MISCELLANEOUS.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume V, Issue 514, 25 June 1897, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

The average watch has 98 pieces. The papyrus is now extinct in Lower Egypt.

The late Mr Shiel Barry played Guspard 4,000 times. Bombay has the grandest railway station in the world.

There will very soon be no Royal personages who do not bicycle. This year the Duke of York will, hoist for the first time an admiral’s

Hag. Longfellow's Wayside Inn has been purchased by an admirer of the poet. An exclusive diet of cereals and preserved meat induces symptoms of scurvy. Scandinavian sailors are said to predominate on vessels of nearly all nationalities. Already nine tenths of tho trade of Bangkok is in English hands. The Siberian people called tho Tcliuktchis toast each other in seal oil. There will be a positive swarm of biographies of the Queen very soon. Between 1871-91 nearly 2,000,000 Germans left their native land. Pneumatic shoe 3 for cycling aro being a good deal talked of at present. President McKinley’s father was a hard working lower class citizen of Ohio. Sealing wax is more than ever in vogue, tho colour matching tho tints of the paper. Only one man ill 203 is over Oft in height. Inoculation for diphtheria and croup is now in force in the Froncli army. In the opinion of the Spectator Nevada is clearly a century behind civilisation. Naturalists assert that a healthy swallow will devour 6.000 Hies every day. A new museum is to be erected in Berlin at a cost of nearly six million murks. Among this year’s French conscripts there was a youth of nineteen who weighed 3101 b. Mushrooms grow wild in all parts of the earth, and are as plentiful m Siberia us in the tropics. The most indestructible wood is tin jarrah wood of Western Australia, which defies all known forms of decay. Intoxicating liquors have been made from the sap of the birch, the willow, the poplar, and the sycamore. Canaries that aro fed on too much sugar will he ruined so far as their singing is concerned. The deepest mining shaft in Africa has recently hem opened at Kimberley. It gees down 1,000 feet. The speed of tbe fastest Atlantic steamer is now greater than that of the express trains on Italian railways. The planet Venus, as a world, lias run its course, bhe is old and wrinkled aud dead.

A man six feet high standing on level ground can only see objects on the same level three ami a quarter miles distant. Vidal, one of the most famous sculptor 3 of France, was stone blind at the time when he executed some of his most famous works. Some of the most fashionable millinery and dress making establishments in New York city are veritable

11 sweat shops.” Tho superiority of tea over brandy in many casts is beyond question. The idea still lingers that alcohol keeps out the cold. As a matter of fact, mountaineers have found by re peated experience tliatt the opposite of this holds true.

Officers and soldiers of tho French army will henceforth have a numbered metallic plate, fastened on tin ir collars fur identification. A similar scheme n being considered fur tbe benefit of miners.

Lepers in India were tfeated with shocking inhumanity before Christianity entered that country. Many of them were buried alive. The English rulers hi ve put a step to this custom, and for 11 years there has been a special Christian mission to 12->,OOO lepers in India.

The Nile has a fall of hut Gin. to tbe 1,000 miles. The overflow commences in June every year, and continues until August, attaining an elevation of from 24ft. to 26ft. above low watermark, and flowing through the “ valley of Egypt ” in a turbulent body 12 miles wide. Spaniels, of which there aro many breeds, aro supposed to have first come from Spain, from which circunn lance is derived their distinctive name. Charles 1. was an ardent admirer of a small variety of this animal, and from that arose tho di signation of his pets, known the world ovir as King Charles. It ha- In i n estimated that in the I 'niled Kingdom over 100,000 pheasants uro killed every season, ’of which about half find their way into the London market —a supply that couhl never have keen approached by the old wild system of pheasant shooting, or any other than that of cun fill preservation and rearing for

1 irgi shooting parties. National flu we;have hern adopted in various countries as follow : (in ice, violet ; Canada, sugar iniiple ; I' pi, loin ; England,rose ; France, l! or du I:. : (lermauy, corn Hover ; Ir land. ! imror': Paly, lily; Pro - .a, I n bn; Faxon', inignonett' ; Ecotbind, thistle; [Spain, ponw gran ate ; Wa'es, Ink. (i, of ; mst remarkable echoes in tin- iv oil is that produced liy the ■ti p. n i 'll 1 ridge across the Menai Strait. The sound of a blow w ith a Immincr on one of tho man piers is r. turn' d in ruree -ion from each of the cross beams which support tho roadv.ay, m addition to which the sound is many tunea repeated bet>o eu the wntir and llio roadway, ut tin; rate of twenty-eight limes in five seconds. Mr McKinley is th 21th President of the I'uiteil States of America -hire George Washington held that pusilion in 17*9. The Lor i Chuirvllor of England, on it firinj.; from oftirv l , has a pension of l‘."»,()GO n y( ar for lifn whether I • t* rin of cflico ha:i been long or ! nrt. 1* . an Act passcil in the 08th year f If ii**y Jll., all |>'th >nH pOßHessiii.q a yiarly income of 1.10 wero inpt ikil to bo knighted or pay a ll m Find that the Etnprosn nf I'hiim eirrii H with her 1,000 dressos when file travel.-!. These fill o>o n»\< ‘, and uro taken care of by 1,2000 coolies. Tb word “prefuco” used in the n ginning of books was origin illy i i word of wolcomo to a meal, anti j vas equivalent to “ Much go xl uay it do you.”

The first ship canal on the line of the present Suez Canal was projected by Necho, an Egyptian king, about 600 b.c. The two seas were actually united 270 b.c. In accordance with Chinese etiquette, all business of state requiring the Emperor’s attention is transacted between the hours of 2 o’clock and 6 o’clock in the morning.

There are only three occupations in America in which, according to the census no woman can be fonnd. They are soldiers, marines and priests. To display a crest on stationery and plate in England costs family a tax of a guinea a year. About 40,000 people pay it. There are three places where green snow is found. One of these places is near Mount Hecla, Iceland, another 14 miles east of the mouth of the Obi, and the third near Quito, South America.

The British Museum possesses a small square of yellow jasper bearing the figure of a horse and the name and titles of Amenophis 11., believed to date back to about the year 150 8.0.

All German soldiers must learn to swim. Some of them are so expert that, with their clothing on their heads, and carrying guns and ammunition, they can swim streams several hundred yards in width.

A white frost is not the most severe ; it is the ordinary frozen dew or hoar-frost. Black frost is so called when the cold is so intense as to freeze vegetation and cause it to turn black without the formation of hoarfrost. In connection with our blizzards it is curious to read that plants growing near the sea have thicker leaves than those growing inland. Apparently tho sea salt is the cause of this phenomenon, as plants cultivated in artificially salted soil yield thicker leaves.