INTERESTING ITEMS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 20, Issue 68, 27 August 1909, Page 2

INTERESTING ITEMS.

The wheels of a watch travel 3,5.j5| miles per annum. Football was considered, a crime in the reign of Henry VIII. : There are • over 7,000,000 total abstainers in Groat Britain. , Eightv-five per cent, of lame people are” affected on the left side. A matchmaking machine is capable of cutting ,10,000.000 per day., Gold can be beaten twelve hundred times thinner than printing-paper. The people of Great Britain consume less tobacco per head * than those of any other civilised coun-| try. The slug has the means of spinning a gelatine thread Ijy which it can let itself down from dangerous heights. The Alpine Club-house, on Mount Rosa. 12,000 ft. above sea-level, is .the highest inhabited building in Europe. Fn a clear day, any, moving 6bject can be discerned across the South Airman veldt at a distance of 2a miles, with the naked eye The Danube flows'through countries in which fifty-two languages and dialects are spoken. It. bears on its current four-fifths of the commerce of Eastern Europe. The oldest diary in the world is that belonging to a Chinese family, landed proprietors in the province of Koschin. It has been conscientiously kept by the various heads of the family (or more than three centuries. Sneezing may be averted by pressing the upper lip. By so doing we deaden the impression made on a certain branch of the fifth nerve, sneezing being a reflex action excited by some slight impression on that nerve. The lines of no two human hands are exactly alike. This fact is utiUsed in an interesting way m China. When a traveller wants a passport, the palm of his hand is covered wdth a fine oil paint, and an impression is taken on thin, damp paper,. This paper, officially signed, forms his passport. The amount of dew deposited on any object depends to a great extent upon the particular colour of that object. If you take lour pieces of board and paint them respectively red, yellow, green, and black, then expose them during the night, you will find, next morning, that there is no dew at all on the red and black boards, that the green is damp, and the yellow covered with moisture. Extreme- cold has a remarkable effect on certain mineral colours. Four hundred degrees below zero, for t instance, will reduce the brilliant scarlet of vermilion and mercuric iodide to. a pale orange When the temperature rises, the original colours gradually returnBeetles possess an enormous amount ol strength. The common dor beetle can draw 500 times its own weight, and a stag-beetle has been known to escape from underneath a box on which a weight had been placed 1.700 times greater than the insects body. The largest, heaviest, and most peculiar nests are to be found it Australia The jungle-fowl usually build their nests hL„.the form of great mounds, some haying been found 15ft in height and ' 160 ft, ic circumference They are erected it sheltered spots, and are skilfully' in* terwoven witb leaves, grass. ” and twigs. The bush turkey adopts a similar system in constructing its nest, ’but it is more extensive, and the shape is pyramidical.. They build in colonies, and the nests are so large that it would require the services of six or seven carts to re- . move one. The material of a single nest has been found to weigh upwards of five tons. H 54.. !