MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3419, 26 September 1919, Page 53

MULTUM IN PARVO

A new "baby" aeroplane, of Swedish make, weights only 7001 b, and has a speed of CO miles an hour.

One penny is beins paid to Aldeburgh fichool children for every seven cabbage (white] butterflies they catch. The record block of limestone, weighing 300 tons, has recently been quarried at Wirksworth, Derbyshire. Australia enlisted 416,809 soldiers during tho war, of which 329,716 served overseas. —lt is estimated that only about '200,000 United States troops now remain in Europe. The British Independent Force, R.A.F., carried out 205 day raids and 373 night raids, including 70 of 150 miles and nine of 200 miles.

—Women strawberry-pickers in Derbyshire received 7s a day this year, compared with 3s four years ago. Tooting Hall,- in the south-west of London, once the residence of Daniel Defoe, is unfit now for habitation owing to its tumble-down state.

Householders generally are said to bo very careless. In London some time back the police found in one jcar that over 26,000 doors and windows were left open nightly. A man from tho Rhine tells of a British officer getting up in a Cologne tram to offer his seat to a German girl. The fraulein was so startled that she did not sit down, but allowed the Hun who was with her to take the seat. He was lifted out by the scruff of his neck. ber. In the time of Edward I there were only three "houses of call" in London; in 1552 40 only were legally permitted in the metropolis, "but just after 1600 there. were 400 inns in the city of London. —" Jerry-built" houses were erected as far back as the days of the Athens earthquakes. They were attractive buildings outside, but the faulty stones and rotten blocks soo.i caused a rapid falling away of material from the marble exteriors..

—ln Suffolk people used to say that if the broom is accidentally left in the corner after swooning the houso "strangers will visit you," while up north folk had a superstition that 'to sweep dust out of a house by the front door, fortune and happiness leaves your house." Tho ocean provides its quota of curiosities, amongst those on record being a double-sided flounder, both sides of which were marked exactly alike, with duplicate fins and a misplaced eye. More strange, however, was the oatch of another angler, whose bait lured to destruction a hybrid fish with tho body of a perch but a head like that of a pike. ' —Wo learn (says. The Times) that a largo contract for constructional engineering in Holland has just been accepted by a German firm on terms much below those of a British tender. The business, which amounts in the aggregate, to a very large, sum, has been accepted by the German firm. at about £2O per ton less . than the figure tendered by a leading British company. .'.-.. The story of the popular Advent hymn " L-o, He comes with clouds descending" is worth recalling in any discussion on our hymn tunes. Apparently it began life as a drawing room ballad about 1770, and shortly after was being danced as a hornpipe at Sadler's Wells. Authorities differ as to whether the hymn came between the ballad and the hornpipe* or last of all. but at any rate the tune proved itself suitable for both. .

-t-The .authorities of a small watering place in Wales once cornered all the coppers in the town. ; Their object was to force the hand of visitors who stingily (as thrv thought) gave only one penny to the .collection for the local band., and in it they were successful, for, as change became scarcer, so the receipts of that institution increased. But their triumph was attended bv many awkward consequences, one of which was a plague of threepenny-bits. America seems to specialise in producing ptrange freaks of Nature. One of theso peculiar creatures was a giant, glowworm, found in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which was about 4J*in in length. When placed in the dark a gorgeous effect was produced bv. the lumirous rings encircling the body. Huge blossoms of mammoth fruit arc of frequent occurrence, but one of the most remarkable cf such freaks is a garden daisy, which, developing the modern habit of co-operation, formed seven flowers, joined together by one wide, flat stalk. —Mr Mervyn Macartney, the consulting architect to St. Paul's, savs that it seems very likely that Sir Christopher Wren was imposed upon by some of his contractors. "We kmw that there were eight or nine contractors, and that not all of them were of the same excellence. We found some poor work when we were engaged on the southwest pier, but the work on the south-cast pier suggests that this particular contractor was the worst one of the whole lot. . . . It has taken us five years to complete one pier; we are now on with the second, and there are eight in all. It may take us another 10 years to complete the work." That there is gold in the sea is well known. Someone has even taken the trouble to compute the approximate amount. Every ton of sea water contains about one grain of gold. Every cubic mile of the ocean contains 4,205,650,000 tons, and the oceans are estimated to hold at least 302,000,000 cubic miles of water. There are, therefore, 1,270,106,300,000,000,000 _ tons of salt water, and it is a simple arithmetical calculation to determine that this contains something like 50,000.C00,000 tons of gold. A little fortune, surely, for the man who knows how to get it! —lt may be assumed without injustice that everv person who is taxed on an income of £50,000 or more is a millionaire, writes the Daily Chronicle. There are 540 of them, with an aggregate income of £54.300,000. We need not waste any sym'nathy on millionaires, but in fairness it may be said that the State intercepts £26.049.000 of this sum. The millionaire's sovereign, therefore, is only worth 10s when ho comes to spend it, and, allowing for the change in values, is worth 5s if he buys bread and a good deal less if he invests in diamonds. —Mr Mole, that delving, destructive little nnimal which makes the farmer tear his hair at times, is so swollen with pride that he is in danger of bursting his hole. Diko everything else, his" price has gone up. Furthermore, beautiful society women are sighing for him. Other furs have reached such a prohibitive nrico that the mole has now become the fashionable fur. Bcforo the war 4d was the price for a raw skin. The present price paid for dressed skins is Is 5d to 2s each. Moleskins are wanted by the 10,000, for 300 to 400 skins have to bo sown together to make one long coat.