MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3958, 21 January 1930, Page 71

MULTUM IN PARVO.

- horn teen million people have been up the l'.:tiel Towei- m 40 years. Many 1- reneh papers are complaining oi the spread ol bull-fighting in France. — Ihe jjlemeiitary schools of London have 18.350 fewer children this year than in 1928, 4 he average visitor to Britain may spend as niueh as £1.5(1 j or British goods and services during a few weeks' stay. An old lady oi ( heddar. England has ju.-t died at 104. Up to two years ago she took a daily walk. She was a teetotaller.

-Except for cases in which Englishmen |_* le involved, Alaltese is to supersede Italian m the law courts of Malta, i — lhe remains of a Roman building have been brought to light in Colchester t astle park.

The oldest Sunday school in England that of Alycombe AA eslev, has just cele brated its 160th birthday.

r-The danger of Dovedale, in Derbyshn e. England, being spoiled has been iemoved. and its beauty is to be preserved. . —Of the German war vessels sunk m Seapa Flow. 2.5 destroyers and three battleships have been raised.

Io promote the cultivation of gardens £st>() in prizes is being given to municipal householders in Birmingham. - England's first electric telegraph operated between Haddington and Drayton in 18,5.5.

Ihe number of cremations has inci eased m Britain by about 30 per- <-ent. m the last few years. Thm e were 3436 in 1928.

-Natural gas. which wells up through a pipe originally sunk to find water at Heathfield, in Sussex. England, is used to light the railway station. According to a Government comniittee, the total number of mentally defective persons of both sexes in England and AA’ales is at least 300,000.

Smallpox is responsible tor more deaths in France than in England, the rate per million over a period of nine years being 2.9 for France and 0.46 for England.

- I ravelling housekeeping schools are a sm-c-ess in Fi anee.

—Tin is the only important metal not mined in the United States.

—The first cable message to England from America cost ,sdol (about £1) a word.

If all the jellyfish hatching out in the sea in early summer were to teach maturity, they would turn the sea into a solid mass of blue jelly. - Out of 30 barristers at a London police court a man selected a woman as his counsel. She was the only woman barrister present. - In rammaking experiments at Hongkong over 6001 b of powdered china clay were dropped front aeroplanes on likelylooking clouds, but without result. —'lhe record kill of wolves in Ontario, Canada, is 6000 in a year. It was the ambition of the Provincial Govet iiinent to kill 12.000 during 1929. The bouuty is at present £3 a head.

—Machinery is being employed in farming to a greater extent every year, one of the latest inventions being an appliance which plucks chickens in the course of a few seconds.

— Two convicts in Baltimore Gaol, U.S.A., have invented a hydraulic power plant which is said to produce electricity for almost nothing. It is claimed that with this plant the electricity bill of the gaol will be reduced from £14.000 to £2OO each year.

- Stone tablets containing items of news have been discovered during excavations at Ostia, near Rome. These would seem to he the first ancestors of our modern newspapers. - The long vacation of Cambridge, lasting nearly four months, arose from the practice of students who were farmers’ sons returning to their homesteads to gather in the harvest. - -No white bread will be available in Soviet Russia for the next two years. It is estimated that the ban on the sale of white flour will save at least a million tons of wheat annually. --The women of the British Isles use up something like 1,600.000.000 pairs of stockings a year. Some of the finest varieties, costing 35s a pair, can only be worn a few times.

— Homing pigeons to the number of nearly 3000. ami valued at about £lO.OOO, were lost during a recent race from Nantes. Fiance, to the Midlands of England. The loss was due to bad weather. - According to a table of food values of fruits, nuts, and vegetables recently published, chestnuts weighed without their shells head the list. Dried peas come next and old potatoes (weighed as served) are third.

English, -which a century ago was spoken by 20.00(6000 people, is now the language of 220.000.000. The only declining language is Turkish, which has dec-, eased from 30,000.000 to 24.000.000.

Except for a group of mins. A’atican ( ity. the new " country " of the Pope, will be inhabited by men only. - President Hoover has saved his country £60.000 a year by dc-eommission-inu the presidential yacht Mayflower. -The world’s largest library is the Biblioteqiie Nationale. in Paris. It contains over 1.000.000.000 volumes. - London is being gradually rebuilt. Sim e the war £200.000.000 has been spent on the work of reconstruction, which is always goina on. — There is now a shortage of juvenile workers m England, both boys and girls, ow ing to the fall in the birth i ate during the wav years. - Twenty-four bishops. 28 "risli peers elected for life, and 16 Scottish ;>oers elected for the duration of Parliament sit in the House of Lords. - Linen blouses with low-cut necks are tile new garments suggested for men by a league of sensible clothing which has been started in Now York—by a woman. — A Fleet of aeroplanes, tw’cc as large as those .already in use and capable of carrying 40 passengers each, has been ordered for use on the India air mail route. —The only part of England which rejoices in as much as 2000 hours of sunshine yearly is a narrow strip of eoast running from Margate to Ventnor. The Devon and Cornish coasts, though warmer, have less sun than the south-east. The extreme north of Scotland gets only 1)00 hours of sun yearly.