, and are now among the Grown Jewels. About 1500 conscientious objectors are still in prison in Britain, By the end of * February 140 of them would have completed two-year sentences without a break, —Nearly 700 army doctors have been killed or have died of wounds, according to The British Medical Journal. —Some British soldiers were engaged in removing a heap of coal which had been abandoned by the Germans near Mons when some shells hidden among the coal exploded, killing two soldiers and wounding many others. —The erase for tattooing which broke out soon after the war began seems to be spreading rather than abating. It has now spread from the masses to the classes, even dainty society women having the regimental crests of their lovers or husbands, as the case, may be, indelibly imprinted upon their delicate skins. —Some of the finest classics in our literature have been miserably paid for. Oliver Goldsmith parted with his immortal "Vicar of Wakefield" for 60 guineas; Shakespeare made only about £2O a year out of his plays; while Milton got no more than a r ' fiver" for his * Paradise Lost." Bede Cottage, the., scene of George Eliot's novel and the original home of "Adam Bede " situated on Boston Common, Derbyshire, -was recently sold by auction for £635. The cottage still has the building attached which formed the workshop of Adam and Seth Bede. The Blue Cross Fund las decided to issue a special badge for horses which have seen service in war. The badge will, it is hoped, not only distinguish those horses which have " done their bit," _ but will also serve as a reminder to their owners and drivers to accord them fair and generous treatment.

The Rev. John MT/ean, D.D., -who •was formerly minister of St. .Columba's Pariah, Glasgow, leaves £3500 to the University of Glasgow for the foundation of a scholarship, £2500 to form an endowment of three bursaries in arts to .be held by Gaelio-speaking students for .the ministry, and £SOO to the Aged and Infirm Ministers' Fund.

The following figures give some idea of the extent to which medical science is conquering fatal sickness in war. In the South African war only one man died of wounds to everyvfive or so who died from disease. In the Russo-Japanese war there were two deaths from, wounds to one from- disease. The figures in the Australian units in this war show that 100 men die of wounds for each one yiho dies from one of the many illnesses developed by trench warfare and all the other enemies of the doctor. The figures are the more remarkable when it is remembered that the deaths from wounds are now a very small proportion of the total wounded. "Which business takes the greatest variety of coins over the counter? The X.M.C.A.'s record in France would be hard to boat. Both English and French coins are the recognised legal tender. But at sundry hours and divers places they have taken coins from Belgium, Italy. Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, Canada, India, and the United States. Other contributions have come from Spain, Luxembourg, Rumania, Tunis, Indo-China, Mexico, and the Argentine. There have been Papa] coins of Pius IX, and a William and Mary halfpenny of 1694-. Tho rarest, though, was a Napoleon I frano bearing the legend " Republique Francaise—Napoleon Empereur." • A tremendous amount of labour is Baved daily at tho offices of the Detroit street railways by automatic coin-handling machines. A bank of machines handles an average of 200,000 coins each day. The machines are operated by one-third horse power motors. The coins are placed in hoppers at tho ton, in all denominations, just as they come from the on the cars. Without further attention,

battered and badly-worn pieces are thrown out, and the remaining: coins are .sorted Into their respective denominations. These are accurately counted and properly •wrapped in rolls of any desired amounts.