MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3487, 11 January 1921, Page 45

MULTUM IN PARVO.

• —A searchlight of 7,000,000 candle-power has recently been exhibited in New York. Taxes in Germany are £3 Is per head; in Great Britain they are £22 per head. Canals of a total mileage of more than 5000 miles are in efficient use iD England. New arc-lamps being used in American film studios are of 100,000 candle-power each. Shellac, from which gramophone records are made, is now £7OO a ton, seven times the pre-war figure. Said to be the largest in the world, and 400 miles in width, a new oilfield has been discovered in Canada. -—There are 30,785 blind persons in the United Kingdom. —An automatic chess-player has been invented by a Spaniard. Typewriters cost £IO,OOO each in Russia, and two-seater motor cars anything from £12,000 to £20,000. A coat oi dark sea otter fur, claimed to be the only one in Europe, was recenUy offered for sale at £SOOO. “Blind and deaf children dream less about food than normal children,” says an expert. “The physically defective child usually forgets his deformity in his dreams.” -By means of a cylindrical attachment at the back of his car, which ends in an earpiece close to him, the driver of a heavy motor vehicle can now hear other traffic approaching from behind. Diamonds to the extent of 873,961 carats, valued at £2,668,854, were produced in the Transvaal last year. Bangkok, the capital of Siam, is a floating city, containing 70,000 houses, each of which boats on a raft of bamboo. Eighteen stars are of the first magnitude. Some idea of their distance may be gained from the knowledge that they are at least 211,000 times farther from the earth than is the sun. The lighthouse on Heligoland is said to possess the most powerful light in the world —of 40,000,000 candle-power. Next to the British Parliament, which, in its present form, dates back to 1265, the oldest Legislative Assembly is the Parliament of the Bermudas, West Indies. It is 300 years old Zeppelins of the future wiil be capable of carrying a load of 60 tons, with 500 passengers, and they wiil be able to cover a distance equal to three times across the Atlantic without hating to refuel. Contracts worth £200,000 have recently gone to a German firm of electrical machinery manufacturers because their prices were so much lower than those of the English rivals. - A blind man states that he can tell most shops by their distinctive scents, and that each street has its own particular echo or sound when the pavement is tapped with a light cane. there is still in use in Paris a fountainpen made in 1864. This pen was patented in that year by Jean Benoit Maiiat, an engineer, and tne firm that still carries on the business founded by him asserts that it was the first fountain-pen ever made. A strange story comes from Mons, of a woman who “did not know her name, her age, or her place of birth,” and whose application for permission to get married was refused by the authorities "on the ground that she fiad no legal existence.” A ’tnotor car clock has been invented which never lias to be wound up. it runs from povyer obtained from the batteries used for lighting the car-lamps. Bo little current is required to work the clock that it uses ill a year less than is required to light a four cand.e-power lamp for an hour. - There is a restaurant in London for men only, with a private chapel on the premises. It is in Pilgrim street, almost under the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral. In a large room decked with pictures, but otherwise furnished with monastic severity, one may lunch well and reasonably, but only on fish and eggs if it happens to be Friday. The president of tile Teachers’ Association in the United States declared the other day that there are 25,000,(XX) people over 16 years of age who cannot write a latter in English. The best minds in the United States are perturbed, and a very vigorous movement is now on foot to remedy the evil. A fish that carries its young from place to place _in a bag, and that has four eyes with which to find its way about, is the anable'os, a South American fish. One pair of eyes it uses for looking along the surface of the water in search of its food; the other pair is used or seeing beneath the surface. Both pairs of eyes are close together, being separated only by a horizontal division. The anablebs usually swims about using both pairs of eyes at the same time. One of the latest triumphs of science is to produce glucose, or grape sugar, from sawdust. The sawdust is treated with acid by a new process, and enormous supplies of sugar may be anticipated from the results obtained. Quantities of motor spirit are obtained from sawdust and wood, and the production of sugar is only another example of the way in which chemists to-day are obtaining useful products from almost every kind of waste material. A new York message says that Mr T. D. Armour, the Amateur Golf Champion of Scotland, has become engaged to Oonsuelo Careras de Arocena, the widow of a Mexican mine-owner who died leaving an estate worth more than £3,000,000. Mrs Arocena was denied the right to sue for her share of this fortune on the ground that there had been no marriage, whereupon she filed a protest in the Surrogates Court. Mr Armour, who went to the United States in the summer to compete for the Amateur Golf Championship, met Mrs Arocena soon after his arrival. The Mohuwa, a tree native to India, is one of. the w’onders of the vegetable kingdom. From its flowers a spirit is distilled which is indistinguishable from whisky. They are also rich in sugar, invaluable as cattle food, and are eaten by the natives both taw and cooked. Dried Mohuwa flowers used to be imported into France, until it was discovered that “brandy” was being made from them. Then their importation was forbidden. Similarly, in Calcutta, shortly before the war, a Mohuwa spirit was put upon the market which the Government chemical who tested it, reported to be “very similar to good foreign brandy.” A new industry seemed to be in prospect, but the Calcutta distillers petitioned the Board of Revenue, and a prohibitive duty was imposed, which ruined the trade. Meanwhile, however, our chemists got busy, and discovered that the seeds of the Mohuwa tree are as valuable as the flowers. Not only are they edible if properly prepared, but soap, candles, glycerine, and many other valuable products arc made from them.