GENERAL INFORMATION.

Thames Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 14474, 13 March 1913, Page 5

GENERAL INFORMATION.

The Ural Mountains practicallyj supply the world with emerald*, They are exported in the rough.

Express trains in Russia rarely; travel faster than twenty-two miles an hour.

It is said that no country in the world shows so great a variety of plant-life as Mexico. :*£

A Persian carpet has been in use for two hundred years in the Shah'? palace in Teheran. ;|J

It is not generally known that King Edward has the- reputation of being a skilful fencer.

Sixteen ounces of gold are sufficient to gild a wire that would encircle the earth.

The albatross has been known to follow a ship for two months without ever being seen to alight. •

When ttie fashionable young ladies of Japan desire to make themselves very attractive, they gild their lips.

The imperial pawn-shop in Vienna has twelve auction rooms as adjuncts. In them are sold' such goods, as the owners cannot or do not wish to redeem. The charge for this is 5 vj>er cent, of the amount received..,

Leicester Corporation is 'bringing into use a new pattern of drain.-, trap, as it has discovered that many; of the poorer inhabitants have beea using the old patterns for saucepaua or potato boilers. (

An Islington Parish Act. forbids the driving of sheep through the parish.' ob Sundays. For encroaching 200, yards with sheep over the boundary line, in order to take a short cut to Islington Cattle Market, two mea were recently fined sixpence each.

The most precious possessions qJ the Prince of Wales are said to 1)0 his big collection of postage stamps,: valued at £20,000, and an sJbum full of photographs of the babies of all" nations.

Driven by a golfer at Rochford,. Essex, a ball plunged into a hedge and was found in a nest resting on four eggs, the parent having beeu knocked into the water.

Out of 1,400 villagers in the parish of Milverton, where the King is lord of the manor, there are fifty receiving pensions from the State, at least ninety of the inhabitants being more than seventy years old.

It is estimated that there is 45,000,000,000 tons of marketable coal in the Canadian North-West field; The coal is bituminous generally, but at Bankhead, near Banff, a fairly good anthracite has been mined.

Probably the highest situated inns in England are the Tan Hill Inn, Yorkshire, on the Brough-Reeth road, 1,727 ft. above sea-level, and the Cat and Fiddle, Cheshire (MacclesfieldBuxton), 1,690 ft. -

Some fishermen netting off Yarmouth beach captured a young porpoise five feet, long, and as an experiment tied a rbpe to its tail and returned it to the sea. It towed the boat for a considerable distance.

The copper bath in which Marat was slain by Charlotte Corday is for sale in Paris. It was sold once to a museum for £120, but now it has come into the market agaic., It is described as an old tub, "shaped1 like a wooden shoe and scarred from ancient usage."

At St. Day, Cornwall, can "be seen dally the straa?e spectacle of water, being retailed in the public streets, at a halfpcnr.y per pitcher. Til©. water is brought in barrels drawn, by horses, though, if the inhabitants cared to pay for the cost of piping,, it would save them a considerable outlay. •"""&.