MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3828, 26 July 1927, Page 62

MULTUM IN PARVO.

Japan has a written history extend’ ina over 2000 years. — British shareholders lose £12,000,000 a Tear by trade failures. —About 50 kinds of tree bark are used in the manufacture of paper. The eye of a butterfly contains about 6000 different lenses and 30,000 nerves—4. field ant ha<? been known to hold in its jaws a weight 3000 times heavier than itself. . , , - — If all th? air sacs m the lungs of an adult were spread out they would cover an area of 100 square yards. —America now has 5000 aeroplanes. There are 20.000 different kinds of butterflies. , , — — Herrings hardly ever exceed loin in length. - — One-seventh of the territory ot France is composed of forests. — The only birds that sing as they fly are the skylark and woodlark. —A man found asleep on a stair in Glasgow had £2oo.hidden in his clothing. — Mozart holds the record among composers, of having written 024 compositions. _ .. —A flash of lightning is often a mile

— Men, on an average, weigh 201 b more than women. —A thousand scientific books have been published in England for every year of this .century. — The largest apes have only 16oz of brain. The lowest type of man has 390 z. —A woman barrister has for the first time before a House of Commons Committee. — Over 15,000 tons of cockles are landed every year from the 22 cockle boats of England and Wales—lt is estimated that something like 3,500,000 human beings are on the seas of the globe at one time.

-—A bachelor marries at an average age of 26 years and four months and a spinster at 24 years and eight months. — There are now 2716 public telephone kiosks in use in British streets. — Regions with the most intense sunlight produce the most highly-coloured fruits.

— The American Navy is now stronger in point of numbers of vessels than that of Britain.

—ln 22 Kent (England) villages there have been no cases of insobriety for nine years. — Uniforms for English postmen have to be stocked in 1800 sizes. Each complete suit costs £1 Ils 4d. — Two wells at Orpington. Kent, England, supply between two and three million gallons of water a day. — The true position of the human heart was discovered by Andre Vesale, the Belgian medical scientist. — People are now moving back into the inner ring of London suburbs, as large blocks of flats are being erected. —- In the British Navy 90 per cent, of the sailors still make up their own clothes. Ready-made suits are not Jiopular with them. — Criminals are growing cleverer and less brutal. Such offences as brutality to Children and weak persons become rarer every year.

— The .soil of Haiti is so fertile that it often yields three crops of corn in the course of a year. -—Tobacco seeds are so rninute that a thimbleful will furnish enough plants for an acre of ground.

—A wrist watch serving as an alarm clock has been invented. A revolving unit, with protruding points that touch the skin, serves as the alarm. —lt is calculated that a million people speaking for an hour and a-half do not expend more energy ‘than is consumed in boiling the water for a cup of tea.

— More cases of consumption appear among needle-workers and file-makers than any other class of workers.

— Nearly 1000 people are killed and over 100,000 people injured in the streets of Greater London every year.

— Fur seals are among the greatest rovers in the world, animals marked in the Arctic having been found in the Antarctie.

—A monument is to be erected on Cape Gris Nez to commemorate the first swimming of the Channel by a woman. Miss Ederle.

— London was made a bishopric in a.d. 314. Bangor in 516. and Winchester not until 635. Llandaff is another ancient bishopric, and dates from a.d. 450. — The earliest authenticated sea fight is said to have been that between the Corinthians and the Corcyreans, in which the former conquered—664 H.c. — Aeroplanes flying in mountainous country have on more than one oeasion been attacked bv eagles, which mistook the strange machine for a rival bird. — The dwarf willow, which grows on Ben Lomond is said to be the smallest tree in Great Britain. When fully grown it is from 2in to 3in in height. — St. Giles’s Church, near Camberwell Green (England), set an admirable example to. churches everywhere by calling public attention to its treasures. — There are 23.000 fatal industrial accidents in the United States every year. The number of workmen injured in a year is over 2.500,000.

— Women voters outnumber men in four British constituencies, and in two of these. Cheltenham and one Glasgow division, the present Ms.P. are bachelors. — Ipecacuanha, the basis of one of our most popular cough remedies, has recently risen, through shortage of supplies, to 25s a lb—four or five times the normal price.

—At the School of Oriental Studies in London, some of the most difficult of the African languages are taught by a lady. Professor Alice Werner, a Newnham College graduate. — London's council schools are visited every year by Germans. Americans, Chinese. Japanese, Turks. Swedes. Danes’ and Norwegians, who wish to inspect the system of education. — St. Peter’s School. York, celebrates this year its 1300th anniversary. The ground on which the present school stands was purchased from Guy Fawkes, who was a scholar there. -r- While translating *v. a-d Japanese Bovel. 500,000 words long, dating back to A.D. 1004 an expert "at the British Museum has discovered the mention of © game akin to cur modern football.