MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3523, 20 September 1921, Page 45

MULTUM IN PARVO.

The salmon can travel in the water at the rate of 25 miles an hour. A scale model of the Debating Chamber of the House of Commons lias been made, so that the problem of ventilation and the avoidance of draughts may be studied. From Franco it is reported that the Ltabliseement Schneider of Crousot is hard at work on a new four-engined military aeroplane, in which the four engines will be arranged iD tandem inside a central fuselage. The wing span will be about 100 ft, and the power plant is to consist of four engines of 400 h.p. each. The machine will be designed for bombing work, and will carry several machine guns. - Last summer the number of 6eals m North America under the protection of the United States exceeded one million. More than a-quarter of a million seal pups were born. The mortality among the young ones is very great, probably 5o per cent., due to the fact that the seal is the iood supply of bears, eagles, the deadly thrasher, and other meat-eating fish. Naval vessels and revenue cutters will protect the seals from pelagic hunters this spring during their migration to and from their breeding ground on the Pribilof Islands, in Leliring Sea.

—That great white land commonly known ns Greenland is not exactly the region where one would expect to find crimson cliffs. Cliffs of ice and bare black rocks are more what might be looked for. Yet when Captain .lohn Ross sailed round Cape York in 1813 he noticed that all the snow patches in the gorges and gullies of the coast were coloured bright crimson. So startling was the appearance that, ho named the rocky coast “Crimson Cliffs.” On later Arctic expeditions similar red snow has been observed in Spitsbergen and other regions, but nowhere in such remarkable abundance as on the “Crimson Cliffs” of Greenland. And when this red snow is examined the colour is found to be due to a microscopic plant, related to the seaweeds, which grows in it. Red enow seems at first to have been noticed in 1760 by De Saussure, the famous Swiss scientist., in the snow-fields of the Savoy Mountains. Since then it has boon found in many peaces, including the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, and the Sierra Nevada. The plant itself is a minute spherical body, and the botanist Sommerfelt named it Sphcerella nivalis—that is, the “little sphere of the snow.”

—As a result of the new prohibition restrictions in the united States, loving couples will bo deprived of “the perfumed kiss.” It has been the custom among some girls to scent, their lips with violet, lilac, or rose toilet waters. This custom gave rise to the perfumed kiss. 1 lie Government is now warning women not to anoint their lips with these perfumes, because anyone kissing them might receive a violent chemical reaction. Revenue officials have l-uled that toilet waters must now bo rendered unfit for drinking so as to avoid a heavy tax on liquids high in alcoholic content. "Lips that bear a coating of these drugs will give a ‘kick’ similar to that of strychnine,” an expert explained. “The woman who puts perfume containing these chemicals on her lips may also lick them herself and b&coine poisoned.” fisli —a mere mass of jelly, which turns to water under the sun's rays—is capable of doing harm to anyone. But those who have experienced his sting know how formidable he can he. When he is in the water the jelly-fish looks like an inverted saucer. He contracts and expands his frail bodv alternately. Bach movement, pumps a quantity- of water through his mouth, from which he extracts the minute p’ant.s and animals that form his food. The jelly-fish cannot deal with living animals if they ai=o of anv size; to he of use to him they must be dead. For this reason he is provided yvith an amazing network of fine stinging threads, which hang down from the main saucer. Bach of these threads—they are often several feet in length —is armed with millions of tiny, stiff, sharpprinted hairs. If they touch any living thing thev penetrate its skin at once, and each discharges a minute drop of poisonous, irritating fluid. Small animals are killed at once, and the jelly-fish’s pump conveys them to the gaping mouth that awaits them. On human beings a painful red spot, appears wherever a hair has penetrated, and frequently the person stung suffers from cramp and sickness. Among the many things still unexplained about the lower animals and their habits fis the occasional occurrence of cannibalism in parenthood and courtship. It is, the more remarkable when, as sometimes happens, it breaks out among the birds,

ceause oi an living creuiaues onus nave brought parenthood and home-making to th« greatest perfection. They- are also unique in the glamour in which they invest their courtships, in the gaiety of their mating plumage, in the ecstasy of their, pong. Occasionally very human qualities show out in the courting. the female assuming a pose of indifference which has to lap broken through. We have all lately heard a great 'en 1 i bout the penguins, and how the ma’e brings pebbles to lav at the feetof his choice until she signifies in some occult wav that he is cither rejected or chosen. In other species—notably in the game bird=- —the male dances a"d struts in bis magnificent ohunn.ee while the hen goes on serenely pecking and grubbing without, paying anv apnnrent attention to the disp7ji ~ ,-.,e spiders hare very unpleasant courting arrangements. '! lie _ fe-nale of many of the tropical species is normally somewhat, of a cannibal, bid at the courtr.,,oll the becomes particularly- murderous. and the chances are heavily against a r V.; r< male. Mhc is also generally- of n much larger size than her mate, and therefore his best elianee under these circm i fauces seems to lie in his superior In a certain Bast Indian specie, s, Nephibt mac ik fa the comedy of the courtshit on i■ - its height. The nude spider j= reduce I to a acre fragment in contrast to the enormous female; but lie has presumably the greater speed. Some observers have watched this yvarv little fellow paticntlv careering about in front of his “choice” for oy-cr an hour at a time. TTo never turns hi- h-e-k on her. as that would b immediately fal-d. hut. the ch oices are tb t in the e-c! lie has to run for Ids life .—a. poor rev ard for persevering effort Wl: ■ I - it all mean? No one can tell us. Many explanations have been attempted, hut none of them is satisfactory or will oovor the yvhole ground, ft may be that when the answer to the riddle is forthcoming it will bp found to he very simple. It will probably be stumbled upon by a working naturalist who makes bis patient observations in the field.