HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 20042, 3 September 1920, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

l ( our New York picture theatres claim to entertain between them 30,060 people every day, while the Stoll Pietine Theatre in London entertains an average of 9000 people daily. ' Manchester Ship .Canal is 35J miles long. The total amount of excavation required for the canal and its docks was 01,603,747 cubic yards—half the quantity that was taken out for tliQ huez Canal. Ilio. seainship Yarmouth has the distinction of being the only vessel owned and manned exclusively by coloured men. She is tins property of the Univeisal Tsegro Improvement. Association, which numbers among its members Jr?.^sP ei! rora , ever the country, thirteen hundred of her owners recentiy inspected tho vessel on a visit which sho made to the port of Boston. Burglars who robbed an inland Canadian bank last winter, made a second visit recently, to return non-transfer-ablo notes, stocks and securities worth nearly £20,000. Tho president of the bank claimed tho" securities. Among the papers was a land note for £3OOO of value only to tho rightful owner. ’ A curious thing is happening to the massive tower of 'Westminster Cathedral, a land mark for miles, which is leaning. It is threo feet out of the perpendicular. Unlike the. Chesterfield tower, which refuses to look plumb from any aspect, the Westminster Cathedral tower, to the untrained eye, does not look an eighth of an inch out from any viewpoint. consumes no less than; iu,Uoolb of tea every day of tho year: and from these thousands of pounds of loaf she brews something like 560,000 gallons of the “ cup that does not inebriate.” If it were possible to make a cup large enough to hold the tweutvfour hours’ supply of tea, it would bo 60ft in diameter and 50ft in height. The word “ fly ” is the popular name “ given to a largo number of insects, all of which are distinguished by having a proboscis terminating in a sucker, through which they draw up fluid- substances. There are said to bo some 10,985 different kinds of insects in Britain, but the best known species of liy are tho house fly, tho “ bluebottle,” and the blow-fly. High kicking is the latest and most popular method of reducing too ample proportions. The practice has been seized upon by hundreds of members of Uio fairer sex who are anxious to rid themselves of- excessive solidity. Complaints have readied the management of a London Women’s club regarding the incessant knocking on the walls that was heard at 7.30 every rooming. The knocking lasted for ono'solid hour. It was discovered _ that tho noise • was duo to tho high-kicking propensities of a. member who owns to sixty birthdays. Sho was finally persuaded to conduct her self-reducing performance at a more reasonable hour in future. “I simply cannot give up my highkicking now,” she wailed. “ I’ve managed to hit tho wall at four and a half feet, and have lost two pounds in weight. Besides, there’s an old lady of seventy-five in the club who can kick seven inches- higher than I can. I won’t bo beaten by her I” Attention has often boon called to the fact that, although abundant statistics aro available concerning tho normal distribution of air temperature- over most parts of the earth, there are but meagre statistics of the distribution of. tho radiant energy _ received from the sun. 'these two kinds of data are by no means parallel, and they arc some-' times strongly contrasted. On mountain summits, for example, the air temperature is generally low and the intensity of solar radiation high. Moreover, solar radiation, on account of itg influence on. animal and vegetable life, is a climatic element of great importance. Another neglected clcnient of climate is illumination from the sun and sky. AVo have rather extensive data of the duration of sunshine in many regions, as registered by automatic sunshine-recorders, -but these take no account of the intensity of the light. America is suffering from a shortage ot hotel accommodation, and as the' running costs of them coasting and local steamers have been multiplied bv about four, many of these vessels" which were once tho pride of the American merchant service, have been turned into floating hotels. The experiment was first tried with two of tiie big Hudson lliver peddlers. The sudden forming of the ice caught them up-river at Albany, and they had to stay there until 'the spring. As all tho hotels of tho town were overcrowded, they were connected with the municipal water find electric mains, and earned large profits during the winter. The latest case is the Noronic, a wellknown Great Lakes liner, which usually runs between Detroit and Chicago. This year sho is moored to a quay in Detroit, * and her 279 cabins aro let out at from ■ one and a half to four dollars per night, the restaurant service is as good—and as expensive—na most hotels on land, while concerts and dances are held on <•, deck in tho evening. 'She promises to yield an excellent dividend. The inevitable historical parallel which occurs to one is diming the gold rush te California m 1849. The clippers had no diffi. culty in finding crews to take them out. but as soon as they were ’through the Golden Gate officers’and men all'sacrificed their wages to doso'fc for the goldfields. In 1860 practically all the San I'rancisco hotels, ns well ns the gaol, were abandoned ships. Illicit trading {„ permits to release whisky from bonded warehouses in Now lork lias lieoy rampant, ami profitable, llio authorities a lit,tie while ago discovered that_ there were 1200 forged permits’ in existence in the city alone amt that the use ot these forgeries had netted tho perpetrators a profit of more than £2,000,(100 in- two months. ft was stated that so much- whisky had been released that “ sly-grog ” shops wore able to reduce tho price of a. “ nip” of tho spirit from 3s to 2s tid. Altogether the .State Director of Prohibition up to the beginning of June had issued' 11,000 permits for the release, for non-beverage purposes of spirituous liquors from bond. Tho permits are protected be bonds ranging from £2OO to £20,000. The latter sum entitles the holder purchase an unlimited amount for '■ legitimate ” use, such as the mnnufae--turo of perfumes, at 26s a gallon. IVbisky obtained in this fashion or by the use of forged permits is retailed at, from 40s to 50s a quart, and shows a profit by tho time it reaches the drinker of 700 to 800 per cent,. One man who sold his permit legitimately obtained, is said to have forfeited tho bond on. discovery, but to have boon able to console himself by tho fact that ho had made a. profit in two weeks of £40,000. Five thousaand) draft evaders have been convicted in United States Federal. Courts and given sentences of ‘from thirty days to ono year in prison, according to reports compiled at tho Department of Justice up to the beginning of last month. Thirty thousand oases remain to be investigated, but officials said that rapid progress was being made in rounding up delinquents. Tho figures, it was explained, do not include cases of persons who were called, in tho draft, and deserted, aa such cases aro handled by the military authorities. So far approximately 275,000 oases of delinquents—men who succeeded in avoiding actual entrance into the semce—have ben investigated by the Department out of a total of 318,314 reported. The results of the investigation show about' ■ 10,000 cases of failure to register and an equal number of false questionnaires. Careful attention is being given false quetdioimario returns, as well as cases where wealthy men bought farms before the oa.ll (.'nine) and obtained deferred fitibsillcatiuu on tho ground of mjcewary industry, v ff V.