HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16750, 3 June 1922, Page 8

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. OUR ROYAL ANCESTRY. Not everyone realises that Royal blood flows in the veins of us all, but there seems to be no doubt of it. Miss S. L. Kimball, an Englsh lady, traces tho descendants of one Isabel d© Hermandois, who died in 1131. Twice married to nobles, she could claim descent from Charlemagne through six separate lines, and left four children, whose descendants can in a multitude of instances he traced down to the present time, with the result that King George ated from her by 26 generations—an honour shared by a New York farmer—whilst George Washington is four generations nearer. In face of the extraordinary result of these researches. Dr Jordan, of •Stanford University, says that through Isabel “the Englishspeaking population of the world consists of inbred descendants of Charle-PRODIGY-OUS. A little girl of four, living in Windham, Maine, has been paragraphed on account of her mental attainments. She answers French and Spanish questions in careful English, and has an extensive knowledge of gegraphy and a detailed knowledge of her own State of Maine. But this pales into insignificance before the attainments of Christian Heinecker, born at Lubeck two centuries ago. At ten months he could speak, nnd at a year knew moat of the events in the Pentateuch. He completed Bible history in his second year, in his third year lie tackled French and Latin, and grounded himself thoroughly in history and geography. He then turned to theology. and was invited to the Ocrart at Copenhagen, taking up the art of writing on his return. But under th© strain of that he sank and died on June 27, 1725. ST. MICHEL’S MOUNT. If it be true, as experts predict, that silting up of the Bay of St. Michel threatens sooner or later to make Mount St. Michel one with the mainland of France, Normandy will lose one of its most remarkable spectacles—the rise of the famous tide. Over the flat sands of the bay the sea recedes to a great distance at low water; when the tide turns it comes in at a speed of seven males an hour, and to watch it sweeping across the flats and round the base of the Mont is like watching the progress of a, race hors o. The causeway, built since \ ioHet-le-Duc’s restoration to carry a tramway out to the foot of the Mont, is stated to be th© oause of the silting, which is causing much perturbation among the good folk of Normandy. A considerable cut in the middle of the causeway is the remedv suggested, but this would be a costly* process, and in these tames there is natural heptation on the part of the French authorities about undertaking it. 1 ormerly St. Michel, which at times has been Druid’s shrine, Benedictine Abbey, and state prison, waa accessible at high tide by boat only. SPEAKING IN MILLIONS. Scientists are fond of telling us of things which happened ten, twenty, or thirty million years ago; hut does anybody realise what these immense periods of time mean ? What was happening a million days ago? If you make a simple calculation, you Trill find that a million days ~is 2-739 years; a million days ago. about the year B.C. 800, Rome had not been built, Kang Uzziah was reigning at Jerusalem, and two hundred vears were to elapse before the Jews ‘went into captivity in Babylon. Of what happened a million weeks ago we know nothing except what we can deduce from prehistoric bones, implements and weapons! A million hours ago—in 1807 the battle of Trafalgar, fought two years before, was fresh in men's memories; we were in the midst of our struggle with Napoleon, which did not end for eight more years. A million minutes? Two years all but thirty-six days! Well, then, what of a million seconds. Surely that cannot be a very long time? A miHion seconds i© eleven and a half days. If you were to count rapidly, without stopping for a moment it would take you from 8 o’clock on Saturday morning until midday ou Monday to reach a million. WATER DIVINING IN THE EAST. To those persons who are adepts at water divining, the following Eastern method© of ascertaining sites suitable for wells may be of interest (6ays “Engineering”). A ryat, or villager, who wishes to excavate a well generally has not sufficient capital to go to any great depth in search for water, his object being to find a spot in his field wtbere water can be obtained in moderate quantities and at a convenient depth. The method of divining is to drive a flock of sheep on t-o the field in which he purpose© to sink a well, and to keep them without water- A© . the sheep get thirsty they will gradually congregate together with their heads pointing towarda the ground. The place where the sheep congregate, and the spot towards which the heads of the sheep point is the locality where water is likely to be found nearer the surface than any other place in the field. Another method in the case of a large field which has trees of the same species grotring on it is to observe the place whore the trees are larger and more luxuriant than other trees of the same species in the field. A well sunk at this place is more likely to tap water nearer to the surface than any other place in the field. A third method in the case of a large area in which it is proposed to sink a well is to inspect the natural surface drains or runlet* that carry off the rainfall from the surface of tine ground under investigation. At the place where the main surface drain alters its gradient to a flatter slope is the most likely spot at which water can be struck nearest to the surface. \ BLONDE OR BRUNETTE. The question of the comparative rank of the blonde and the brunette a© to lieauty is again raised, says the New York Outlook.” After a long-landing supremacy of tho blonde in Wellesley n brunette has been elected mistress of the Senior Tree Day exercises, while Vassar has also selected a darkhaired girl as marshall for the Daisy Chain ceremony. Among the painters, probably the blondes have the vote, though Mona Lisa has, if we remember correctly, dark hair. Historically, among celebrated beauties Cleopatra if ranked as a brunette; Mary Queen of Scots as blonde. Queen Louise of Prussia as blonde; Pocahontas, of course, as a brunette; Airs Myddleton, ** the incomparable beauty of the time of Charles 11-,” as a blonde: Lady Hamilton as a semi-blonde; Empress Eugenie as a brunette, Mary Anderson as a blonde; Lily Langtree as a semi-brun-ette. De.sdemona ia commonly pictured as a blonde, to offset Othello’s too insistent brunettishness. Byron sings the praises of “a dark eye in woman.” while Helen of Troy is often represented is a blonde, and ** Beauty in Woman '" says that, the ancients regarded Venus a& lair and golden-haired.”