Brief Mention.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5256, 11 May 1895, Page 3

Brief Mention.

Only one woman in a hundred insures her life.

It is calculated that 33 per cent of the cigars cold in London are not made of tobacco at aft.

Plans have been prepared for a auggeated Bhip canal 1000 miles long between tbe Baltic and the Black Sea. Tho estimated COBt ia £20,000,000.

. A female skater in knickers and short blouse appeared on the ice in a London park, and waa so mobbed by rougba that a policeman had to eaoort her Off the ice. The longest plants in the world ai*e seaweed. One .tropical and sub-tropical variety iB known which, when it reaches its full development, is at least 600 feet in length. The Turks do not grind their coffee, bnt pound it in a mortar with wooden pestles. Brillat Savarin, tho great French epicure, who tried both pounded and ground coffee, preferred the former. One titled lady in London, with a viow to aßcef taining what organ-grinder a made, hired an organ, disguised heraelf, nndeang in Eussell Square two hours, during which time she collected threepence In eome parts of Germany parch are caught and carried alive to market, sometimea a distanco of forty or fifty miles, and, if nob sold, brought back to their tank or pond to await another occasion for sale. Of the 222,000 officers and men on the roll of the British Army at tho close of last year, 106,000 were ct&tioned in the British Islea, 26,000 in Ireland. 38,000 in the coloniea and Egypt, and 78,000 in India.

■ The Japanese religion demands thai a man muat worship " on the soil" evory day. Princes and rich men evade thin by springing a little dirt in one corner of the room, sometimes on a square of cement made for tho purpose. In 1890 no leso than 20,676,046 residents of the United States, or 33 per cent, of tho total population, were of foreign parentage. Nearly half thie foreign element (8,215,838, or over 47 per cent), iB eettled in the North Atlantic Status.

It is said that the first cost of building a fleet of Atlantio liners is a trifle compared to the cost of running them; in les3 than three yeara it will exceed tho coat of construction, so enormous is the constant expenditure in wages, port duen, and repairs. . The Eskimo call tho Polar bear the " icedog." It ia found in considerable numbers all over the frozen seas. In eome places about the Stor Fjord, Wido Bay, and Hinlopen Strait, in Spitzbergon, it is at times Been in numbers of from five to twenty; but this iB rare. The two dogs on the Great Western Railway Station at Leamington collected no leas than £20 5s 3d Inab year for the Widows' and Orphans' Fond. This io 5s 2d more than the previoua year. "Rattler "died during the year, but he is stuffed, and still collects on a pedestal near the bookstal}.

Some idea of the extent to which esparto and wood pulp have been used in the manufacture of printing paper will be obtained from the following figures of the importation of 1894 : — Esparto and wood pulp, &c, 431,728 tona weight, £2,285,815 value ; rags imported, 20,750 tona weight, £200,000 value.

For many centuries in Borne propitiatory offerings of human victims were made every year to the Tiber * men and women were drowned by being bound and flung from the wooden Sublician bridge, which, . till nearly the end of the Republican period, was the one and only bridge acrosß the Tiber in Borne. The extent to which the practice of private confession is spreading in the Church of England is probably little appreciated by tha majority of Church people. The parish magazine of Christ Church, St Leonards, Btatos that at least 1000 confessions were heard by, the clergy of tha church in tha course of laat year.

The annual report of Captain Simonds, chief officer of. the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade, states that in 1894 there were 3061 fires in London, of which 151 resulted in serious damage. There wero 73 fires in which life waa lost, and the number of lives so losb was 82. No fewer than 474 of the Area were due to explosions or over-turnings of mineral-oil lamps. A lady in Los Angeles, California, h&s sued for slander' a pastor in the city because he prayed for her. She ia the librarian of the Pubiio Library, and admitted some books to which Christiana took exception. The preacher prayed for. her in the worda: "O, Lord, vouchsafe Thy aaving grace to tbe librarian, and cleanae her of all ain, and make her worthy of her office." She euea for £1000 damages.

The King of Sweden was once smoking a cigar on an ottoman in bis palace. He rose to make his way to bis study, and hardly had he left hia seat when a massive chandelier weighing several hundredweight fell down with a tremendous crash completely smashing the very piece of furniture occupied by the king only a second before. Ib waa found that the central beam of the ceiling had been rotting for yeara. Five thousand conscripts who were passed into the Frenoh army, in spite of their physical incapacity,' had to be discharged three months afterwards. The extreme rigour of the weather told' upon their debilitated frames to auch an extent, that bronchitis and pneumonia became prevalent. At Nancy the military hospitals wero filled to overflowing, and special infirmaries wGre opened for accommodating the sufferers.

The peat boge of Great Britain and Ireland are estimated at 6,000,000 aores, having an average depth of 12ft, nnd being capable of yielding 3500 tons of dried peat per acre. In Ireland there are 2,830,000 acres, or nearly one-seventh of the entire area of tbe island. More than half of the Irish peat is of the best quality, and, reckoned at one-sixth the value of coal. The total supply in Ireland is thought to bo equivalent to 470,000,000 tons of coal. Two burglars who entered the house of a merchant at Hampste&d, after getting together .£SO worth of nilver, coolly took a fowl from the larder and cooked it over the hot-boueo etove. After eating the fowl, drinking whisky, ahd smoking cigars, they made off, but one was eventually captured by the police, who saw them leave the house at six o'clock in the morning. The occupier of the house, hearing noises in the night, twice left hiß bed and made unsuccessful searches for burglars.

Jerusalem haa no clubs, no bar-rooms, no beer-gardens, no concert-halls, no theatres, no lecture-rooms, no places of amußement of any kind, no street bands, no wandering minstrels, no wealthy or upper clauses, no mayor, no aldermen, no newspapers, no printing-presses, no book stores — exoept one outaiae the walls for the sale of Bibles —no cheerfulness, no lifo. No one singe, no one dances, no one laughs in Jerusalem ; even the children do not play. So writes a traveller who vißitod the Holy City recently.

Sailors are not quite so improvident as tradition represents them. Within the pa3t seventeen yeara considerably over two millions and a half starling out of wages earned by seamen has been transmitted either through the Post Office, local Marino Beards, or Board of Trade offices, to relatives in England. Of that eum was sent between April 1, 1893, and the end of March, 1894. The total amount paid in the United Kingdom on money orders Bent by sailors in thirty-eight years was just The Beamen'a investments in savings banks amount to something very near £85,000 a year.

M. Legrain, iu a little volume " Degene'resconce Sociale et Alcoolisme," gives a rdsumi of 215 medical observations of the firat generation of drunkards' families, and of 98 observations of the second generation. The firat showed 518 individuals, all more or less degenerate; tlio second showed 294 individuals mentally afflicted, or epileptic, or Buffering physically, usually from fcuberculo3io, and the moral sense hns almost entirely disappeared. The third generation ia etill worse, but, happily, less numerous. In it wc find sevcutewi individuals, all lacking in somo way, feeble, imbecilcß, or idiots. M. Legrain wantß to show that alcoholism is a social aa weU M W individual ma]a,dy.