MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3488, 18 January 1921, Page 45

MULTUM IN PARVO.

Cobalt, one of the rarest minerals, is chiefly used in colouring glass and porcelain. Jigsaw puzzles, which are still very popular, are a good tonic for sufferers from nerves. The pay of Cabinet Ministers under the “Irish .Republican Government” is fixed a: £175 a year. English boarding-school now costs a boy’s parents between £+o and £SO. There are in England between 1000 and 1100 toymakers, a trade which employs large numbers of disabled men. —“Glands from goats will,” says an American doctor, "renew the youth of elderly people in from fifteen to twenty minutes.’ has risen from the pre-war rate of 35s 5d per week to 91s 3d, an advance of 157 per cent. the Asiatic town of Maiwatchi, on the borders of Russia, is peopled by men only. Women are forbidden entrance. Rope Leo X’s Bull of Excommunication against Luther, drawn up in July, 1520, has been found in the Wurtemberg State Archives. Tor various reasons, including cruelty to animals, gruesome details in crime, irreverence, and excessive revolver-shooting, the British Board of Film Censors raised objections to 250 films last year. The largest organ in the world is to be installed in the cathedral now nearing completion in Liverpool, It will have no fewer than 10,567 pipes and 215 stops. —-'lhe men who repair the Southern Pacific Railway (U.S.A.) take their families about with them, and their train has a school saloon attached for the children's use. “Children between five and seven years of age should go to bed at seven o’clock and sleep thirteen hours; between seven and ten, twelve hours’ sleep, with eight o’clock bedtime; and between ten and fifteen, ten hours’ sleep, with nine o’clock bedtime,” says an expert. The Pretoria Government recently tried an experiment with a view to producing rain by dropping dust on clouds. An aeroplane ascended to a height of 5000 ft, but the dust failed to cause rain. Count Magri, the Italian dwarf, 37in high, the second husband of Mrs “Tom Thumb,” died in Massachusetts on a recent Sunday night. Only a fortnight previously Count Magri, having fallen on evil days, had the Lilliputian effects of his wife sold by auction. Landru, who came to be known as {lie “French Bluebeard” man months ago, and who appeared recently before a Summary Court on a charge of swindling, was sentenced to undergo four years’ imprisonment, pay a fine of 1000 francs, and suffer banishment. He has still to be tried on the capital charge. Three men have successfully navigated the American schooner Harris, with 500 tons of timber, across the Atlantic from Campbelltown, New Brunswick, to Coleraine, North Ireland. The voyage occupied only 20 days. That a sense of humour is not altogether quenched by the humdrum monotony of work in a Government office is evidenced bv a placard which appears on the door of a department of the Pensions Ministry. It reads: “Everyone closes our door—except you.” Sam Moore, a music hall artist, has succeeded in getting music from a carpenter’s saw. He grips the saw handle between his knees, holds the tip of the saw in one hand, apd works the usual violin bow with the other. Th<j vibrating steel blade emits notes, the pitch of which is varied by changing the curvature of the blade. A remarkable bird found in Mexico is the bee-martin, which has a trick of ruffling up the feathers on the top of its head into the exact resemblance of a flower. When a bee comes along to sip honey from the supposed flower it is snapped up by the bird. A curious bill was signed bv President Wilson recently. It was an Act of Congress authorising the payment of £7 to a Brooklyn navy yard employee for new teeth. After he met with an accident the Court of Claims decided that he was not entitled to damages to his teeth, as they were false, but he persisted, and has "at last obtained special legislation. Potatoes are now used as the standard currency in certain remote agricultural districts of Poland, since the value of the potato fluctuates less than that 'of paper money. In the district around Grodno, for instance, the American Red Cross reports, ail the local help employed in warehouses or in the activities of the field units is remunerated in a weekly wage of potatoes. —An Italian girl, of the Bronx, New York, helping her mother clean house, shook a rug out of an upper window. Later in the day it was discovered that the mother had hidden in the rug a roll of 5000 dollars, her life savings. Somebody picked it up and walked off with it. The most extraordinary tattooing idea ever carried out was that of a French coachman, who, at the time of the Dreyfus trial, had his body covered with no fewer than 120 _ illustrations of t-fie case, including portraits of the loading personages. The work occupied nearly two years. Seeds are scattered in many ways in the autumn. Tall trees usually have winged seeds, which the wind helps to disperse. Some are feathered and fly in the wind, like dandelion seeds. Many travel by water", in the coats of animals,' in the feet of birds, and on the shoes of man. All records for tobacco production in Cuba are broken by last year’s bumper crop, according to recent estimates. The value of the crop is placed at £15.000.000. At the same time the prices are reaching new high marks with £8 and £lO for 1001 b of stem that formerly brought only £5. The bottling of salmon, an entirely new industry, has been taken up by a party of men. headed bv a returned soldier, at Clnosp. British Columbia. Jars similar to those used in preserving fruit will be utilised. This has long been followed in private households with great success, but lia= not before been attempted on a commercial scale. Numerous asteroids —generally supposed to be fragments of a great planet—have been discovered bv photography. Such bodies make a trail on the plate, and so show that they have an independent movement, It was in this manner that astronomers in 1898 became acquainted with Eros, which is remarkable as our nearest planetary neighbour. Sometimes it is much nearer the earth than either Mars or Venus can ever be.