GENERAL INFORMATION.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 22, Issue 28, 11 April 1911, Page 2

GENERAL INFORMATION.

The best way to reach perfection, suggests a cynic, is to follow the advice which we give to others.

Kissing is now prohibited at French railway stations. It is blamed for having kept the trains late !

An American humorist thinks broth should be very good to-day—there are so few capable cooks to spoil it.

A hero or a genius, or both, declares a philosopher, is the man who guesses right most of the time, and then does it.

Oh, Jerusalem ! Seven-tenths of the articles and souvenirs sold to tourists in the Holy City are said to come from Germany.

An Edinburgh cabman has been asked to find £5 caution for making a practical protest against a taxi-cab by cutting its tyres.

The rubber boom has had curious ramifications. Brazil nuts are up 11/ a cwt., because of the displacement of labour on the plantations.

The factory chimney may now be doomed. Mechanical draught is stated by an engineer to cost only one-sixth as much as chimney draught.

By the various simple contrivances composing the modern umbrella, some half-dozen persons have divided among them more than £2,000,000.

The highest lakes in the world are in the Himalayas, in Thibet, where there are some bodies of water as high as 20,000 ft. above the level of the sea.

The finest specimen of engraved gem now in existence is a head of Nero carved on a first-water diamond by the brothers Oastanzi in the year 1790.

Coke-making Is first recorded in July, 1656, by Sir John Evelyn, who writes in his diary of a “new project of charring sea coal to burn out the sulphur and render it sweet.”

A fly will lie motionless at a temperature of freezing point, begin to crawl at 53 deg., to buzz and fly at 68deg. ; 113 deg. of dry heat will usually kill a fly in a short time.

The pulse of a new-born infant beats 130 or 140 times a minute ; of a man from twenty-one to sixty, 70 or 75 a minute ; in old age between 75 and 85 times.

If all the factories in Lancashire should work day and night,- producing 155,000,000 miles of thread every twelve hours (the usual outputs of one day), it would take them 200 years to spin a thread, long enough to reach from the earth to the nearest of the fixed stars.

The surface of the sea is estimated at 150,000,000 square miles, taking the whole surface of the globe at 197,000,000, and its greatest .depth supposedly equals the height of the highest mountain, /or four miles. The Pacific Ocean covers 78,000,000 square miles,- the Atlantic 25,000,000, the Mediterranean 1,000,000.

A man weighs less at noon and midnight than at sunrise or sunset, at the time of new moon and full moon, owing to the moon’s and sun’s attraction then acting together. In fact, he is subject to the same force which causes the tides.

The wonderful glistening materials in ladies' shops- that look so like silk, and yet which cannot be silk, seeing the price they are sold at, are among the knowing ones styled “artificial silk.” The demand for artificial silk is attaining enormous proportions. The basis of such silk is wood pulp. Cotton has proved satisfactory for the purpose, although the cost has been a serious drawback. Apart from these materials, any substance susceptible of chemical conversion into cellulose is available for the manufacture of the artificial silk, and experiments will be conducted to develop the possibilities.

The most luxurious prison in the world is in Japan, about fifteen miles from Tokio. In the midst of gardens, where, flourish medlars and cherry-trees, where arc seen ornamental ponds with water-lilies, arises this palatial prison. The cells are spacious and airy. The lighting throughout is by electricity, and the apartments are furnished luxuriously.

Bath-rooms with marble baths are provided, hot and cold water being laid on. There are dressing and reading-rooms, and nothing seems wanting to make the sojourn in this prison pleasant. In fact, it is more like a country residence than a prison.