MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3757, 16 March 1926, Page 66

MULTUM IN PARVO.

TUe British Isles comprise no fewer than 1000 separate islands and islets, without counting mere jutting rocks or isolated pinnacles. Dog-training has been made a fine art in Beilin, where dogs arc taught to act as spies and guards for their burglar masters. About 35 per cent, of the population of Brazil are whit-*, 35 ber cent, mulattoes. 25 per cent, negroes, and 5 per cent. Indians. , Every year 2,500,000 tons of silt and mud have to l>e cleared away to keep the Tort of London open. The Myling Head precipice, m Stromoe, one of the Faroe Islands, has a sheer .drop of 2200 ft from crest to %ea. During the Prince of Wales’s voyage on board the Repulse, over 1,300,000 cigarettes were sold in the ship s canteen. The carrier pigeon was in use by the State Department of the Ottoman Empire as early as the fourteenth century. The site of Winnipeg, Canada’s third largest city, was first occupied by settlers in 1812. In 1870 there were still only 215 inhabitants; now there are 195,148. Sherry should only be used to describe wine from Xerez, a wine-growing district in Spain, and not as a general classification, according to a London magistrate. . _ _ , The first steamsmp of the Cunard Line, the Britannia, arrived at Boston, U.R.A., on July 18, 1840, after a passage of 14 days and eight hours. Coloured dress-suits, gaily-striped lounge suite, and brightly-hucd jewellery are prophesied as the coming style for the Parisian “knut.” The grain, the smallest measure of weight in use, derives name from being originally the weight l2 an ordinary grain of wheat, well dried. Experiments have proved that if fish get beyond a certain depth in the sea, they die from the pressure of the water, which they are unable to support. The London Metropolitan Water Board is responsible for enough water to provide every one of the world's inhabitants with one gallon daily for a week. A chemist advises that canned fruit be opened an hour or two before it is used. It becomes richer after the oxygen of the air has been restored to it. Constructing all the woodwork himself, including the doors and windows, a blind ex-soldier lias just built his own bouse.

The mole is not blind, as many persons suppose. Its eye is hardly larger than a pin-head, and is carefully protected from dust and dirt by means of enclosing hairs.

When dead bodies are entered as cargo ou a ship, they are recorned on the invoices as “statuary” or “natural history specimens,” to allay the superstitious fears of the crew.

The Swedish University of Upsala presented to the British Museum €75 rare works on natural history, written between 1C97 and 1875.

Sir Charles Markham provides free half a pint of milk each morning for the scholars attending the village school at Longford, Derbj'shire. The Pope delivered a thousand speeches since *he beginning of Holy Year, and they are to be published in book form by the Vatican. chute jumpers recentily leaped simultaneously from a balloon at an altitude of 30(H)ft. All were unhurt.

Hot baths, night clothes, single beds, and bed clothing must be provided, by order of the British Ministry of Health, in the casual wards of workhouses.

_ Scorpions have assumed the proportions of a plague in the Mexican town of Durango, where special prayers were recently offered in the cathedral for relief from the pest. —“Mannequins” who show off frocks in. the smart London shops arc usually paid a fee for each parade, as much as £8 or £lO being given to a particularly successful girl. -—Miss Brandon’s method of novelwriting was tc sit down at her desk every morning at 9 o’clock, and remain there until she had completed her task of about 3000 words.

Only one variety of bird is known to “shingle” its own feathers. This is a native of South America, which nibbles away each side of the tail-feather to produce a curious-looking racket effect. One beautiful butterfly found in the Fen district of England is equipped with h scent gland in its head. From this the insect can eject a spray of perfume so powerful that insects hostile to it are driven off.

From only 2500 a quarter of a century ago, the population of Edmonton, the capita! of Alberta, one of Canada’s prairie provinces, has become 05,378. --The Albert Medal for rewarding acts of heroism by land or sea was instituted in the year 1860. The first class is an o\ a 1 -shaped badge of gold, the second a bronze badge.

Wholemeal bread is seriously rivalling the popularity of the white variety Some users claim the wholemeal loaf goes farther, a great point in the case of large families.

The credit of originating adhesive stamps is generally given to James Chalmers, of Dundee, lie first advocated them m 1837, and they were issued for public use in England on May 6, 1840. .. Telegrams will be transmitted through public telephone boxes if an experiment now being tested in England proves successful. The cost will be the usual telegraphic fee, plus the cost of the phone call.

---A peer cannot resign his peerage, and poverty does not disqualify a peer holding his position. This was decided by the House of lx>rds in 1640 tvhen Roger de Stafford sold his barony to one King for £BOO.

-—An extraordinarily large number of dwarfs live in the district of Riwas, in the Eastern Pyrenees. Tradition has it that they are the descendants of a race which inhabited these mountain ranges in prehistoric times.