BRIEF MENTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7434, 21 June 1902, Page 3

BRIEF MENTION.

Punishment is lame, but it comes. — Herbert. Sorrows remembered sweeten present ■joy. — Pollock. jf|V The first step toward doing good is the Inclination to do it. . One grain of fine gold can bo made into ai wire 550 ft in length. • One cent's worth of mirth is better than a dollar's worth of anger. Even the chronio bore can hfclp a busy man by not hindering him. Someone has counted 1425 characters in the twenty-four books Dickens wrote. England grows (t_ tons" of potatoes to the acre, France 3 1-5, Russia only 2 tons. St David's Bishopric holds a record. There have been 119 occupants of the see. One hundred and six British officers have qualified as interpreters in Russian. A 'dealer in atfificial limbs estimates tha* 300,000 Englishmen have lost one or both legs. m St Peter's, Rome, can accommodate 54,000 worshippers/ St Paul's, London,, 32,000. "- Any man who gets in on the ground floor and stays there has no use for a fire escape. The sooner a man shuffles off this mortal coil the sooner his good qualities will be recognised. The natives of Liberia prepare a singularly intoxicating beverage from a common musbrpom. '. Every first-class London theatre has to take (in round figure®) £30,000 a year before it pays. The London policeman arrests on an average seven persons per year ; the Parisian twenty-nine. If nettled by severe .raillery, conceal the' sting if you would escape a repetition of tbe evil.— Oolton. ■■'•."; Stillness of person} and steadiness pt features are signal; marks of good-' breeding.—O. W. Holmes. Within the past century the sea has stolen from England land equal in area, to the County of London. Every man has a three-fold nature— that which he has, that which he exhibits and that which he thinks he has. — In Honduras it is enacted by the laws of the land that on election days " no debtor shall be sued for money owing." The organs of smell in the turkey and vulture are so delicate that they can scent their food at a distance of forty miles. The, first mention of the pipe organ in history is in connection with Solomon's Temple, where there was an organ with ten pipes. In Germany all workmen, servants and clerks above sixteen, and getting less than £100 a year, are obliged by law to insure against old age. \ Reflection is the flower of the mind, giving out welcome fragrance ; but reverie is the same flower, when rank and running to seed. — Tupper. Greenock Corporation has been legally advised that it cannot prohibit the running of tramcars on Sunday, as there is not a prohibitory clause in the lease. Berlin's population fluctuates in curious fashion. Its total of just under two millions increased by 42,493 during the year 1900, whereas last year it grew but 12,000. Messrs William Gray and Co., of HartlepWl, turned out 74,191 tons of new shipr ping last year, achieving a world's record. Messrs Harland and Wolff are feecond, with just under 68,000 tons. • The total number of papers in the" British Isles is now 2532 ; 'of these London is responsible for 554. The number of magazines is 1562, while there are 209 quarterly reviews of every kind. A five-petalled flower nearly \ yard in diameter, is found in the Philippine Islands. The buds at a distance look like gigantic cabbage heads. A single flower has been known to weigh more than 221bs. In Ashanti there grows a tree resembling in appearance the. English oak, which furnishes excellent butter. This vegetable butter keeps in good condition all the year round, in spite of tne beat, in its natural state. The oldest lock in existence is one which formerly secured one of the doors of Nineveh. It is a gigantic affair, and the key to it, whicb is as large as one man can conveniently y carry, is 3£ft in length, and correspondingly thick. The borough of Marylebone is being slowly depopulated. The last census returns show a decrease of 10,782 from those of 1891, a result which Dr Winter Blyth, the medical officer of the borough, attributes to migration to the suburbs. In London, one day lately, Dr George Danford Thomas held a dozen inquests on adults and children who had died from heart disease and pneumonia. It was shown in each case that they had conplained of a cold and cough owing to the weather. The Pope's Pontifical Jubilee was inaugurated on March 5 by a solemn service and the saying of a Mass in the Papal Chapel of St Peter's, Rome. Among those present were thirty cardinals, many archbishops and bishops, the apecial foreigp. Envoys, the Diplomatic Body A and the Roman nobility. The Pepe was carried from his apartments into St Peter's, and was, of course, most' cordially received. Five hundred and forty miles an hour is beyond the wildest dreams of Mr Behr, the mono-railist, but the Rev E. T. Daubeny, of Market Weston, states that that is the speed at which the northern bluethroat (declared to "have only moderate powers of flight") migrates. It gets, he cays in "Nature Notes," from Egypt to Heligoland in a spring hight of barely nine hours. The Virginian plover maikfis 636 miles an hour in its journey of 9600 miles from Labrador to North Brazil.. The bird that travels at this unimaginable speed soars so high that the resistance of the air is reduced to a minimum. A London- newspaper proprietor offered free vaccination to its entire composing and printing staff, with payment of wages to any who had to go off work, and also a guarantee to keep situations open for those who caught small-pox. The offer has been declined. In Glasgow once, the proprietor of an engineering shop proposed to erect ahuge lavatory, provided with soap and towels, so that the workmen could wash their hands before going out to meals. The proposal was laid before the men for discussion, and the idea was abandoned because some of the employees could not see where the advantages to them came in. They thought ; there should be some in. crease of pay under the circumstances ! Increasing surprise is felt .in England that the Duchess of Fife is never officially described as "princess royal." It as only since the accession of George 11. that such a designation has existed, but that monarch's eldest daughter (though she was born when her father was only electoral Prince of Hanover.) enjoyed it, and so did the' eldest daughter of George 111. and the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria. While the late Empress 'Frederick was living there might have been good grounds for withholding the title from the eldest daughter of King Edward, for there have never been two princess royal alive at the same time. But that difficulty is now removed, and why the distinction ''should be allowed to drop is a question causing much conjecture. ■ T* ..-■'■' A writer in "St Mait:n's-le-Grand " urges that stamps should be sold in "neat little booklets that will rest comfortably in the waistcoat pocket." It often happens that when we want to post •an important letter on Sunday evening the stamps in our pocket are an impossible mass of gum and paper. The American Postmaster-General has issued the booklet, at a charge slightly in excess qf the face value of the stamps, and" has issued more than eighty million stamps ' in that way, with a profit to his Department. New Zealand has adopted the idea, issuing booklets of which each leaf contains six stamps, and is separated from the next leaf by a piece of waxed paper. The outside contains information as to rates of postage, and an extra half -penny for the binding bringß a profit to the Government. • . s - : ■ ... -v