MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3442, 2 March 1920, Page 53

MULTUM IN PARVO.

Living microbes have been found in manuscripts hundreds of years old.

Two bells at Seaton Parish Church, Devon, or© still sound, though made in 1430.

Sailors, at a minimum wage of £SO a year, are suggested as household servants.

The Victoria Cross was awarded to 63 Australians during the war. The journey from London to Paris by air takes 2£ hours, compared with seven hours by land and sea. Honey weighing nearly a hundredweight was recently discovered in a disused Essex chimney. The railway strike in England caused 375,000 persons to be unemployed for varying periods. —An average of over 1000 cases of ohampagne per day has been, landed in England from France for some time past, During the last financial year death duties were paid in Britain on eight estates of the value of £1,000,000 or over. Under the English Education Act local authorities can extend the age of compulsory attendance at school to 15 by by-law. _ Five million three hundred and fortysix thousand peopl) in Great Britain are liable to pay income tax; of these only 59,100 enjoy incomes of over £2500. —lt has been estimated that war work for women drew 400,000 recruits from domestic work and dressmaking. Chilled fish from Newfoundland is prepared in a cold storage plant, which can deal with 200,0Q01b of. fish a day. During the year ending with Easter, 1919, there was a decrease of 67,086 scholars in Church of England Sunday schools. The Republic of Ozecho-Sk,vakia has an area of between 50,000 and 60,000 square miles and a population of 12,500,000.' Old railway plans and tracings, in one instance dating back to 1835, were conVerted into linen dressings during the war. Boy Scouts are graded, according to age, into three classes —Wolf Cub, eight to 11; Scouts, 11 and upwards; and Rover Scouts over 15^. The Vice-president of the United States receives a salary of 12,000d0l (about £2400) annually. —Dirt and smoke in the atmosphere can now be measured by means of a machine which automatically exposes blotting-paper. —Coal used for household purposes in Great Britain amounts to 30 milluan tons a year; industries use nearly 100,000,000 tons' annually. —The war debt per head of the population of the United Kingdom is £157 ss; of Germany, £l2B 6s; of France, £ll4 4s; and of the United States, £55 ss. —The largest Bible in the world is more than.sft 2in high, and 3ft 6in wide. When opened flat, it measures 7ft lOin across. It is intended for use in a special religious movement. —Before August, 1814, the British Navy possessed 7112 guns of all calibres; by October 31st, 1918, this total had increased to 14,724. On the latter date there were 7005 ships" in commission.

—Sir Walter Scott, prince of time economisers, would let no ona cut his hair but his wife, and this domestic arrangement enabled him to work while, the operation was in progress. —A Chelsea patient has died in Hanwell Asylum, who was sent there from Chelsea 41 yeaiy ago, at the age of 19. Hia maintenance cost the Chelsea guardians over £I2OO.

—Tests show that Rochdale (England) .has an excessive amount of dirt in its air, London's record being one half of the Lancashire town. Glasgow, in this respect, is cleaner than London.

—Sir Archibald Salvidge recently stated that claims arising out of the recent police strike received by the Liverpo-ol Corporation amounted to £150,000, exclusive of the cost of the military. —There were 26 deaths from starvation, or accelerated by privation, in England and Wales during last year, . five of which occurred in the Administrative County of London and 21 in the provinces. —So many cases of theft from church offertory boxes have occurred recently in Hertfordshire that the Chief Constable has advised church authorities to place the boxes beneath the floor with a connectingpipe to the coin slot.—"I swear to do justice between party and party as indifferently as the herring's backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish." Li this queer form the new stipendiary magistrate of Douglas, Isle o.: Man, was sworn in. —Captain Martin Van Duron Bates, who died recently, wore a watch that weighed four pounds. It was set with diamonds, and a delicate set of chimes sounded the hours as the watch rested in the captain's vest pocket. The watch was a gift from Queen "Victoria. The captain waj a famous giant. He stood 7ft 4in, and weighed 3801 b. —The pith of sunflower is said to be by far the lightest vegetable substance. Dried sunflower pith is, in fact, 10 times lighter than cork. The sunflower plant is cultivated to a great extent in Central Russia, where every part of the plant is put to some use. The pith in particular, is carefully removed from thi stalk, and used in making life-saving appliance*. —The "Tibetan Bible consists of 108 ■volumes of 1000 paged each, containing 1083 separate books. Each of the volumes weighs 10 pounds. In addW-;m to this there are 225 volumes di commentaries, which are necessary for the understanding of the Scriptures. The typ><» from which the Bible (or Kah-kyur) is printed requires rows of houses like a city for storage. —Caraways are the seeds of a biennial plant called the "Carum Carui," which has a. root like a small carrot. Cinnamon is the bark of a small tree, 'the "Cinnamonum 2;eylanicum," which, as the name suggests, thrives in Ceylon—though it is also raised in Java. Cloves come from the French "clou" (a carpenter's nail) which they resemble in shivpe. They are, however, the flower-buds of a small evergreen called the "Caryophilus Arotnaticun." After 12 years, one of these trees will yield anything from five to 60 pounds of cloves yearly, and as a single stem may live for 150 years, the output in time becomes almost incredible. Ginger grows in the East Indies, and is the root stock of the "Zingiber Officinalis" —a plant with grass-like leaves. The root must be at least 12 months old before it can be preserved. Nutmegs are kernels of the fruit of a tree cultivated in Sumatra, Java, and the West Indies. The shape and size of this fruit resemble a peach, and when ripe, it easily splits in two parts, showing the kernel (or nutmeg), and mace, which surrounds it.