BRIEF MENTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7808, 12 September 1903, Page 3

BRIEF MENTION.

The first regatta on tbe Thames was held in 1775. An inch of rainfall represents 100 tons of water to an acre. Umbrellas to the number of 2,214,764 wero imported into India last year. The freedom of the City of Rome was conferred on Signor Marconi recently. Alderney is the only plaoe in the British Islands where tobacco is now untaxed. Matches are now largely made of aspeD wood, imported from Finland and Russia. Disputing about tastes or anything else is but a sorry employment. — Vernon Lee. London now has 21,369 lunatics. The number has increased 50 per cent since 1691. It is estimated that between 900 and 1000 ships go up and down the English Channel every day. Great Quantities of amber have been washed up on the shores of the Baltic by recent gales. Great wealth is a great blessing to a man who knows what to do with it. — Lord Beaconsfield. No woman has entered the Convent of St Catherine, on Mount Sinai, for fourteen hundred years. The common measure of road distance in Greece is the pike, which equals threefquarters of an English yard. Goldsmith's house in Wine Office Court, London, has been labelled by the authorities as a "dangerous structure." A run was made from Pittsburg to New York— 43B miles — without a stop recently, . the longest run of a passenger train on record. . " After grape wine tha oldest alcoholic beverage is saki, a wine made from* rice. The Japanese have used it for oyer 2000 years. Domestic servants im Sweden have an order of merit conferred upon them for' long and efficient servioe under the same employers. Missouri, in the Indian tongue, signifies " muddy water." The Mississippi is ordinarily quite clear above the mouth of the Missouri. From Liverpool to Yokohama by jbhe trans-Canada route will be but 9830 miles. By New York and San Franci_eo it. is 12.P98 miles. . The Grand Trunk Road, in India, is the longest macadamised road in the world. It begins at Lahore^ aud is eighteen hundred miles in length. A selfish man complains most of the selfishness of others, just as the fat man in a crowd complains most of the crush to which, he contributes most.— Swift. Ruins of a large city containing pyramids and extensive fortifications have been discovered in the midst of a dense forest in the State of Pueblo, Mexico. In 1668, Hungary's forests returned little more than a mi-lion florins a year. To-day, owing to careful ax-ministration, the yield is. more than three million florins yearly. Attar of ylang-ylang, which rivals attar of roses as a perfume, and is worth from £8 to £10 more per lb, is tihe product of a tree which growß in the Philippines. Some of the Parisian restaurants serve camel's flesh. The meat tastes similar- to beef, though white, like veal. The hump is considered a great delicacy by the Arabs. It has been well said thjit no man eiver sank under the burden of the day. It. is when to-morrow's .burden. is added to, the burden of to-day that the weight is more . than a man can bear.. In the Tamarack copper-mine a plumbline 4250 ft long of piano-wire was recently lowered from the shaft-mouth. It toolthirty minutes to drop, and is probably the longest plumb-line ever used. . In parts of Australia where the average rainfall- is not move than lOin, a square mile of land will support only eight or nine sheep. In Buenos Ayres,. the same area, with 34in of rain, supports 2560 sheep. ; To encourage vegetation on an unsightly crag in the Hartz Mountains, inaccessible to climbers, tbe 'owner of the chalet near by has given orders for canisters of tree and grass seed tio be fired on to the summit irom ai cannon. '.. __ Ammunition to , the value of £10,000 was, some time ago thrown into the sea as defective from the United States warship Olympia when cruising in the Caribbean Sea. Ifc is now said tnat the ammunition was in perfect order. If Lord Kitchener's order to the Ind_a__ army on the subject of assaults upon natives, is unpleasant reading foa* the British public, how much more painful must the duty have been of promulgating a grave reflection upon the conduct of Jh-glish troopp. —"Pall Mall Gazette." Economic controversies are decided, not by discussion, but by events. It was not the arguments of Bright and Cobden, but the famine in Ireland and the dearness of wheat in Lancashire that forced Sir Robert Peel to open the ports, though the anti.corn law agitation made it easier for him. — "Saturday Review." - What is thought to be a rich vein of lead has been discovered at Kerrowmoar, near Ramsey. It is stated by experts to be three feet thick. Many years ago efforts were made to work a lead 'mine in this vicinity, but by prospecting in the wrong direction the main vein, .supposed now to have been struck, was then missed. There is little good to be got from your vague, gregarious natures, liking or disliking merely because others like or dislike. There cannot be much loving-kindness, let alone love (whether for persons or things or ideas), in souls which- always require company, and prefer any to none at alL — Vernon Lee. The omnibus drivers on one of the principal London lines drive on alternate days 80 miles and 48 miles, which total up tx> 23,360 miles a year. The circumference of the earth is only 25,000 miles. If the earth were all dry land, they could almost drive across it every year in the hours they have to devote to the common round in London streets. Buried' away in- the Board of Agriculture's returns for the United Kingdom is a canine oensus. It appears that last year there were 1,871,619 dogs in Great Britain, oc one for, roughly, every 20 human beings. The revenue derived- from licenses — 1,525,273 dogs at 7s 6d each— was £571,977 7s 6d. In England there were 1,659,678 adult dogs, in Wales 119,586, and in- Scotland 182,353. It is true that large animals usually live long, and that small animals are often short-lived — an elephant may live two hundred years, a horse forty, a blackbird eighteen, a mouse six, and many insects only a few weeks or days. But then a cat or a toad may live as long as a horse, a pike or a carp as long as an elephant, a crayfish as long as" a ,pig (twenty), and the sea-anemone " Grannie," which .died a natural death in Edinburgh, on August 4, 1887, was at least sixty-six years old. — Professor Thomson. The Census Bureau has published a report by which it is shown that the span of human life in the United States is steadily increasing. The census statistics are taken by decades to compute the median age — that is, such an age that half the population is under it and the other half over it. • The median age of the inhabitants of the United States in 1900 was 22.8, as compared with 21.9 ten years previously. The increase in the median age of the white population since 1810 is 7.4 years. This gain in longevity is attributed to the remarkable progress effected in medical and sanitary science. A simple instruction of what to do amid the smoke that precedes the outbreak of flames in a burning house is given by a volunteer fireman- :— -On retiring to rest place a handkerchief under the pillow. On being awakened by smoke or the cry of fire thrust it into water and tie it round your head, over the mouth and nostrils. You can then walk. erect through the densest smoke you meet. The nightly practice of placing :he article will make you less nervous in '.he hour of danger. For upwards of fifty rears, says this practical fireman, he . has raken this very simple precaution, and he teaches it to all his grandchildren.