BRIEF MENTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5698, 17 October 1896, Page 3

BRIEF MENTION.

A new kind of blotting-paper removes ink stains from paper. During last year British postmen de» ' livered 2,785,270,000 letters. Tolstoi, like Gladstone, enjoys himself in his leisure moments by felling trees. On the Canadian Pacific Railway there are carriages over seventy-seven feet long. ' Fruit wrapped in brown paper will stand fifteen degrees more cold than if act thus protected. Since Her Majesty ascended the throne she has paid over £17,000 for the triplets of her subjects. The sacred Bo tree of Ceylon is caid to have sprung from a slip of the tree under which Buddha -was born. " ;7';;. Posters are now .'''printed "ln luminous inks, and can easily be read in the darky A Parisian has'patented a fading ink; •„' A- dealer says there is niorev steel 'iteeA nrthe manufacture of pens, than in all the swoid and' gun- factories in the' world." Hair dye. is considered so detrimental to long life that a Paris insurance company refuses to insure the lives' of persons wh,o use it. At Streatham a beggar was found going his round on a stolen bicycle. HeohaifieS the machine up to railings while he made his calls. Scientists say that the hand loses the delicacy of its dexterity after forty years, whilst the brain is not ripe, for its best work before that. The French census shows that the population is nearly stationary. In sixtythree departments . there was an actual decrease of the population. Mr Macquardt, the only surviving passenger of the Drummond Castle, has joined the Thirteen Club. He occupied. berth thirteen on the ill-fated vessel. A living human body was placed under the action of the X r s at Munich. Observers were able to witch the heart, lungs, and all the internal organs in action. In connection with the Fresh Airsdheihe, 10,000 poor children returned to London recently from a fortnight's holiday in * country cottages, and another 10,000 took their places. • ■ ' : '. ■ ' In the towns and cities of Chili all the shopping of any consequence is. done in .the evening. In Santiago. the stores are open till midnight, and during hot afternoons they are locked up!. A vrMte object of any size can be seen in sunlight at a distance of 17,250 times its diameter; that is to say, if it is a white ball a foot in diameter it can be perceived at a distance of 17,250 feet. The oldest love letter in the world has found a home in the British Museum. It is a proposal of marriage, for the hand of an Egyptian princess, and it was made 3600 years ago. It is in the form of an inscribed brick. The amount of gold produced in iihe United States in 1894 has been estimated at 1,910,8000z, valued at £700,900,000— an increase of .£700,000; and the amount of silver produced at 49,500,0000z — adecrease of 10,500,0000z. Electric tramways and launches have been installed in the Paris sewers. Twice a month, on two Wednesdays, visitors are admitted to the number of about 1200, although the applications-are nearly always far more numerous. A deputation from the mineral water trade to the Home Secretary, stated that 30,000 women were engaged in the trade in London alone. One firm's output of bottles varied from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 a week in the summer months. The fashion for snuff-taking became general in France in the early part of the reign of Louis XV., although Louis bitterly discouraged the practice. His valets were obliged to renounce it when they were appointed to their office. : A giant on exhibition in London stands Bft 2in in height, and weighs 3861 b. He is twenty-two years of age, his parents being of medium height. He wears a twentyfour shoe, a fourteen glove,' a 21in collar, and eats three times as much as anordinary man. Country roads in China are never bounded by fences., but are entirely undefined. While the farmer has the right to plough up any road passing througnbis hind, drivers of vehicles have an equal right to traverse any part of the country at large. A mother informed a London magistrate that her son had married a woman who gavea wrong name. Was the marriage legal? The magistrate said, the bride might have committed aoofience by giving a wrong name, but the marriage was a perfectly legal one. King Humbert, of Italy, is the most heavily insured man in the world. ,Th« amount of .insurance he carries is ov«r .£1,500,000. The late Czar, Alexander IH, was insured for £1,000,000. The Prince <tf Wales carries different policies on his life, to the amount of .£850,000. While Frenchmen grumble that they still have to pay taxes in order to make up the war indemnity' exacted by Prussia, twenty-five years age, the town of Koenigsberg, in Prussia, has only this year paid the last instalment of the loan contracted to meet the war contribution imposed by Napoleon L The silk that comes from the looms of Japan compares in gloss and fineness with, any in the world, and Japanese crapes haro a reputation in almost every market for softness of beauty and harmony of colour ; but for -substantial wear^for lasting quality, the silk goods of China are most favourably known to the merchants of all lands. Herr Krapp not long ago received a communication informing htm thai his vast establishments were to be burnt down. He : called his thousands of workmen together, read them the letter, and said: "If any one of you has made this threat, let him execute it ; but I warn you that I shall, not rebuild. I am now rich enough, to live without working." . A new order against street noises has been issued for residents in the Middlesex portion of London. A householder • can order the instant removal of a street musician to a distance of fifty yards, suburbanites can repress steam organs, and policemen can stop the playing of mi«if»l instruments or shouting near places of worship or hospitals. The Emperor of Germany received an invitation from the Berlin Yacht Club to a regatta fixed for Sunday. He declined tha invitation, adding that he was not able to attend any regatta to be held during the Mass or Divine service. The club then postponed the start of the regatta till one o'clock, but His Majesty caused a telegram to be sent to say that he could not be . present. Hans SchLLessmann, the well-known Vienna caricaturist, has sent half-a-dozen letters to artists and&uthors of his acquaintance, writing on the envelope only " We" and then adding a tiny sketch of the person in question and the designation of tha quarter of the town in which he lives, ADI these letters arrived without delay, giving a brilliant testimony to Schliessman's art as a caricaturist and to the alertness of the Post Office staff. ' Among the advantages claimed for paper tiles, one of the latest products of the wood pulp industry for roofing purposes, are their light weight, exceeding hardness, non-conducting of heat and sound, and sufficient elasticity to meet all the requirements. There is also freedom from the - dampness usually experienced inthecaae . of stone. The new material is pronounoed superior in quality, appearance, and price, and from an insurance standpoint seems to . be regarded as safe and satisfactory. It is said that a scrap-iron yard is on&«£ : the most successful fields for the discovery of heterogeneous collections on the face of . the earth. All the disused iron articles, or . pieces of them, find their way there, from ; kettles, kitchen spoons, trays, locks and keys, horseshoes, frying-pans, bolts, bars, steam-boilers, " bits " of large articles, ' j bayonets, swords, &c. A writer in Cluimbcrs's . Journal says that there were 20,000 bayonets lying at one time in a scrap-iron yard, which bad been- made at the tune of . the Franco-Prussian War and never used. "'• They eventually sorted themselves into this refuge for old iron, where the material iiw until it is sold for-a aaerfrsongrinr^aae