GENERAL INFORMATION.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 15, Issue 33, 26 April 1904, Page 7

GENERAL INFORMATION.

There are nearly 400 recognised bowling clubs in Scotland. : * The eame style of costume has prevailed in Lapland for at least 1,000 year®. * A sum of about four and a half million pounds is annually spent on diamonds. * In nearly all parts of Switzerland .females have their hair cut by, women. * From the liver of a single baskingshark 150 gallons of oil have been obtained. * The Tsang Po river In China flows for 100 miles at an elevation of about 10,000 ft. The Metropolitan Police of London have to look after 8,200 miles of roads and streets. * Cats have become so numerous in Switzerland that the extermination of birds is feared. * When a fish has lost any of its scales by a wound or abrasion they are never renewed. * It is found that silk cocoons can be give# any colour by colouring the leaves upon which the silkworm feeds Germany’s highest smokestack Is at Rheinan. It is 396 ft. high, just eight feet short of Bt. Paul’s spire. •1—- , Ordinary meadow grass rarely yields over a ton and a half of hay to the acre, but clover will give up to three tons. * The astonishing statement is made that the chance of two finger prints being alike is not one in 64,000,000, 000. * Two-thirds of all letters which pass through the world's post-office are written by and sent to people who speak English. * The South African diamond mines ore situated on a plateau about 4,000 feet above sea level, covered with a red sandy soil, resting upon a bed of diabase stretching across the whole area. The deposits are in the shape of huge pipes, each several acres in extant, and pass through various strata. It seems passible that the pipes have been burst open by force of gas or super-heated steam perhaps in a former sea near the edge of the Karoo basin, and that for a time they were geysers which gradually became intermittent mud springs of continually increasing, viscosity till at length they ceased to be active. Thg dfcuppnds were probably formed from AcCmaulations of carbon-dioxide under enormous pressure. Each pipe would under these circumstMioes produce its own kind of diamonds according the surrounding conditions. An eruption would bring the diamonds to the surface and churn them up with the matrix of the pipe. Xt is estimated that 15 tons weight of diamonds have been extracted in South Africa. * . Whist when first introduced into England was called “whisk,” or “swabbers.” 1866