MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 4048, 13 October 1931, Page 67

MULTUM IN PARVO.

—British produce of all sorts and grades is on sale at a shop belon«iii" to the Ministry of Agriculture recently opened m Burlington Gardens, London, W.

• “rWheelbarrows should have le--s 18 inches long, according to experts in industrial health research.

a s d William Gough, of Chippenham, England, who had been married 62 years, died within eight hours of each otner and were laid in one grave. ~ re cent glut of salmon in the North Sea off the coast of Yorkshire a iley fisherman caught 10001 b of the nsh in one day s catch.

«c~ One ° f T tlle original volumes of the bongs of Innocence,” by William Blake tlie mystic poet, sold at- Sotheby’s, London, lor £l6OO. ’

Mr P. Hutchins killed a swallow in flight when he drove his golf ball from the tv elfth tee at Downe, near Farnborough, Kent.

Miss Mary Nolan, the stage and «;ree_n star, and former member of the Ziegfeld 1-ollies, has tiled her petition in bankruptcy. Her liabilities are given as £18,559 and her assets as £6OO. —Carnations are King George’s favour’te flower, the variety he likes best being M lute Pearl. . —.Moi e than naif the 800 prisoners now ’’ uD(leswortli Gaol, England, arc under 27 years of age. Crime is decreasing in the citv of London, the total number of people .•.(’•prehended last year being 1081, ns compared with 1181 in 1928. —British Museum exhibits which are most popular with visitors are the mummies, sculpture, and the art and utensils of our ancestors in that order. Central beating is distributed over \ large area in Winnipeg. Canada. I'.oni a central plant run by the unini<inal authorities. - Candidates for the city of London police in 1930 numbered 179, of whom 77 were passed and 102 rejected on medical grounds. —London’s official affairs are handled by an army of 6500 people, who are responsible for the expenditure of about £63,250,000 a year. _ population now stands at 474.757.000, although the figure is more or less approximate, as internal disorders interfered with the completion of the census. —Fashion is reviving the ostrich feather, but the supplies are -vci.v restricted. There were 750.000 ostriches in South Africa in 1913, but less than half that number in 1923. —Cellar or bqsement dwellings in London number 30,000. They provide homes lor 100,000, including 7000 families, each of four persons, who live in one-room dwellings. —England has 19,974 non-European soldiers in her standing army, the figure for France being 178,400, and for Italy 21.600. lhe United States army contains 11,200 coloured soldiers. —England has more motor cars than any other country in the world, with the exception of the United States, and the average life of a car in Britain is seven and three-quarter years. —Recreation and smoking rooms, courts for badminton and tennis, a swimming bath, and a preliminary training school’ are included in the new £300.000 home for nurses attached to the Middlesex Hospital. London. —Kissing was recently described by a well-known doctor as “ the result of two sets of emotional cellular vibrations which attract each other and become harmoniously merged into a rich chord bv contact.” —Dating from Queen Elizabeth's day, the Great Bed of Ware is 10ft 9iu In length and breadth and 7ft 61in high. This national curiosity has been bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum. —Spending 100 hours without sleep, two American students said they lost half an inch in height and half their mental acuteness, and could not concentrate on any subject. —Young women, and even girls, are stated to be taking to crime in increased numbers, though among the female offenders during a recent year there were fewer old ones. —" Cosmetic rooms, ’ where women can make-up, and a creche, where they may leave their babies while watching the films, are to be features of a great, new kinema to be built at Thornton Reath, Surrey. —One hundred and twenty times larger than an ordinary wrist-watch, a giant specimen, weighing 131 b, has just been completed for exhibition purposes by a Swiss firm. The jewels in it alone cost £5O. - —Throughout Great Britain there are 107 trustee savings banks, with 500 branches. Their funds now amount to £78,000,000. —The number of licensed aerodromes in the United Kingdom at the beginning of this year was I’2’2. The number oi new licenses issued during 1930 was 2SS, of which 228 were issued for periods of six months or less. —The funds under the Widows’, Orphans’, and Old Age Pensions Acts in Great Britain in hand at March 31. 1931, amounted to £46,000,000.

—Since the provisional agreement in India was signed there has been a notable improvement in the cotton trade. On January 26, 1931, the percentage of unemployment was 45.6, on February 3 it was 43.1, and on March 23 it was 38 per cent.

—Only S per cent, of the milk consumed in the United Kingdom is imported from abroad, and of this amount only 1 per cent, comes in the form oi dry or powdered milk.

—Feathers cast "by the birds in the London Zoo are saved and put to some use. Brightly coloured plumes are used for decorative work, others become hat ornaments, while tiny fragments of bird of paradise plumage are made into flies for fishing.