BRIEF MENTION

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9513, 10 April 1909, Page 3

BRIEF MENTION

Muslin is being manufactured from the fibre of the banana tree. An average orange tree yields' during its life about 20,000 oranges. Denmark can boast of having the oldest national flag, its use dating from 1219. Only a little over one acre in a hundred in Ireland is under timber cultivation. The horn of a rhinoceros is not join- x ed to the bone of the head, but grows oa th.c skin. ■ . . Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark have given the municipal franchise to women. . . . Volcanic outbursts and earthquakes occur most frequently when the moon is, nearest the earth. - Ears of corn left in a glass of water until the seed starts to grow make a very pretty table decoration. There are nearly 5,000,000 women breadwinners in the United States, two-thirds of them, being unmarried. The people of the United States read and support as many newspapers as England, France and Germany combined. : Berlin knows no "slums." Even in thb. poorest; quarters of the city the streets are paved with asphalt and kept beautifully clean. , I. What is probably the oldest organ mi I the world has been found on the island i of Gothland, in the Baltic Sea. It dates from about 1240 A.D. .: The wreck record of the >Baltic Sea is greater than that of* any other part of the world. The average is one a day throughout the. year. The volcano Aso-san, in Southern Japan, has the biggest, crater known. It is fourteen miles across one way, and between ten and eleven the other. The Rotherithe Tunnel is the largest of the thirteen which have been driven under the Thames. It occupied four years in the making and cost £1,088,484 to build. ' . . Many church steeples in England are covered with copper. One' of these, in Exeter, is covered with 6heet-copper, the metal being taken from the bottom of an old man-of-war broken up at. Devonport. - . ' Buddhism is reckoned , to have 455,000.000 adherents. The numerical strength of Christianity is 421,000,000; Mohammedanism, 215,000,000; Brahmanism, 175,000.000 ; Confucianism, 80,000,000 ; and Shintoism, 14,000,000. Fifty years ago John Bull was master of 5,850,000 square miles. At the pre- j sent time these figures have more than doubled themselves, and he finds himseld a monarch of 13,000,000 square miles, or equal to one-fifth of the area of the globe. ' . ~ In many districts in Italy and Spain the chestnut takes the place of oats, rye and rice. Chestnut groves are abundant in all the mountain districts of Italy and .Spain, and the season of chestnut gathering is the harvest festival of these countries. A cheque for- £10,000 was handed to the Queen of England on November 23 as the first instalment from the sale of the Royal Book of Photographs, thus enabling her Majesty to give effect to her charitable puVpose within a fortnight of the date of publication. The hospitals and* almshousQS in Ber- j lin are regularly supplied with fresh flowers from the public gardens, and twice a week each of the national schools receives from 100 to- 150 specimens of four different kinds; of plants for the, purpose of botanical demonstrations. Vast quantities of flowers are gathered for perfumery purposes. It is estimated that each' year 1860 tons of orange flowers are used, besides 930, tons of roses, ,150 tons each of 'violets and jesamine, 75 tons of tuberoses, 30 tons of cassli and 15 tons of' jonquils. There is an old-fashionea precaution of keeping a goat in a stable. Supposing • always that the animals are loose, the goat will leave the stable on the outbreak of a fire, and the horses will follow the^ goat when- no amount of persuasion from men will get the terrified creatures to budge. The sfaovel used by the Prince- of Wales wften helping the stokers of the i Indomitable on hep record 'run from Canada has been kept as a souvenir. It has been mounted and a suitable in- j ■scription placed upon it, and is now attracting muoh attention in the window of a leading jeweller's at Gibraltar. When completed^ the Roosevelt dam, now being built by the United States Reclamation Service, on Salt River, in Arizona, will impound 1,300,000 acre-feet of 'water, and thus will_ hold the record of being the largest artificial reservoir in the world until the completion of the Engle dam. A company has been formed^ to bore another tunnel connecting Switzerland and Italy. The tunnel will run through Mount Blanc, / starting at Martingly, in Switzerland, and cooping out at Courmayeur, Italy. It will be twenty-eight miles long, and it is expected that it will be completed in three years. ._ ' Mattresses made of seaweed are said to be cheap and healthy. They ere, besides, no. new invention, one manu-. faefcurer declaring that he manufactured them half a century ago. One hundred and thirty tons of seaweed have been shipped from the shores of Nova Scotia |o the United States for stuffing mattreeeea. • Llandudno, in North Wales, one of the most charming of seaside resorts, occupies geographically a unique position, the town having one bay, Llandudno Bay, as it may be said, at the front of it, and another, Conway Bay. at the back, whilst at either end of its sea-front rise two promontories', the Great and the Little Orme's Head. A ladies' short skirt league has been formed in London. The members, ac-^ cording to "Woman 1 *- Life,^' bind themselves to wear dresses which will not sweep the floors and pavements, and so gather up dust and microbes. In America they have a similar organisation,'called the five-inch league. Every member is pledged to at least five inches of clear space between skirt and floor. . A few examples of the way in which some Church of England clergymen are overworked was given at a meeting of the Additional Curates Society. A great parish in the north of London had only three clergymen tor 19,000 persons,' while a parish in Durham diocese had only two clergymen for a population of 15,000, and two Glamorganshire parishes with more than 10,000 people in each had only two clergymen. . „ Senor Sarasate died a "^millionaire," [according to French and Spanish computation. The details of his will show that he left an estate amounting to three million francs . (£120,000). He leaves to each of his sisters £50,000, and the Paris and Madrid Conservatoires each receive a Stradivarius and £4000 for the foundation of prizes. The Villa Naverna, at Biarrita. is bequeathed to Mdlle Goldschmidt ; his ?,ri collection and furniture to his natrve town of Pampeluna; while his valet receives £2000 and his cook £400. Newspaper accounts report the steel and shipbuilding industries in Northern Ohio to be in very bad way. Last year 47 000 000 tons of iron ore from the Superior regions passed through Cleveland and the neighbouring ports; this year it is calculated, the total will not exceed 26,000.000 tons. Every conceivable branch of the iron and steel industries is affected, and the shipbuilding companies have not a new order on their books. In Cleveland alone from 20.000 to 35,000 men areout of work, and things are as bad, or worse, at Toledo, Sandusky, Huron, Loraine and elsewhere in the district. Skilled mechdnjps, who under ordinary conditions earn. from 14s to 24s a day, are grasping eagerly at casuaf employment in rough, unskilled labour at a matter of 4s or ss. The present state of things is being used as a lever by the more extreme Democrats, who 1 assert that the bottom has been knock- I ed out of the Republican "full dinner paH." ,