MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3396, 16 April 1919, Page 53

MULTUM IN PARVO

The jury at a London inquest was told that window-cleaners who stand on window •ills more than 6ft above a publio highway without lifebelts and lines are liable to prosecution. The Times says: "In the midlands and West of Ireland eggs have fallen in price from 6s to 2s 9d a dozen owing to large etocks in the markets, and a further reduction is anticipated."

The King-, in view of the splendid work which has been performed by the Army Chaplains' Department during the recent war, has approved of the department being in future designated the Royal Army Chaplains Depai*tment. —ln cassock, surplice, and "mortarboard," Miss Ruby Morris, aged 19. of Wynsham road, Salisbury, England, has for a year, during her father's absence in the army, acted as verger for two parishes, of which St. Mark's, Salisbury, is one. The Belfast correspondent of a London daily is responsible for one of the "thingr which might have been expressed differently":—" Sir Edward Carson could still have been a member of the War Cabinet; but he preferred to preserve his honour." John Jacob Astor, the six-year-old posthumous son of the late Colonel John Jacob Astor. will have his fortune of £600,000 left / by his father increased to £1,673,400 by the time ho is 21, because his mother will support him from her own ( mes-ns. Colonel Astor was drowned in the Titanio ; When war broke out Captain Johat MacGregor, M.C., D.C.M., Canadian Mounted Rifles, who has been awarded tha Victoria Cross, snowshoed over 100 miles to join up. . . —Mr G. Mackie, stationmaster at Falkirk, who, has retired after nearly 50 years' railway service, recalls how, in 1873, luggage was carried on railway carriage roofs, evci* on the London and Edinburgh trains, cud

secured by tarpaulins. Cambridge University has received an offer of £20,(500 5 per cent, war stock from Mr Emile Mond, of Hydo Park square, London, for the endowment of a Professcr ship of Aeronautical Engineering «s • memorial to his son. Lieutenant Francis Mond, who was killed in action whilst flying on the western front. A score of old ladies, aged between 65 and 92, were presented ■ with blankets at Chertsey recently under a charter of Queen Elizabeth's days. The distribution is undertaken annually by the feofees of Chertsey market. The money is derived from the market tolls and the town crier's.fees.

Banbury cakes were put on the market in England recently after an absence of three years owing to the w*r. The history of the cakes dates back 300 years, but they were not popular until Betty White, in 1760, brought them into favour. _ Her recipe is used to-day by her direct descendants.

The Tribune de Geneve is informed that Grand Admiral von Tirpitz is staying at Wildegg, Switzerland, as the guest of Lieutenant-colonel Wille, son of the former OOmmander-in-chief of the Swiss army. Tirpitz has lost all his fortune. His son is u clerk in a bank at Zurich, and his daughter is governess in a Zurich family. The most, powerful locomotive engine ever built has recently been delivered to the Virginian Railway Company by an American firm of locomotive builders. It

weighs 449 tons, and measures, with its tender, 105 ft in length. The tender carries 12 tons of coal and 13,000 gallons of water. . —The London Zoo has suffered a heavy

loss in the death of . Rothschild's giant tortoise, that was born on- Indefatigable Island, Galapagos, about 250 years ago. Children used to have rides on Georgina's back. "It took me several months to train her to do it," explained Collins, the reptile-keeper at the Zoo. "So far as I know, Georgina was the first tortoise that learnt to carry people." A Hatton Garden merchant tells me that there is a great scarcity of emeralds at the moment, and a glance at any jeweller's showcases confirms his statement. A genuine unfa-ked emerald, he added, is worth about £OO a carat, while small inferior stones, which, to use his words, "resemble a chip from a lemonade bottle," are readily bought up_ at from lOgs to 15gs each according to weight, Jews'-harp making is one of the most exclusive of callings.. It is a trade which has been oarried on by one family for many generations. That family—a Birmingham one—still produces jews' harps, in spite of all the restrictions in trade due to thfi

war. in a workshop Bituated in the heart of the jewellery quarter. The demand now comes from America and Africa, particularly the tetter plaoe, where the lews' harps go up country, and are bought by the natives.

At a meeting of the University Court of St. Andrew's University it was reported that the universitv was to be enriched to the extent of £BO,OOO by the will of the late Mrs Purdle, widow of Emeritus Professor Purdie. The residue of Mrs Purdie'e estate, amounting to £25,000, is bequeathed for the promotion of chemical research. Mr George Eonar, Dundee, makes a gift of the same amount to provide teaching for a degree in commerce. Mr Jas. Younger, Mount Melville, and, Mrs Younger, gift £30,000 for • the erection of a quincentenary memorial hall. Paris, jve are told, is to be paved with glass, and this has been referred to as if it were quite unknown. However, this is not so, for Lyons already has the Rue do la Republique, with its glass pavements laid in blocks Bin square, so closely fitted that water cannot pass through them. But streets of glass are not bv any means the most curious streets in the world. Thore is a street in Gwandu, Africa, which is a veritable place of skulls. The town, oval in shape, has round it a ring of poles, every one' of which is crowned with a human skull. There are six gates to the town, and every one of them is approached bv a pavement of skulls, of which something like 12.000 were used. _ The pavement is snowy> white. Philadelphia has a street made with compressed grass, and the experiment pro mised so well after a year that there may be many companion streets of grass by this time.

The longest onnal in the. -world is the Grand or Imperial Canal in China, and is 700 miles long-. In America the longest canal is the Erie, and is 363 miles long. Two of the shortest canals are among the most important: the Panama Canal, which h 54 miles long, and tho Sue?. Canal, which is 100 miles long. The Corinth Canal in Greece is perhaps the shortest in tho world. It is only four miles long, and yet has a marvellous history. It was projected by Alexander tho Great, determined on by (Tuliu3 Ctesar attempted by Caligula, actually begun by Nero, and yet it wasn't finished until 1893!