MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3808, 8 March 1927, Page 62

MULTUM IN PARVO.

-—The British gas industry carbonises 16,000,000 tons of coal yearly,, and makes 27,000,000.000 ft of gas. It has a capital ®f £160,000,000, and employs 150,000 workers. — Canada, which has 103 men to every 100 women, has an estimated population of 9,364,200. The Dominion ranks twenty-fifth in population among the nations of the world. — Mortalitv in the North of England, especially among the aged, is probably twice as much as in the south. This is said to be due mostly to the rapid changes in temperature. — Artificial silk stockings and imitation fur trimmings are now permitted by the Pope for the use of cardinals, bishops, and other dignitaries of the Catholic Church, on the score of economy. — Including patients and staff, there are about 1200 people to be fed every day in the London Hospital, where there is every convenience, including a separate Jewish kitchen for the preparation of special dishes. — In a.d. 780 a learned Chinese author wrote on the subject of tea: “Tea tempers the spirit, harmonises the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prerents wrowsiness, lightens and refreshes the body, and clears the perspective faculties. .—■First uncovered by soldiers practising trench-digging in ,1916, a burial ground of prehistoric times near Witham, Essex, England, has now been excavated and found to be part of a Celtic settlement, dating back to about 2000 B.c. — False teeth now required annually by the people of Great Britain number 200,000,000. At present dentists estimate that one person out of every three has false teeth at the age of 30, and one in every two at the age of 50. — Jewellery is not being worn so much just now, so the Birmingham manufacturers have started a campaign to bring it again into favour. One method is by lending jewellery, real and imitation, for the use of mannequins during fashion parades. — A pretty, dark-haired girl, Miss N. Jones, daughter of a Staunton-on-Wve farmer, won the cup and gold medal for the champion milker at the recent Dairy Show. She easily beat the men competitors. A Cornish girl, Miss R. E. Mitchell, of Kenwyn. Truro, won the silver medal for the best butter-churner in Great Britain. — The oldest members of Welsh Sunday schools who qualified last year for the Gee Memorial medals, presented annually, included one woman of 88 years of age, with 85 years’ attendance, and three other women, each 87 years old, with 84 years’ attendance each’ — British Blue Books are selling better than ever, the coal report and the communist papers being among the most popular. Germans and Japanese are consistent purchasers of every report dealing with trade, international affairs, agriculture, explosives, and education. — Machines for filling milk bottles at the rate of 2000 an hour were recently exnibited in London. — ®9 C^S worn by babies should have, according to one expert, a compartment for the big toe, just as their gloves have for the thumb. — Building societies in England. Scotland, and Wales advanced in 1925 the total sum of £49,500,000, or nearly five times as much as in any pre-war year, to house purchasers. ; —Feet vary so widely in different distncts that they are a clue of identification. London feet are long and slim, Welsh feet low in the arch, and Scottish feet broad in the sole. — Although most of them have deserted •wigwams for houses, and till the land or work in factories instead of hunting buffaloes, there are still about 350,000 Red - Indians in the United States of America. — Ham sandwiches, after years of popularity, are now condemned by some doctors as not being a complete food, lhe addition of green salad, chopped finely, would, it is said, help to remedy this defect. . Eight dukes, four marquises, and nine earls have now turned themselves into private companies. The first peer to do this was the Earl of Warwick, who became the Warwick Estates Company (Ltd.) in 1889. — The knowledge and use of salt are as old as man. The use of salt for preserving foods was known to the early Egyptians and Assyrians, and the process is recorded both in the hieroglyphic and' cuneiform writings. Big Ben, London’s famous bell, has been cracked practically ever since it T ? Put ' n the Clock Tower of the House of Commons in 1860. Sflie bell weighs about 13 tons. — London has two of the five shot tovvers (where round leaden shot are made by dropping molten metal from various heights) in the country. The others are at Newcastle, Chester, and Bristol. — Umbrellas decorated with life-size parrots heads or large coloured fruits as handles are now being made. They are long and slim, apart from their grotesque handles. Children as young as 41 years of fige are to be found among the pupils in London riding schools. It is whispered by some masters that the girls show more pluck than the boys. ~ Birmingham’s French “adopted child, the town of Albert, recently received a cheque for 500,000 francs from its foster- parents. This is being used to erect a block of almhouses for the a"ed poor. “ “Make a boy believe in himself,” said the headmaster of Mill Hill School recently, m advocating a period in each day when a schoolboy must do something that he wants to—a sort of hobbytime. .■77". escopes have brought the moon within a focal distance of 50 miles, and nothing in the nature of life has been observed. Cities and moving objects, such as trains, would be easily seen at that distance if they existed. — With an average speed of 9.6 miles an hour, the London County Council trams are the fastest in England. They reach a speed up to 20 miles an hour in the quieter districts when the roads are clear.