MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3444, 16 March 1920, Page 51

MULTUM IN PARVO.

There are more than £OO music schools in Germany. Portuguese is the language of about 30,000,000 people. War pensions are being paid in Britain to 2,621,313 persons. The wood known as Circassian walnut is too heavy to float. Although many spiders have poison fangs, only a few are dangerous to human beings. —Of the 34,000 blind people in Britain, only 2500 are employed. Four times more Irishmen reside in the United States than Englishmen. Twenty-four years is stated to be the average duration of life among the natives of India. I —A factory chimney, 115 ft high, ■will sway as much as lOin in a high wind without danger. Many Russian women of good birth are reduced to selling papers in the streets of Petrograd. A leading physician has stated that as many as 1,000,000 microbes may be found on a pin's point. The amount assessable for income tax in 1913-1914 has doubled, being now estimated at £2,290,000,000. • The total annual income of weekly wage-earners has increased from £205,577,990 in 1916 to £485,000,000 in 1919. The tour of the Prince of Wales in Canada and the United States was officially filmed, 15,000 feet being required for the Canadian visit alone. Ten large industrial firms at Kingsport, Tennessee, U.S.A., have taken put a single insurance policy to cover their 2000 employees against illness, accident, and death. His wife dreamed that he was Jelled, and the next day, at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a linesmen fell to his death from a littlA car attached to an overhead cable. First convicted when she was only 16, Ellen Davies, of no fixed abode, who is now 79, ras spent 51 years 5 months in •prison, leaving only 28 velars of her long life free. A Welsh . relieving > officer states that applicants for outdoor relief with £4 a week are quite frequent, while in one case an application was received from a family whose total earnings were £ls a week. Opera House have a morning dancing lesson from 10.30 till noon, an afternoon rehearsal from 1 to 4 p.m., private tuition from 5 to 7 in the evening, and then appear on the ftage from 7.45 p.m. During the war the number of persons in England and Wales in receipt of poor law relief fell from 761,500 to 555,000—a reduction over the whole period of 27 per cent »

Fifty thousand summonses were served in 12 years by Police-sergeant A. Richardson, warrant-officer at the Kingston Borough and Cteunty Police Courts, who has retired after 26 years' service in the Metropolitan Police. Policemen at Brighton (England) have been ordered to give up football and devote themselves to a milder form of athletics. This is a decision of Sir William Gentle, the chief constable, taken because so many policemen footballers have been incapacitated for duty through injury sustained in matches. I find the people who believe pleasant things much more agreeable than those who believe unpleasant. But it is a logical part of m v own belief in pleasant things (writes Mr A. Glutton Brock) that no belief canfinally be pleasant which is not true. ment of which the chief victims are children. The chief constable of Eiastbourne (England) says that the front seats at district cinemas are so near the screen that the children have to fix their necks "at an angle" in order to see the pictures. This injures their necks, and medical opinion is being sought. "", The ohrase, "Robbing Peter to pay Paul," had a curious origin. On December 17, 1550, the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster, was, by letters patent, announced to have the dignity of a, cathedral; but "10 years later it was rejoined to the London Diocese, and the majority of its estates. appropriated to the repairs of St. Paul's Cathedral. Just as a deep-sea fish, when brought to the surface, sometimes bursts open, owing to the removal of the great pressure to which it has been habitually subjected, so the diamond, fetched from the bowels of the earth, is liable to explode. In many instances large ones have actually burst in miners' pockets, or even when held in the warm hand. After long experiments the firm of Handley-Page (Ltd.) have produced a giant commercial- machine capable of carrying a large number of passengers and a heavy load of cargo. The machine has a fine saloon, and the interior is fitted with all conveniences. There is also a telephone, in addition to wireless apparatus. A spacious luggage room' is provided between the saloon and the pilot's cockpit. # It is described as the first of its kind in the Although a gold rush to Wales is not likely to be caused by the fact, promising developments have taken place at the Clogan P-old mines, Boniddu, near Barmouth. 'When th© miners came across a valuable vein they continued to work for three days and three nights without ceasing extracting a auantity of pure gold. The six miners and the foreman who dscovered the vein have been rewarded by the owners. From March to October of last year 188 120 prescriptions for liquor were issued by ' doctors in British Columbia, according to figures issued by the Attorney-General. Since June doctors have been allowed to issue a maximum of 200 prescriptions a month. It is admitted on all sides (writes the correspondent of The Times) that the present working of the Prohibition. Act has become a farce. The AttorneyGeneral states that legislation will be introduced in the forthcoming session of the Legislature limiting the amount of prescriptions to eight ounces._ ~.,,, , Tl ie f ro ,g is the vivisectiomst's favourite victim not because his structure is at all human-life (though he is built somewhat like a man), but for the reason that he will endure being chopped up to a remarkable extent and still reta.in life. If hi* brain be removed he can get along without it. swallowing whatever is put into his mouth and otherwise behaving much as usual, though m automatic fashion. Jf his lungs are cut out he will survive for a long time, because he can breathe through his skin. The corpuscles of his blood being remarkably large, that fluid serves admirably for the instruction of the seeker after medical knowledge.