MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3995, 7 October 1930, Page 63

MULTUM IN PARVO.

—Every year the number of mechanical appliances used in farming increases, the latest being an invention which plucks chickens in the course of a few moments.

—Pineapple fibre is being used to make artificial silk. —Built for a missionary society, a church on wheels, fitted with its own motor, has an altar. It was consecrated before it began work. — A remarkable machine designed in Chicago turns out 40,000 bricks an hour. -—ln street accidents 0128 people were killed and 164,838 injured in Great Britain last year. —A woman has created a world’s record for a three-wheeled motor car, doing 101.55 miles per hour. —There are now 5000 buses running in London, and their passengers last year numbered 1.917,000,000. ' —The winner of a Northants (England) fishing competition had the only catch —a 1-Joz fish.

—-Automatic telephone exchanges are now installed in nearly 50 British villages, and another hundred are authorised.

—During playtime Leeds (England) school children are each supplied with a bottle of milk and a straw. The cost is one penny. —The British are the greatest users of banks in the world. There are nearly 10,000 banking offices and branches in England alone. —During the recent heat wave in Britain one prominent ice cream manufacturer sold portions of ice cream at the rate of nearly 2,000,000 a day. —Motor cars, hitherto banned, are to be allowed on the island of St. Helena. —An average-sized qptrich egg wi'l make quite big omelettes for eight persons.

-—Potatoes in their skins, fruit, and vegetables, and plenty of water drunk between meals will prevent rickets and many other ailments in children.

—Every 10 miles of Britain’s new main roadways under consideration will call for 30,000 tons of quarried stone, 7000 tons of cement, and 500 tons of steel. —A tunny fish landed at Scarborough, England, measured about 9ft 9in ami weighed over 6001 b. Another, 9ft in length, weighed nearly 8001 b. -—A Frenchman has started a crusade in favour of his countrymen wearing beards. He says that by going cleanshaven they are destroying a distinct French type. —Cats are to form part of the staple diet of Turkey, by order of the President. Turkish authorities state that cat meat is tender and agreeable to the palate. —Thunderstorms travel at from 13 to 60 miles an hour. The average works out at 28.1 miles an hour. Java has more thunderstorms than any other part of the world.

—The Bev. James. Sibrce, D.D., the church architect and missionary of the L.M.S. in Madagascar, on which country he was the leading English authority, has passed away at the age of 93. -—A travelling bathroom, recently built in England, to the order of an Indian prince, is fitted with porcelain bath, washhand basin, couch, and dressing table. —Disable fuel to the extent of 320,000 tons is thrown into London dustbins every year. As fuel this is estimated to be worth £160,000, but it costs £290,000 to destroy it. —Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales, reaches a height of 3571 ft. Its name means “The Hill of Snow.” —The national tendency to drink less beer and more tea is causing a certain amount of alarm among some doctors, who regard it as a change for the worse. —The staff at the War Office, London, now numbers 17,655, in addition to 7500 at the various ordnance factories. The total annual pay-roll is something like —Coxswain Henry Blogg, of Cromer, has twice won the V.C., of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution —the gold medal. He is the only man who has won it twice. —London’s new business palace, the offices of the Underground Railways, is built over St. James’s Park Station, and stands on a layer of thick felt to avoid any risk of vibration. —At Sandhurst, the famous military college, there are 490 cadets, who are waited upon by 181 servants and grooms. The total average annual cost for each student works out at £453. —Grey lounge suits, a looking-glass, comfortable slippers, their own safety razors, and a strip of carpet on the cell floor are some of the “ luxuries ” now allowed to the inmates of British prisons. —Every year something like 1500 people apply to the 8.8. C. at Savoy Hill alone for test auditions as singers or players on the piano, violin, or ’cello. Only about 5 per cent, prove satisfactory. —Estate in England valued at £6314 was left by Baroness Minnie von Wartegg, better known as Minnie Hauk, the operatic singer, who created the part of Car«, men in Bizet’s famous opera.

—A fifteenth century French manuscript of Boccaccio’s work, “ Des Cas des Nobles Homines et Femmes infortunez,” with 87 large-sized miniatures and decorations in gold and colours, realised £l3BO at Sotheby’s . —A steel mast from the German cruiser Nurnberg, which the British Navy, after the surrender, used as a target and sank, has been fixed on the signal tower of the new Gate of Empire building in Portsmouth Dockyard. —The Michigans, whose •family name is O’Brien, are the only family in the British Kingdom who have the right to use royal red on their carriages and dress their servants to match. They, too. are of royal descent, their -forbears being kings of Munster. Concrete is being increasingly used on English railways. Signal and telegraph posts, station platforms, level-crossing gates, signal cabins, and even platform seats are now being turned out in this material.

—Built at a cost of, nearly £40,000, the new public library at Hendon has a special children’s room, where, juvenile books and periodicals are provided. There is also accommodation for the young patrons to wash their hands.