GRAINS OF KNOWLEDGE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18761, 27 December 1930, Page 20

GRAINS OF KNOWLEDGE.

London contains seven thousand miles of water mains. “Laid” notepaper has a water-mark of straight lines. An admiral’s flag is flown from the mainmast of the ship. The first wall advertisement was for a brand of bottled beer. The wishbone of a fow'l is regarded as lucky, because it is shaped like a horseshoe. Sugar is one of the most important exports of Java, one of the richest islands in the world. >t La Giaconda, otherwise “Mona Lisa,’ is that famed portrait which was stolen from and restored to The Louvre some few years ago. Hadrian's Wall is eighty miles in length, from the estuary of the Tyne to the Solway Firth; in several places the remains are nine feet high. The phrase “Ships that pass in the night” owes its origin to a poem by Longfellow: “Ships that pass in the hight, and speak to each other in passing.” Although light travels* 186.000 miles in a second, the light we see from the constellation known as Ursa Major started on its journey to us 2,000.000 years ago. A marvellous ruin is that of the Colosseum in Rome. It encloses a space of about five acres, and is said to have been capable of seating 87,000 spectators. Costard is a species of five-ribbed apple; also a humorous name for the human head, used by Shakespeare; and, again, a clown in Shakespeare's “Love’s Labour Lost.” The “Ghetto,” the name usually applied to any quarter of a city inhabited by Jews is derived from a section of Rome so named in which Jews were compelled by law to live. It is estimated that each American who visits Europe spends £250. Each year the amount increases. In 1929 over £160,000,00 were spent by Ameri-

cans travelling outside the United States. In earlier days it was usual to break the glass after drinking a toast so that it should not be used when a less loyal toast was being drunk. Nowadays, we do not break the glass: the clinking is a pretence of doing so. The name “centipede” means "hundred feet,” and most people take it for • granted that the creature so called has J all these extremities. Actually, the | varieties commonly found in this : country have only about 34 feet. The time for the Atlantic crossing by steamer has been lowered by 21 days 44 minutes in the 111 years which have elapsed since the Savannah made the first Atlantic crossing by steamer from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819. Soap is mentioned in the Bible, but it was probably not the kind of soap we use to-day. but ashes of plants and similar purifying substances. It is be- ! lieved that soap was first made by the 1 Germans from goats’ tallow and beech ash. The biggest kind of tree in the world is the Wellington Gigantea, which grows in California. Some specimens have been known to reach a height of 450 ft, with a circumference of 116 ft. —one and a half times the length of a tennis court. The official home of the President of the United States is known as “The White House,” because it is painted white. It was so painted to hide the marks of a fire which was started in it by British troops when, long ago, England and America were at war. Iphis was the daughter of Lygdus of

i Crete, who. desiring a son. ordered that j his about-to-be born child, if a daughter, should be smothered. On the birth j of Iphis the mother swore that the j baby was a boy, brought her up as I such, and at the mother’s prayers, the I gods changed her into a boy. ■ To hold up the thumbs is now an : accepted sign of something good. The ! gesture comes from the days of the gladiators, when the spectators showed by turning their thumbs up or down, whether they wished a gladiator to live or die. Actually, the spectators turned , their thumbs down when they wished j a man to live; up when he was to die, ; Writing generally, the ocean preI serves a uniform saltness. In special circumstances we find the saltness | increased as by the excess of evapora- : tion over the fresh-water influx in the ; Mediterranean and Red Seas, and j about the northern and southern limits ; of the tropical belt; and decreased by | the contrary cause in the Sea of Azof, | Black Sea, Baltic Sea, and in the Polar : regions. The term “stealing his thunder” I originated thus: An old man who had | once writ fen two or three successful , j plays entertained the idea that every- j i thing good which appeared in any play j had been abstracted from one of his I | works. There was produced a play ! which depended for its success upon ! scenic effects in thunder and lightning. : When the old man heard of the suci cess of the play he remarked “That’s I my thunder!” I The reasons why cud-chewing animals have cloven feet are because the splitting of the foot into two parts adds to its spring and elasticity, prevents it sinking deeply into soft ground, and permits it to be more easily withdrawn. As the animals usually feed upon pastures and other fertile places, it will be seen that this confirmation of the foot not only favours the movements of the animal, but renders the tread less destructive to vegetation. The sign of the “Elephant and Castle” would appear to have been taken from an early traveller’s account of the use of the elephant in battle. Caesar Frederick, a merchant of Venice, who. spent eighteen years in travelling in the East, about the middle of the sixteenth century, states that the King of Peugu had 4000 war elephans with wooden castles on their backs. Milton has the phrase of elephants indorsed with towers of archers," in his ! description of the retreat of Antony . from Parthia. Exposure to cold gives one’s skin a i purple tinge on account of the faulty 1 circulation of the blood. Exposure to cold arrests the heart in the exercise ! of its office, and so stops the supply of arterial blood, which is of a bright red colour, from the heart to the extremities It accumulates, therefore, in the large vessels proceeding immediately from the main spring, and there is no ingress to the heart for the blood returning from .the extremities along the veins, which is of a purple or nearly black colour. It is this blood which, seen through the skin, gives it a purple tinge.