MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3823, 21 June 1927, Page 62

MULTUM IN PARVO.

■—Only one person in 15 has perfect * y — In a mile of railway there are more than 2000 sleepers. • — Sixty-two per cent, of the families in Canada now own their own homes. — Good players on the harp are said to be the scarcest of all musical performers. , ~ —A hyacinth bloom about Bin m length Was recently exhibited at a London show. — Over 4300 salmon were caught by the rod and 3000 by the net in the River Wye, England, last year. — Blackberries are cultivated in America, and on some plantations they realise nearly £250 an acre. — Travellers by train between Berlin and Hamburg can now ring up their friends by wireless telephone. — Among English people dark brown hair is more than twice as common as hair of any other shade. — Water-colour drawings will, it is said, last for 400 years if they are protected from direct sunlight. —ln France 42 tons of letters could not be delivered last year owing to careless addressing. , ... — Garden tulips were introduced into Britain through Holland in the sixteenth Ce _ U lt is estimated that the Gulf Stream takes about two years to flow from Florida to Norway. —ln nearly all the arid land regions water can be obtained at a depth of from 300 ft to 600 ft. —An old lady of Swansea. Wales, died at the station when about to take her first railway journey. — There was 7,238,258 fewer passengers on British railways in December, 1926, than in December, 1925. The Football Association. Great Britain, has given £lOOO to the National Playing Fields movement . — Out of every hundred hotels in England 18 are White Harts, 10 King’s Arms, and eight Crowns. — Warships in the tunes of the old Greeks and Romans were built with as many as four and five banks, or rows, of ° a^.'Th e United States Patent Office has over 1200 employees. Every year over 80,000 applications for patents are received. . • —The vineyards of France overtop in productiveness those of ull other countries. • —To supply the shilling-m-the-slot gas meters of one London gas company over 4,000,000 shillings are withdrawn from circulation every six weeks. — More than £lOO,OOO was saved last year by thrift clubs in Glamorganshire, Wales, in spite of seven months of idleness in the mines and factories. — The highest mountain in the Indian l..malayas is Kunchaniyunga, 28,178 ft. The highest falls are those of the Yosemite, some of which exceed 3000 it. — The first recorded earth tremor in Britain occurred a few years after the Norman conquest, and two centuries later, in 1274, Glastonbury was destroyed. — Pictures built up cf pieces of wallpaper are the newest “ art ” hobby. The inventor is a Sussex man who has turned out some very charming effects. — A new census of Palestine gives a population of 887,000. of whom 641,000 are Mohammedans, 158,000 Jews, and 78,000 Christians. The Jews have nearly doubled since 1922. — There are 22 allusions in the Bible to the east wind, 19 of them being of a disparaging character. — The interior bones of the ear are called the hammer and the stirrup from their resemblance to these objects. — The United States Bureau of Standards has found that sunset noticeably affects the direction of radio waves. — More than 7000 miles of roads were constructed in Canada last year, at a cost of nearly £10,000,000. — Compared with the year before, there were 13,000,000 more bus passengers and 9,000,000 fewer railway passengers in London last year. — The crow population of the United States is estimated at 200,000,000, and each bird is believed to cost the farmers of the nation a dollar a year. — Rubber shoelaces have appeared on the English market. They are said to stretch so easily that shoes can be put on or taken off without being unlaced. — The average height of an Englishman is sft 9in and of a Frenchman oft 4in. The average weight of a Englishman is 1501 b and of a Frenchman 1361 b.

—ln Lancashire there is a superstition or belief among the miners that if they have a bath it is unwise to wash the back. There is a deep-rooted impression that this would cause weakness.

— Sufferers from deafness who belong to the National Deaf Club, London, have reading and billiard rooms for their use, while dances are held regularly, most of the club members being expert dancers. — Only one couple out of every 1000 married people live to keep their golden wedding. — Fur-trappings in the winter time yield Canadian farmers about £2,000,000 a year.

— The Queen of Holland, who gave up a tenth of her income last year, is doing so this year too. —An ailment similar to hay fever can be caused in many people by the odour of certain animals—notably cats, dogs, and horses.

— Patent leather shoes which shine with a mother-of-pearl effect are being introduced for men to wear. They cost nearly £4 a pair.

—“ Guests who attempt the dangerous mountain climb are requested to pay their bills in advance ” is a notice displayed in one Alpine hotel. —Across a stamp issued by the Southend Free Church Council in connection with a Sunday observance campaign are the words “ Guard Our Sunday.” — Fresh air, cooled in "summer and warmed in winter, is pumped through the latest vessel to run across the Channel. This is a shipbuilding novelty. — Germany’s population has gone up by 3,300,000 since the Armistice, and is now over 62,000,000, though she has lost territories containing 7,000,000 people. — Most people imagine the sky, in clear weather, to be blue. It is really white, tinged with green. It is only the distance and clearness which made it seem blue.