BRIEF MENTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5961, 28 August 1897, Page 4

BRIEF MENTION.

The Queen is trying to revive tbe silkindustry in Spitalfields. The Shah never stirs without his three dwarfs, whose duty it is to amuse him. A Sunderland man hanged himself because his face was disfigured through a bicycle accident. A German scientist and poet has been celebrating the iron jubilee of his wedding, which took place sixty-five years ago. There has been an epidemic of Thames mysteries, five bodies in a nude condition being taken out of the river within as many days. Queen Victoria is Sovereign over one continent, 100 peninsulas, 500 promontories, 1000 lakes, 2000 rivers, and 10,000 islands. There are 256 railway stations within a six-mile radius of St Paul's Cathedral, whilst within a twelve - mile radius there are nearly 400. A pot that cannot boil over has recently been invented in Berlin. It has a perforated rim, through which the overflowing fluid returns to the pot. The numbering of the people of Egypt took place recently, the returns showing a population of 9,700,000, an increase of 2,900,000 as compared with the census of 1882. On Sunday, June 13, the thermometer in London registered 84 degrees in the shade and 133 in the sun. One death from sunstroke occurred, and two other deaths were attributed to the heat. There are said to be over twenty million widows in India, a fourth of whom are under twelve years of age. They number about one in every five females in India, while only about one male in twenty is a widower. An aged man has just concluded a long career as bell-ringer at Leigh (Lancashire). He rang for the burial of George IV. He also rang for the coronation and funeral of William IV., and for the accession, coronation, and Jubilees of Victoria. A Battersea magistrate, alluding to a criticism that he dealt too leniently with wife-beaters, said there were hundreds of cases, and if every man who struck his wife was to be sent to gaol the prisons would be more crowded than they are already. There are many reigning Sovereigns at the present time who have never taken the trouble to be crowned. Among them may be mentioned the German Emperor, the King of Italy, the King of Spain, the Queen of Holland, the King of Bavaria, and the King of Saxony. The spy takes his life in his hands, renounces glory, and affronts a shameful death. He requires the rarest courage, resource and devotion. But the fact remains that part of his courage is the courage to be base, and that the height of his devotion is to be measured by the depth of his treachery. The Pennsylvania oil-fields, which are 350 square miles in extent, have already yielded 516,000,000 barrels of petroleum. There are other great fields in Russia, Mexico, India, Canada, and the Argentine Republic, and it is Baid that the area of the oil-producing region in Peru alone is 7500 square miles. In England about one in twenty-one of the population have an account in a savings bank ; in Wales, one in forty ; in Scotland, one in twelve j and in Ireland, one in a hundred. The average amount owing to English depositors is Jsl lis 4d ; to the Welsh, 18s ; to the Scotch, £1 17s sd ; and to the Irish, 7s lOd. True taste is an excellent economist. She confines her choice to few objeots, and delights in producing great effectß by small means ; while false taste is for ever sighing after the new and rare ; and reminds us, in her works, of the scholar of Apelles, who, not being able to paint his Helen beautiful, determined to make her fine. Most people of to-day only know Ceylon as an island inhabited by a rather effeminate race, the Singhalese, where the industries of tea and coffee planting have gone through various vicissitudes ; and but few realise that the Singhalese were once a powerful people, and that their cities and temples rivalled in splendour the greatest buildings of the Eastern world. An old farmer named Thornton, living near New York City, has a watch-chain which iB made of human bones. It consists of eight links, each a trifle more than an inch long, connected by plaited rings. The ohain is about ten inches long, and has been highly polished by years of wear, and glistens like ivory. Tlio bonoß weretaten from amputated arms and legs, and it ! required eighteen months' time to carve out the links. The value of the National Gallery pictures and building is about a million and a quarter sterling. The National Gallery was founded in 1824, with a collection of thirty-eight pictures ; it now contains about 1200 pictures, which have cost roundly .£1,000,000. The Gallery was finished in 1838, at a cost of .£IOO,OOO. It was altered and enlarged in 1860, and additions were made in 1876, the new portion costing ,£83,000. A further enlargement cost .£66,000. The greatest waves known are those off the Cape of Good Hope, where, under the influence of a north-west gale, they have been found to exceed 40ft in height. Off Cape Horn they have been measured at 32ft from trough to crest; and in tlie North Atlantic, waves from 20ft to 25ft are by no means uncommon. In our own seas, however, they rarely exceed Bft or 10ft, and all accounts of their running " mountains high " must be received as mere poetical exasperation. In one of the experiments with compressed air for propelling vehioles in the . United States, it was discovered, after the compressed air system was put into operation, that unless a disproportionately large and correspondingly expensive air-com-pressing plant was installed, it took longer to charge the locomotive with air than to subsequently discharge it in operation. This meant that each locomotive was out of commission over one half the time, and that at least three locomotives were needed to assure the certainty of any of them being operative at a given time. The official figures just published by the Imperial German Statistical Department leave no room for doubt as to the extraordinary advance of German trade within the last ten years. A few figures will serve to bring this home. In 1886 the total import trade of the Fatherland was 16,944,899 tons, valued at .£147,240,000 ; in 1.596 it reached 36,407,516 tons, and tho value rose to .£227,900,000. The export trade, while not showing anything like the same rate of advance, is also rising in a remarkable way. The tonagre has risen from 18,924,283 in 1886 to 25,719,876, in 1896, and the value from £152,565,000 to _£157,690,000. With a view to rendering the common use of acetylene less dangerous, Messrs Claude and Hess have proposed to store it in solution. The solvent chosen is acetone, which is capable at atmospheric pressure and at 60deg Fahr. of solving itself twentyfive times its own volume of the gas, while at a pressure of twelve atmospheres it can hold no less than 300 times its volume in solution. Thus one pound weight of acetone is capable of storing* practically the whole gas which can be generated from one pound of calcium carbide. The solubility of acetylene in acetone is only about half as much at a temperature of 120deg as it is at 60deg Fahr. The following shows the membership of the three Presbyterian Churches : — Established Church, 633,508, increase 6,637; Free Church 287,689, increase 41C8 • United Presbytrean Church 194,463, increase .£2582. The total amount of money raised by each Church during the with the year, total for the English Presbyterian Church added for the sake of comparison was : — Free Church .£673,883, increase .£23,559 ; Established Church i.466,138, inorease .£45,21 5; United Presbyterian Ohurch .£406,420, decrease .£4433 ; English Presbyterian Churoh .£260,4.98 increase .£29,956. The reason for the decrease in the total of the United Presbyterian Church is that the total for 1895 was swelled by a special legacy of .£25,000. The Sustentation Fund of the Frco Church amounted to .£172,441, wllich is a decreaso for the year, of