MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3802, 25 January 1927, Page 33

MULTUM IN PARVO.

. — Only those officials in the Civil Service receiving £lOOO a year or more are allowed to have carpets in their rooms. —Ao debts owing to him arc to be collected, according to the will of a Derbyshire doctor who died recently. ■ — A young seal is the. curious pet of a boy living in Wormit, Fifeshire, Scotland. . It lives in an old sugar box in the garden. — Bees are said to find their way back to the hive b" means of a special “direc-tion-finding” apparatus which throws off a scent. — A hat made of crinoline, which will fold up like a hnadkerchief and slip into a coat-pocket, is one of tile season’s fashion novelties. — Specially intended for use in bottles containing poison, a cork with' a metal top, which has four sharp projecting points, has recently been designed. — Horses used by the Aletropolitan Police have been shod with rubber shoes as an experiment to see if this will prevent slipping on stone-paved roads. — Bamboos and similar plants can now be woven by a patent process into fabric which is much cheaper than material made from either flax or cotton. —No soap was made in England until 1524. — A room is ventilated best by opening the upper sash of a window, because the hottest air is always near the ceiling. — Employing dogs for the purpose of drawing carts was abolished in London in 1839, and throughout the United Kingdom in 1854. — Under the early Princes of Wales, the “smithy of the Court” was an officer whose duty it was to attend to the shoeing of the Royal horses. —For the first time since 1917 Johannesburg has had a snowstorm, the fall lasting five hours and causing drifts 2ft deep. ' — Posted as missing during the wac, a German soldier has just returned home from Siberia, where he had been a prisoner since 1914. — The rarest stamp in the world is the one cent, 1856, British Guiana, printed in black on magenta. This was sold for £7317 in 1922. — The Thames is not the longest river in England. This distinction is possessed by the Severn, which is 240 miles long. — Kissing is not favoured in Japan, with the result that 800,000 ft of embraces have been cut out of films for exhibition in that country. — A class for the study of Greek is being attended by a number of Welsh miners, financial help having been given by anonymous donors. — Air William Robinson, aged 90, of Alansfield Woodhouse, still takes a class of boys regularly at the local Primitive Alethodist Sunday School. — Nottingham’s old Exchange clock has been purchased by a gentleman who has presented it to Trowell village church, not far from the city. — The biggest photographic lens ever ground has been made for a camera which will enable airmen to■ take photographs over five miles up. — Cargoes of fish, including halibut, salmon, and cod. are to be taken to Hull from Greenland, to make up for the shortage in the North Sea fisheries. — Alembers of the congregation of a church in Brixton, London, are to be permitted to ask the vicar questions'during sermon-time. — Much of the noise made by motor cycles is said to be due to bad driving and lack of care in the use of the throttle and gears. — Ranging in age from 79 years to eight weeks, a party of 1250 Scots recently arrived in Scotland from America on a month’s visit.

— Spraying a Lincolnshire field of potatoes with powder from an aeroplane took about 25 minutes. In the ordinary way the job would have occupied two days. — The first white woman born in Alberta, Canada, is still alive and well. She is Airs John Graham, of Calgary, and was born in 1868 in a tiny Hudson’s Bay settlement.

—“There is just a little something missing in English women’s dress,” Lady Duff-Gordon said in a recent lecture. “Either they have their skirts too short or too long.”

— Too many holes, due to overworking of the yeast and lack of salt were two common faults in a recent breadmaking competition held for ships in the Alediterranean Fleet.

— Two thatched cottages, standing in a secluded part of a Wiltshire village, Christian Alalford, have the curious name of “The City.” The nearest slipp is two miles away.

, — Alen are not accepted as drivers by the London General Omnibus Company until they are 26 years of age, although they may become two years earlier.

— Smoking, according to one expert, is tending to make women’s voices harsh and guttural, enlarging the vocal chords, and creating a general catarrhal condition.

— Lawn billiards, which is now only played at one place in England, calls for balls weighing 91b each. The cues are long poles with iron rings at the end. — Building church organs and making violins are the spare-time hobbies of a Somersetshire collier, who also built himself a house to live in. This occupied all his leisure for two years.

—ln salving the German battleship Hindenburg, which was scuttled in Scapa Flow, divers will have patched up about 700 holes. The cruiser weighs 27,000 tons, and is estimated to contain 6000 tons of water.

— Although he is 90 years of age, Air Alatthew Gould, who lives in an Exmoor village, England, is a keen cyclist. He did not learn to ride a bicycle till he was 70. and is now believed to be the oldest cyclist in England. — Saddlery and harness-making, once quite a big village industry, is decaying sadly. There are now fewer_Jthan 4500 saddlery businesses in Great Britain, employing 12,000 whereas double that number were employed in 1901. — Uniforms for 200,000 postmen and telegraph messengers are supplied by the G.P.O. Stores Department, London, where the measurements of every one of the 200,000 are kept. The largest waist measurement recorded is 60in and., the smallest 331 in,