HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16790, 20 July 1922, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. R ATT,WAT SECRKTS. Why are some British railway signals square at the ends, while others are swallow-tailed? In this regard it must be remembered that signals ore of two classes—home and distant. The first are the really important ones, which the driver must not pass ; if it is against him the distant signal serves merely as a warning that the home signal is at danger. The driver, seeing its fishtail arm against him. slows up, so that he may l>e able to stop on reaching the square-cut home signal. There are many different lights that the engines of various trains show- If you knorr you can tell the class of train at a glance- If there are two, one immediately above each of the buffers. it is an express passenger train. A slow passenger train carries a single lamp at the funnel. A light at the funnel, and one above the right buffer, indicates a fast goods train, whilst an ordinary goods train carries one lamp over the right buffer. HEART OF A BANK. The strong room may well be called the heart of a bank. Those cf the newest type are both fireproof and burglarproof. The walls, floor. and ceiling consist of great masses of concrete, in which are embedded steel rods. Should a burglar undertake the task of 1 Hiring through one of these walls, the bard steel breaks his heart by breaking liis drills one after another! Not a scrap of wood is used, every fitting—even the door and window frames—being of thin steel. There is nothing in the room that can catch fire. Beside* the huge locks that open with a key. the doors of the safes hav© an automatic fasten ing regulated by a clock. When he closes the room for the night, the manager shoots a second set of bolts. Then he sets the controlling clock to open them at a certain hour the next dnv. Once the door has been unlocked its great mass, weighing four or five tons ran be pushed open with tu finger, so delicately is it balanced. HIBERNATING MISTAKES. Rarely does the snail wake up during a cold period. He chooses the bottom of a plant-pot or a jar, and sleeps five mouths of the year away. But as soon as the cold winds have gone he is up .and doing. He seems to be uncannily weather-wise in this respect. The Squirrel sleeps awa v only part of the winter. A sunny day brings him out of his nest and sends him to his store of nuts laid by *in the autumn- The badger does the same thing. Although it is a had thing For hats and frogs to mistake the signs of the weather, they do for all that. Warm days lure them from their rafters in a barn or their beds in the mud to search for flies and insects, and very often they, pay for tbeir rashness by starving to death. • • FIGHTING FIRES. Suffocation by smoke or poisonous gases is the fireman’s greatest- danger. To deal with this, the London Fire Brigade has an emergency tender, a fifty horse-power motor van. fitted with two tremendously powerful searchlights, an air fan (capable of delivering four hundred and fifty cubic feet of air per minute) for scattering smoke, a portable oxy-aoetylene apparatus for cutting through steel doors, eighteen cylinders of oxygen, and crowbars for lifting wreckage. The firemen are equipped with leather helmete. electric lanterns, breathing outfits and oxygen cylinders. This emergency tender, in addition to being used in cases of fire, is frequently called out to rescue men who have been overcome by the foul air in sewers and other places, and to lift wreckage under which men have been pinned. When a large chemical warehouse caught fire, so much poison gas waa let loose that the ordinary firemen were helpless, and the building would have boen destroyed had it not been for the prompt assistance rendered by the tender.

ILLITERATE MAN’S WAR MILLIONS. A Correctional Court in Paris is now occupied with a curious affair of manipulation of war profit*. Charles Per rot 3 aged forty-eight, is charged with having concealed £400,000 of war profit in order to escape taxation. Ho began life as a bricklayer’s apprentice. At the beginning of the war Perrot wa< the proprietor of a email cafe at Saint Denis. His wife looked after the cafe while he peddled with a handcart-. He could neither read nor write. When war broke out. his business as a dealer in scrap iron made gigantic strides, and he amassed so much money that he was able to buy the whole of the war stock at the American camp at Romorantille, for which he paid £1,200.000. At the same time he bought an old cruiser at Cherbourg for £20.000. Although lie had become interested in various big industrial enterprises, and was a member of several boards of directors, Perrot lived very modestly. Judgment h;<3 been deferred. SCOTTISH ISLANDS IN PAWN. The islands of Orkney and Shetland are legally “in pawn.” They were pledged to Scotland by tho King of Denmark on the occasion of the marriage of the Danish princes, Margaret, to James 111. of Scotland, in 1471. These island groups veer then Norwegian territory, and had been so since the close of the ninth century. At the time of their being pawned the King of Denmark was also sovereign of Norway and Sweden, and hoped that the marriage of the Danish princess would help to effect an alliance with Scotland — then a separate kingdom from England. To help matters on. the Danish King agreed to fix the princess’s dowrv at 6(bpoo florins (about £24.000)—10,000 florins to be paid before the lady left Denmark and the islands of Orkney to be given in pledge for the remainder. But at- the last moment the king could only lay his hands on 2000 of the 10.000 florins, and was obliged to pledge the Shetland Islands for the balance. The pledge has never since been redeemed. and though Denmark has made several attempts to get back these island*, all the negotiations have come to naught. There tho matter rests