MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3618, 17 July 1923, Page 51

MULTUM I N PARVO

—About twice as much power is required to stop an express train as is necessary to start one. —The biggest stadium the world has ever seen was in ancient Athens; it could hold 660,000 people. —Wrist-watches are said to be giving way to a revival of the older-fashioned pendant watch for ladies. —ln Norway there is a law forbidding anyone to out down a tree unless he plants three saplings in its piece. —Many of the Scottish lochs are astonishingly deep, the depth of one —Loch Maree — being known to exceed 1000 ft. —Lip sticks are now being sold in Paris flavoured with fruit essences, such as orange, peach, and strawberry. —“A race of human beings provided with tails could be produced in fifteen generations by scientific methods,” said Sir iirthur Keith, lecturing at the Royal Institution recently. He added that ‘‘man as man never had a tail.’’ —Twelve aeroplanes are to be carried by a giant airship now lieing built in America. The aeroplanes will be picked up in flight by the airship by means of a huge hook which catches in a large ring above the upper wings of the ’planes. -—Stamps specially printed to commemorate the anniversary of the PortugalBrazil fight last year have brought the Portuguese Government quite a good sum of money. The stamps were on sale in Lisbon for three days only, and were eagerly bought by collectors. —ln accordance with an old Jewish custom. when a master tailor employs a new worker the latter leaves his scissors as a guarantee that he will start work on the appointed day. —ln Spain, when asked for a light, a man must present his cigar or cigarette for the purpose. To offer a match is to imply the social inferiority of the man who asks for the light. —With one man as traffic manager, passenger agent, porter, engine-driver, and guard in turn, Maine, United States, possesses a unique railway system, the only rolling stock of wtiich is a motor-car with steel wheels. —Celluloid, which is really cotton in disguise, was made for the first time fifty years ago. In the process of manufacture the cotton becomes nitrocellulose, and is mixed with camphor, methylated spirits, and Colouring matters. —The greatest known depth of the sea is * said to ( be 32,088 ft, about forty miles north of one of the Philippine Islands. At this point the ocean bottom would be about eleven and a-half miles lower than the top of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. —A French scientist finds in the great depths of the Arctic Ocean an argument tending to show that the earth is slightly topshaped, the protuberance corresponding to the point of the top being at the Soutn Pole. This, he thinks, would explain the different results arrived at by the various measurements of astronomers and geodesists. The differences are very small in comparison with the entire bulk of the globe, yet they are readily appreciable, and one of the explanations that has been suggested for them is that the earth is tetrahedral in form. But the Frenchman thinks the topshape theory is preferable. The fact that to an eye looking at the earth from a point in space it would not sensibly differ in appearance from a true sphere shows how refined are the methods of science which enable men living on the surface of the globe to detect variations in its general contour. —An improved method of power transmission through reduction gearing has been achieved by the application of nodal drive to the main propelling machinery of a vessel. This system eliminates the chattering of the gear wheels caused by torsional oscillation, and thus reduces vibrations to a minimum. The new Anchor liner Tuscania has been fitted with the nodal drive, and to test the effects of its application to her double reduction geared turbines the vessel made a 24 hours’ engine trial during a recent week-end. The results were highly satisfactory, there being an entire absence of hammerintr or vibration with the engines working at full power. It has been said that the geared turbine engines were not sufficiently reliable for large full powered passenger vessels, but this new system has overcome any defects which may liare given trouble at odd times. The new Anchor-Don al chon liner A then in is likewise fitted with the nodal drive, and the Anchor liner California, which will be. in commission by til end of the summer, will also be equipped. —Poets have sung the praises of the willow, from which, as everybody knows, cricket bats arc made, but, in fact, one of the sportsman’s best tpee friends is the far less extolled British ash. Without it lawn tennis would be impossible. Anyway, although various substitutes have been tried, including steel, cane, aluminium, and hickory, nothing has been found to approach, far less equal, the best British ash, for racket frames. Ash is also unbeatable for billiard cues, though they are spliced with heavier woods such as mahogany, also for hockey sticks, baseball clubs, jumping poles, cricket stumps, and croquet mallet shafts. Cane is also put to a variety of uses. It is used for fishingrods, polo sticks, the splicing of all kinds of bats and handles, cricket pads, and football and hockey shin guards. The rowing man’s tree pal is the spruce, and particularly Quebec spruce, from which the Boat Race oars, for which pitch pine was first used, have been made for over 70 years. True, on one occasion Oxford used Vancouver spruce, but though the Dark Blues won the experiment was never' repeated, owing to three or four of the oars having to be replaced at the last moment. Greenheart is favoured for fishing rods, and wooden golf club shafts are generally made of hickory, greenheart, and occasionally lancewood, orange wood, and sometimes ash being used for “irons.” Heads are generally made of beech, but pear tree and apple tre" are also used. Bowling enthusiasts have their “woods” made of lignum vibe or boxwood. Cork, like cane, is used for the splicing of handles, also the interior of cricket halls. Then where would we he without the rubber tree. There would be no balls, or, at least, no suitable balls, for football, lawn tennis, netball, golf, water polo, cricket on the sands, for which a solid rubber ball is incomparably the best, and squash rackets, the Prince of Wales’ favourite game.