MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3500, 12 April 1921, Page 45

MULTUM IN PARVO.

The world uses up an average of 3,000,000 needles a day. No light penetrates beyond 500 fathoms down into the sea. - —The Russian Soviet Army consists of 4,000,000 men under arms. A wild cat recently trapped in Scotland measured 37in from nose to tail-tip. The war resulted in an estimated loss of births in the Home Country totalling 500,000. Great Britain has 32 first line major battleships, Japan has 9, and the United States 16. The population of the United Kingdom is estimated at 45,500,000. The human body contains as mu h phosphorus as 5000 boxes of matches. The highest salary paid at the War Office is £SOOO, the lowest £52 10s a year. The Home census will be taken on Sunday, April 24, at an estimated cost of £500,000. verts 1800 tons of orange blossoms and 100 U tons of roses into perfume annually. j The human body contains as much in size, before it is four years old. Poltimore Park, near Exeter, has been for more than six centuries in the hands of one family. The chimpanzee and the gorilla are born witn brains as large as those of a new-born infant, but they do not develop after birth. The Uord Chief Justice, the highest salaried fudge receives £BOOO a year. The Lord Chancellor receives £6OOO. Loans to our Allies and dominions have absorbed £36,000,000 of our national income during the last year. —Mr Richard Colgate, New York, of shaving soap fame, has left a fortune of nearly £1,700,000. - There are 718 members of the House of Lords, including 16 Scottish and 28 Irish representative peers. Fifteen tousand workmen, chiefly miners, were summoned for not paying income tax during the past year; incomes of £7OO and £BOO were fairly common among the miners in England. Apart from St. Paul’s Cathedral, the largest floor space in a city church is to be found in the old Dutch church in Austin Friars. An offer of over £500,000 for the site was recently refused. The total tonnage of British merchant ships of 100 tons and over is now 18,330,424, as compared with 19,256,765 in 1914, whilst the total tonnage for all countries amounts to 57,314,065. —ln spit© of Prohibition, the number of cases of drunkenness in New York were 1000 more during last year than during tho previous 12 months. Total figures for the recent voting under the Scottish Temperance Act show that 1,153,978 persons voted, of whom 692,222 were for no change, 442,530 for no license, and 19,226 for limitation. The highest velocity of a gale recorded in Britain was 103 miles an hour, recorded near Falmouth in ISOS. This was a great gust, the highest hourly velocity being 78 miles an hour at Fleetwood in 1894. The depth of water under a vessel can now be ascertained by the hydrophone, which works on the reflection of the sound of the ship’s propeller from the ocean bed. Goldfish, as bred in Japan and China, assume strange shapes. The Celestial has eyes on top of its head, the Telescope has grotesque, protruding eyes, while the Tumbler cannot maintain its equilibrium in the water owing to its curious shape. and the largest airship actually flown, is 743 ft long, and has a maximum speed of 74 miles per hour. She has been surrendered to Great Britain under the terms the Peace Treaty. For his estate in Cornwall, Godolphin House, the Duke of Leeds pays “eight groats and a penny, a loaf, a cheese, a collar of brawn, and a jack of the best ale’-’ annually. The Glebe is London’s oldest evening papier. It was started in 1803 to represent the special interests of the booksellers. Of recent years it has passed through many hands, and at present belongs to Mr Clarence Hatry. the 30-year-old millionaire, who runs the Commercial Bank in the city. - —Abraham Lincoln’s tailor, George Silker, died recently at Ayr, at the advanced age of 102. A refugee from France, he fought in the American Civil War. He later-- returned to his own country, and fought in the Franco-Prussian War. Although he could speak and write seven languages, he died in poverty. 4 —A prehistoric graveyard, believed to be at least 2000 years old, has been unearthed by investigators under the direction of Professor Zakrzewski. In one of the graves the excavators found six black urns and one red urn with white stripes, filled with clay and ashes. Among the remains were some glittering substances, which the investigators believe once had been adornments of prehistoric men and women. Dickens was a journalist at the House of Commons at one time, and so was the present President of the Divorce Court, Mr Henry Duke. The late Mr Spencer Leigh Hughes, M.P., started as a “Gallery man,” and another well-known journalist who won his spurs at the House is Sir John Foster Fraser. On the whole, however, journalists in Great Britain do not have the status which the profession enjoys in France. A Cabinet Minister once summed it up in these words: “Every French journalist is a potential President, hut in England Parliament is afraid of the journalist because he knows too much.” And that further brings to mind how a new M.P. was once asked to give a brief definition of the House of Commons. “It is that place,” he said, “where ignorance is bliss.” Fifteen hundred pounds a year is the salarv paid by the English Government to its official wine-taster. Mr William Pheysev. Jt sounds a good deal of money to get for merely sampling various vintages, but. some French “tasters”—who, by the way, are often women —earn far more than this. Mile. Collinere, for instance, the famous Rh'eims export, is paid a regular retaining fee of £2500 per annum bv a well-known firm of wine-growers and shippers, and receives at least as much more from her private “practice ” But then she is easily first amongst the followers of this curious profession. So unfailing is her trained judgment, and so delicate her palate, that she can toll instantly by merely taking a spoonful of wine in her mouth the particular vineyard in which were grown tho grapes it was made from, its vintage year, and all other particulars. The taster mav not smpke, and, as a rule, does not drink anything stronger than water, the wine to he sampled being merely tasted and never swallowed.