BRIEF MENTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6132, 19 March 1898, Page 4

BRIEF MENTION.

The British public spends £16,000,000 annually on tobacco. The office of Coinmander-in-Chief of the Army dates back to 1660. The British Post Office makes £4000 a year by unclaimed money-orders. A lady has invented a motor . cradle, •which can be worked by electricity or petroleum. A German has invented paper bottles especially for use on board ship, as they will not break if tossed about. The biggest collection on record was made in New York last year at a missionary meeting. The total was over £14,000. The relief of the distress in India by the Government during the recent famine was equal to the feeding of 834,000,000 persons for one day. The wife of Li Hung Chang is said to possess two thousand frocks, and has half that number of waiting women in attendance upon her. Coins of low denominations circulate very rapidly; thus it is calculated that every penny in circulation changes hands a dozen times a week. The Duke of York entered the Navy as a midshipman just eighteen years ago. His princely rank has not helped him much in the way of promotion. Greek and Eoinan doors always opened outward, and when a man was passing out of a house he knocked on the door, so as not to open it in the face of a passer-by. The custom of taking the "Queen's shilling," by which is understood the i taking of the coin to constitute a man's ; enlistment, ceased to exist seventeen years ago. The King of Siam has a bodyguard of female warriors — four hundred girls, chosen from amongst the Btrongesc and most handsome of all the ladies in the land. The smallest flower known to the botanist is said to be that of the yeast plant. It is microscopic in size, and is said to be only one-hundreth of a millimetre in diameter. A writer says that the Glasgow water from Loch Katrine is very soft, and on that account it is computed that the annual saving to the city in soap alone amounts to some .£36,000. A statement is published showing that the total amount of personal estate disposed of in seven years by the wills of 119 brewers was £19,948,857, with an average of £167,637 each. A club of left-handed men has recently been formed throughout South California, and already more than 2000 men who possess this, the sole, qualification for membership have joined. The inquiry into the cause of the Margate surf-boat disaster revealed the fact that lifeboat men would rather take the risk of being drowned than put up with the discomfort of wearing life-belts. Divers in the Royal Navy are paid according to the depth they go down. Thus, for working in six fathoms of water they get 4s for the first half -hour ; twelve fathoms, 4s 6d, and beyond this ss. During last year the number of visitors admitted to the State apartments at Windsor Castle was 94,775, being, it is understood, about 12,000 in excess of the figures for the previous twelve months. About 20,000 young pigeons are received alive from Italy each week for the London market. The birds are 6aid to be too young to feed themselves, and make the journey huddled together in small crates. Bullets made of precious stones are rarities in warfare; but during the fighting on the Kashmir frontier, when the British troops defeated the rebellious Hunzas, the natives used bullets of garnets, encased in lead. The French police enumerate twenty-one cases to show that murder does not pay financially, apart from the chance of being punished. The average profit made by these twenty-one murderers was only £3 ss6d. Larks are said to be rapidly diminishing in numbers, tens of thousands being consumed daily during the winter in London. They are devoured at fashionable dinners, a beautiful songster being killed to furnish a mouthful. One of the most remarkable lakes in the world is ths Lago di Castello, eighteen miles from Borne* which is formed in the basin of an extinct volcano, and is drained by a tunnel opened through the lava wall by the Bonians, 390 B.C. *It has been calculated that the annual expenditure in the salaries of football players in the United Kingdom amounts to an aggregate of £1,078,272 sterling a year, or nearly twice as much as the annuities of the entire Royal Family. A young lafly, who has recently been admitted to the Ontario Bar, has become iunior partner in a woll-known legal firm. She will be counsel for cases affecting women — her citizenship, her estates, her children, and her individual responsibilities. The shortest sitting of the English Parliament on record was one day. This happened on Sept. 30, 1399, when Eiohard 11., who had resigned the crown on the day previous, was formally deposed, and /Henry of Lancaster proclaimed Henry IV. in his stead. It is interesting to note that the capital value of the British Navy at the present time exceeds £94,000,000. The first cost of the fleet which led to the downfall of Napoleon was but £10,000,000 sterling. The fleet then comprised between 480 and 4T)O fighting Tessels. Bed light is not the lowestkind visible to the eye. When a body is heated up, it emits first a " grey" glow and then a red glow. Herr Lummer finds that this grey light is perceived by the "rod" formation and the red light by the "cone" formation in the nervous structure of the eye. The omnibuses of the London General Omnibus Company cover just about 20,000,000 miles in the course of the yei»r — half as much as is covered by the trains of the London and North- Western Railway— a distance sufficientjto take them nearly three times around the world every day. Scientists have demonstrated that tlie purest air in the cities is found about 2uft above the street siirfacn. Heretofore ifc lias been thought that the highest floors in tenement houses had the Jiest air. The investigations above referred io show that the healthiest apartments are those of the third floor. It appears that war correspondents were used long before our own time, as far back as the time of Edward 11. Scribes, specially commissioned, wore sent up with the English army which invaded Scotland at that time. One of them completed his ; task, but the other was captured at the Battle of Bannoclcburn. A medical student, charged in America with murdering two young women, and concealing their bodies in a belfry of a church with which he was connected, has at length been executed. Four times he was sentenced to death, and each time appealed against the sentence. The execution was delayed for two years. AVire-rolled glass is one of the most recent inventions. The glass, which is exactly Jin thick, contains in the centre a wire-netting, the meshes of which are a trifle less than lin in diameter. Consequently, the wire does not obscure the light; and wire-rolled glass will resist fire for as long a time as an equal thickness of iron. ' The smallest railway in the world is said to be that from North Billerica to Bedford, Massachusetts. It is narrow-gauge in the truest sense of the term, for the lines are only 2ft lOin apart and 8k miles long. The rails weigh only 251 b per yard, the locomotives 8 tons, and the waggons 4$ tons each. The speed of travelling is about twenty miles an hour. I Military experts are at present interested in a new self-moving car, which is to be a veritable carriage of death. It is to be driven by a sixteen horse-power Engine at the rate of over forty miles an hour over a country reasonably level. The climax and purpose of this remarkable machine is to carry two rapid-firing cannon. One man only is needed to run this terrible wheeled weapon of war, and this same man also attends to the firing and loading.