MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3475, 19 October 1920, Page 45

MULTUM IN PARVO.

About 200 rivers flow into the Baltic Sea.

Bands of Hope first appeared in England about 1848.

Bank of England received its first charter in 1694.

Bagpipes are shown on a Boman coin dating back to 68 a.d. The Cunard Company is building new piers at' New York at a cost of thirty million' dollars. The Federal authorities are inquiring into the allegations thaj; Japanese are entering Northern Australia. —The tongue of a giraffe measures, on an average, two feet in length. The ordinary bamboo has been known to grow at the rate of one and a-half feet a day. The leaves of the banana plant are from eight feet to ten feet long and one foot wide.

The American bale of cotton is 5001 b, the Egyptian 7001 b, and the West African 4001 b.

Barbed wire was first used for military purposes in the Spanish American War of 1898.

Balfouria, a small agricultural colony in Palestine, is named after the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour.

—lt is found that excessive profits are not made in the clothing trade in New South Wales, the total profits not being more than 5 per cent, on the turnover. —An acre of ground planted with bananas will, it as estimated, produce nearly 20 tons of fruit, as each bunch of bananas weights from 701 b to 801 b. The possibility of filling a bladder with hyrogen gas, and so causing it to float in the air, was first suggested in 1767. Soap bubbles were so filled and floated in 1782.

Hides may be measured by passing them between the rollers of a special machine, which _ estimates the area of the skin, even making; due allowance for all small holes. A loss of £500,000 , was: made on the purchase of forage and grain for distribution to necessitous farmers during the recent drought in New South Wales.

The two principal firms in Fiji, Morris Hedstrom, Ltd., and Henry Marks and Co., Ltd.,, have /amalgamated. The capital is £1,000,000. .:""'•. —Mr Boose, . travelling commissioner of the Royal Colonial Institute, is proceeding to Australia and New Zealand on behalf of the institute. '•.

■—"Ball" comes from two different sources. Meaning a globular body, it is derived from the Icelandic bollr; meaning a' dance; we obtained it from the Latin "ballare," to dance. Miniature ballpons carrying scientific instruments for recording atmospheric conditions have risen as high as 80,000 feet before bursting, when the instruments are brought down by a parachute. V; —lt.is reckoned that in the last 20 years "10 millions of the people of India have died through plague carried by rats. f The English Crown jewels have_ been fledged more than once. In 1386, Richard I temporarily lodged them with the City of .London in exchange for £2OOO. ' Only one marble statue of the human figure with eyelashes is 'known. It is the sleeping Ariadne, one of j the gems of the Vatican,, and was found in 1503.

Machines are used in Sicily for extracting the oil" from lemon peel. Each machine can deal with BGOO lemons a day. One woman and one boy manage a machine.. During 1919 Canada's export trade in live cattle exceeded 500,000 head, and was valued at 50,000,000d01, this sum being almost equal to _ the combined values of cattle' exports during the five previous fiscal years. Over 90 per cent, of the exported cattle,went to the United States. —The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company has agreed to establish a regular fortnightly English mail service from London to Australia as from January. The Times (London) in a leading article about the Prince of Wales says: "Britishers wish his marriage to be one of true happiness, and that his wife, will be one of our own race." The Times doubts whether the need now exists for a marriage of policy with a foreign princess. After spending £640,000 on the Flinders naval base, which was • approved in Sir Reginald Henderson's scheme of .naval defence, the Commonwealth Government finds it unsuitable for submarines and destroyers. --The lot of civilians in the big Russian "towns is not particularly happy, as may be gathered from the fact that since March, 1917, •by the vicissitudes of wax-, Kieff has changed hands 17 times, Kharkoff 14, and Ekaterinoslav 19 times.

_ —The men do the housework in a little village on the Cape of Shima, in Japan, the name of which in Japanese means "The Settlement of Nymphs." Woman in this village is the predominant partner. The chief industry is pearl fishing, and it is the women who are the fishers. There were more Smiths in the last American array than men of any other name. These totalled over 51,000. Second in the list stood the Johnsons, numbering 29,000. There were about 22,500 each of Greens and Jones, 9000 Browns. There were "74 George Washingtons, 79 Robert E. Lees, and two Abraham .uincalns.

The record partnership in a test match is held by Jack Hobbs and W. Rhodes. It was a first-wicket partnership, and was at Melbourne, in England v. Australia, on February 9 and 10, 1912. They knocked up 323 between them before they were parted. The bell in the great bell tower, at Pekin was cast in 1415. and weighs 55i tons. It measures 15 feet in height, is nine inches thick, and has a circumference of 34 feet at the rim. To hang it nowadays would require the most up-to-date mechanical apparatus, and how it was hung hundreds of years ago is a mystery which has never been solved.

How far can one see? This depends qn other conditions besides clearness of atmosphere, such as eleyation of object, intensity of illumination, distance of eye above sea level, and so forth. A person five feet in height, standing on the beach at the seaside, can see about two and a-half miles away; if six feet, he can see three miles; from the roof of a house 100 feet high the distance of 13 miles; from the top of a mountain 1000 feet high a 40-mile view is obtainable. An aviator who goes a mile above sea level is able £o see everything within a radius of 96 miles. In the same way, a mountain one mile high can be seen 66 miles on a clear day, if Illumination is sufficient.