MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3562, 20 June 1922, Page 45

MULTUM IN PARVO.

A clergyman has invented a typewriter wiiiich will print music. Burma has an annual rainfall of 600 m. London’s average is 40in. England contains 150,692 miles of roads, Scotland 24,771 miles, and Ireland 55,562 miles Piccadilly Circus is said by an expert to be the worst spot in London for irritating noises. One business house in London still contains the same fittings which were installed there in 1667. The pensioners of the Metropolitan Police Force number about 10,800, about 50 per cent, of the total strength. A grand piano, packed in a ease for transport across the Atlantic, was cleverly stolen, and sand of exactly the same weight substituted. Warships to the number of over 600 have been “scrapped” by the various nations since the armistice. • —During a recent gale a shelter on the front at Sandown, Isle of Wight, was blown down without a single pane of glass being broken. The child of a father over 50 years of age has 10 times as good a chance of becoming eminent as he would if his father were a younger man. Seventy thousand tons of cork are needed for the bottled beer and aerated waters consumed annually in Britain. • Pews were first placed in churches for the use of Norman nobles. Ordinary worshippers aat on three-legged stools. A number of French widows wear rings striped black and w’hite to remind possible suitors of tlieir eligibility for marriage. Although ants communicate with one another by touch, there are many insects which make noises so faint that they are inaudible to the human ear. A road lighthouse for motorists has been erected at Wrotham Heath, a dangerous corner near Sevenoaks. It gives a vivid flash every two seconds. —Wooden dishes, plates, and bowls are coming into fashion again for table use. Made of walnut, mahogany, and other pleasing woods, they are more" costly but less fragile than glass or china. A speed of just over 98 miles an hour on a motor cycle was recorded at Brooklands recently. The vehicles controlled by the London underground railways make a total journey every day equal to 20 circuits of the earth. The amount spent on intoxicating liquors ir: the United Kingdom during 1921 was £402.700.000. as against £470.000,000 in 1920 and £166,000.000 in 1913. New lakes and rivers have recently been discovered in the Rocky Mountains by aerial observers. One party of explorers ir. an aeroplane did in seven hours a survey which would have taken up to two months on foot. Beating the carpets at Buckingham Palace is a three-weeks’ job. Four platecleaners arc employed to keep the silver and table pieces clean. Some rivers in Siberia flow- over ice many years old, and almost as solid as rock. A tributary of the Lena has a bed of pure ice more than 9ft thick. —lt is now possible to obtain “canned music” from a cornet. Private Jowett, of the British Army, has invented a cornet which is fingered automatically by a perforated roll of paper. The operator need only blow to produce tunes. One of the first things a traveller notices in a Moorish town are the “hands,” painted or drawn, on the walls of many 'houses and buildings. These are to avert the “evil spirit” ; five, the number of fingers, is considered a sacred number. The- hands are also worn in the form of ornaments, and serve to keep off the “evil eve.” As in Europe, the horseshoe is regarded as a sign of luck, and is frequently seen over doorways. A Moor considers it a great sin to cut bread with a knife, declaring that, our hands were given us to break it. The same idea accounts for the saying that “to tread on corn is to tread on angels.” Offerings of food, hair, and other small articles are often placed in the trunks of certain trees, and have a quaint significance. As the makers of these offerings are poor Moors with large families, they firmly belive that Allah will be pleased and will give them means to support their family. Some Moors declare that after this offering their children eat less, and therefore cost less to keep. At another religious celebration spiked balls are thrown into the .'ir and allowed to fall on the thrower- leads The man who appears the most injured and ferocious is considered the most truly religious. Moorish marriages are performed at midnight, and the bride is confined to her room for several days after the ceremony. No Moorish woman who is truly religious is seen in the streets at any t.n e, except in cases of absolute necessity. Life is indeed different from that in Europe ! A cable received from Philadelphia recently announced the finding of one of the Lusitania’s lifebelts. This sail reminder of disaster must have travelled 3000 miles, and occupied years in its journeyings. Not one of ’he several clues relating to the unexplained disappearance of the Waratah proved to be genuine, but the evidence of bottle messages has often been accepted in courts of law'. The Nomia sailed from Newcastle New South Wales, in »Tuly, 1912. and was never heard of again. Ixmg afterwards a scrap of paper torn from a log book v.as washed up on the New Zealand coast. It bore a scrawled message: “Nomia is sinking fast bv hurricane in 42 S., 160 E. Gott save us.” The German Consul at Auckland was able to establish the fact that the handwriting was that of the captain of the ill fated vessel. The General Steam Navigation Company’s vessel Oriole left London for Havre in January. 1915. The following month several of her lifebelts were picked up near Hastings, but the Oriole never reached her destination. Subsequently a Guernsey fisherman picked up a beer bottle containing a sheet of paper on which was written a brief message signed by throe of the crew “Oriole—torpedo—sinking.” The Allan liner llnronian left Glasgow in 1902. and disappeared entirely. Five years afterwards a man taw a bottle washed up by the tide on the north coast of Ireland, lb' opened it and found a paper on which was written the message: “Huronian sinking fast. Top heavy. One side under water. Good-bye, mother and sister. —Charles M'Fall.” several bottle messages were put in as evidence during an inquiry into the loss of a G runaby trawler, the Angus. One. picked up on the coast of Norway, read: “Steamship Aii'o All hands mutiny. Collision with ti ■/ _'ii harqiie.’ Bottles have been known //. mine to hand even 15 years after they had been oast into the ocean.