Brief Mention.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5279, 8 June 1895, Page 2

Brief Mention.

Steel and Swift both died of softening of the brain.

aln Corea every unmarried man is considered a boy.

Mobfc of the so-called Havana cigara are made by children. The nuns in Burmah have their heads completely shaved. The London Post Office makes -£4000 -a year by unclaimed money orders. Bicycles may not be ridden in Danish cities faster than the cabs are driven. Astronomers claim that there are over 17.500.000 comets ia the solar system alone.

An eminent electrician declares the common poplar tree to be nature'a light-ning-rod.

There are 200,000 faotory girls in London—ona twenty-second of the whole population.

Vultures havo no sense of smell. Carcases kept out of their sight are never detected by them.

The tax on coffee yields the best retnrna in France, £4.600,000 a year, and the poorest in Denmark.

Pearls worth £10,000 were in three years 0 time, during the last century, taken from mussela in the river Tay. The silver mines of Potosi, in Bolivia, have produced over .£G00.000.000 of preoioua metal since their discovery. The number of unmarried women in England and Wales exceeds the number of unmarried men by a majority of nearly

It haa been calculated that on a steamer like the Campania or Etruria more than 3000 articles of glass and china are broken on every voyage. Twenty-four yeara ago, electricity, as a mechanical power, was unknown. Now -8180,000,000 is invested in various kinds of electrical machinery. Down to the present century apart of the marriage ceremony in Hungary consisted in the groom giving the bride a kick to remind her of her subjection. Mr Merry weather, the well-known maker of apparatus for fire extinction, has at hia house a huge iron squirt that wae used during the great fire in London in 1666. ■ Mr Michael Davitfc exhibita uncommonly good sense in teaching ..his offspring -to write with both the left and right hand-u a plan that is universally adopted !n Japanese Bohoola.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, if bad fieh was sold to the poor, the fishmonger was decorated with a necklace of his unsavoury commodity, and was then perohed on a stand in the market.

. Sea birds outnumber the land birds because their food never fails, not because theyare more prolific. The fulmar-petrel layß but one egg, yet it ia believed to he the most numerous bird in the world. Bullets^ made of precious stones are rarities in warfare. But 'during Borne fighting on the Kashmir frontier, when tho British troops defeated the rebellious Hunzaa, the natives used bullets of garhetß encased in lead.

Wire nails are now cold bo cheaply that if a carpenter dropß one it ia cheaper for. him to let it lie than to waste his time in picking it up. It ia calculated that ono keg out of every five kega of nails sold is never used, but simply goes to waste. A new kind of cloth has been made in Lyons from the down of hens, dncks, and neete. Seven hundred and fifty grama of feathers make rather more than one square yard of a light and very warm waterproof cloth, which can be dyed in all shades. Plants often exhibit something very much like intelligence. If a buoket of water during a dry season be plaoed a few inches from a growing pumpkin or melon vine, the latter will turn from its course, and in a day or two will get one of ita leaves in the water.

A piece of very interesting news comes from St Petersburg. In that famous city . severe frost is a constant visitor for several months of every year. Por days together the thermometer keeps steadily below zero, ' and yet such a thing as a frozen waterpipe is almoat unknown. Chinese dentists rub a secret powder on tbe gum over tho affected tooth, and, after about five minutes, the patient is told to sneeze. The tooth then falls out. Many attempts have been made by European dentists to secure this powder, but none havo ever Bucceoded in doing so. During his life a man eats 17,0001b8 of bread (roughly, 8500 loaves). 16,0001bs of meat of various kind*?, .OOOlbs of vegetables, eggs, and fisb. His drink of every kind of beverage during the same period . amoanto to 7000 gallons, vihich is equal to 56,000 pints, or 112,000 glosses full.

The Esquimaux treat the skins o? animals intended for clothing by first ccrapiDg off as much fat aa possible with a knife, allowing the skin tobscome dry, and then employing the women of tho household to chew and suck it all over, in order to eliminate every veßtige of grease from the hide.

A priest haß inducad four hundred engaged couples of Frenoh extraction, who were too poor to get married, to make their way from Michigan to the province cf Quebec. Ha is providing each couple with a farm, and bas decided to marry tho whole four hundred couples in a batch on a given day. The retirement of Mr Spaaker Peel has brought quite a crop of anecdotes about his predecessors. The moßt curious incident is, perhaps, that Sir John Trevor, who was appointed in 1685, squinted, and there were repeated difficulties and disputes among memb.rs as to who bad first caught the Speaker's eye.

The Eight Hon H. H. Fowler, M.P.; Secretary of State for India, is theßon of a Wesleyan minister, and was educated a. Woodhouse Grove, then at Newcaetlo, andafterwards in Southwark. He was subte- "•■

quently articled to a firm of lawyers, arid by Bheer hard work achieved the distinction of being the only solicitor who has entered the British Cabinet.

According to a statistician, taking the average of a good number of cases, the man of fifty years of age has spent 6000 days of that time in sleep, he has worked for 6500 days, 800 days have been spent walking about, he was amusing himself for 4000 days (of course thiß includes Sundays and holidays), eating and drink* me took 1500 days, while he was ill for 600 dayß.

Out in the Western States a goose farm' has been started with 1000 geese. If these produce six a year each, at the end of the first year the owner will have 7000 ; at the end of the Becond, 49,000 ; at the end of the third, 343.000 ; at the end of the fourth, 2,401,000 ; at the end of the fifth, 16.807,000. On New Year's Day of the sixth year there will be more than 117,649,009 geese strutting around the farm. We see items sometimes about the value of rare books in the hands of bibliomaniac..' or at auction sales, but there is now in San Francisco a volume than which there are few more valuable in the world. It is worth exactly .£6ooo— not a fancy prica either. It is the registry of the whereabouts and identity of 3000 Chinese corpses in the oity cemetery, all of whioh will have to be dng up and returned to Chink in due time, while a disinterment permit coats .£2.

The best briar-root from whioh pipes are | made, cornea from the bordera of Franoe and Italy. In the mountainoua districts ofi those countries, roots are dug out whioh have grown for ages, and are sometimes larger than a man's body, weighing hundreds of pounds. The wood thus obtained is remarkably beautiful. Three large deposits of the root have been just discovered in France, and the price may he brought down in time. At present a good briar-root pipe is not cheap. In 1190, in the Crusade of Richard I„ amongst Frenchmen, Greeks, and Sicilians alike, Englishmen were currently called " tailed." If we may accept the word of an old English rhyming romance, they were scoffed at as " tay lards," and not even tbe divinity which hedges kings availed to protect the great Ccear de Lion himself from being nicknamed the "tayled King." An impression got abroad amongst foreigners that JE-ogliehmen generally, and the men of Kont in particular, were gifted with an organ now lost, but which Mr Darwin asserts was possessed by the early progenitors of oar raoe.