HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16906, 4 December 1922, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. AN ECONOMICAL KETTLE. Ihe application of scientific principles to tho construction of domestic utensils is a marked feature of the times. A recent development of this nature is the application, by an ingenious engineer, of the principle jf tiie water-tube boiler to the ordinary household kettle (observes •• Chambers’s Journal ). The centra] portion of tho bottom of the kettle is plain; set in a ring round the outer part arc a num her of holes, each of which gives access lu a truncated cone which passes up through the outer part of the body «t* tho kettle, and ends in a much smaller opening at the top. When the kettle ,is tilled and placed on a gas ring, tho i burning gas. after playing on the cenj tral part of the bottom, enters the conical tubes, thus greatly increasing tho | heatln S surface, and causing the Kettle to boil m a much shorter time. In a series of careful experiments which we made, we iound that a saving of 30 per cent was effected (with, of course, a corresponding saving in the amount Of gas consumed) in the time taken to boil a measured quantity of water in one of these kettles, as compared with a ,tri e of the same material construct ed in the ordinary way. It is also claimed that the rapid circulation o? the water which takes place during the process of heating entirely prevents tho deposition of scale, however hard the water may be: thus the kettle maintains its efficiency unimpaired throughout the whole course of its life. It .* well made of block tin, and may he had in two sizes. QUICK TIME* FORTUNES. In times of frenzied gambling on th j New \ork Stock Exchange fortunes have been won and lost within a few minutes. Some years ago Mr Joseph Hoadley made some £200.000 it*, fir > minutes, and four times as much dining the day, at a time of panic on the New A ork Cotton Exchange, when prices went up 10 to 20 points nt 1 time. A few months earlier Mr Theu •fore Price is said to have cleared -s*loo,ooo in five minutes and £50,000 in the succeeding half-hour through x sensational rise in the price of cotton In an action against Mr Joseph Leiter it was stated that Messrs Jacob Astor Cornelius Vanderbilt and Hoadley lost £600.000 in a single day in Wall Street. In his fight against the Standard Oil Trust Mr T. W. Lawson lost £BOO.OOO within a few hours on copper; in 1868 Jay Gould wan four million dollars poorer for four minutes’ gamble in gold : and Mr J. D. Rockefeller was credited some years ago with clearing a million pounds sterling by less than an hour’s lucky speculation. “ PICK AND NICK.” Everybody knows what a picnic is, but. most folks would find it hard to say how it got that name, and yet it is simple enough when you come to learn it. When a picnic w'as being ar ranged for. the custom generally was that those who intended to be present should supply the eatables and drink ables. A list of those necessities having been drawn up, it was passed round and each person picked out the article of food or drink that he or she was willing to furnish, and the name of th‘ , i article was nicked or ticked off the list. The open-air entertainment thus be came known as “pick and nick.” The custom is said to date from 1802. so that the picnic is wholly an institution of tho nineteenth century. WHERE DO THE PINS GO? It has been stated on what is supposed to be good authority that the world’s total output of pins is at tho rate of 200,000.000 a day. If so, it may seem surprising that the world isn’t, becoming carpeted with pins. V* o know how easily they are lost—where do they go to? Most of them decay into nothingness, for, actually, tho pin is not such a time-defying object as it seems. Every pin dropped in a damp place soon turns into a few- grains of rust. With new pins turned out by machinery in such immense numbers our grandmotliera’ maxims about picking up pins are forogtten, but in the fourteenth century, when pins were first introduced, they' were valuable articles not to be lightly lost, recalls “ Everyday Science.” An old law permitted the sale of pins on only two days in the year, the first and second of January. Jt was theu the custom of all the womenfolk to buy their pins for the following twelve months. As is still customary, they went to their husbands or fathers for the wherewithal, and hence the term “ pin money.” DEATH UNDER BOLSHEVISM. Mr F. A. Mackenzie was the first independent investigator allowed into Siberia from Europe by the Com mu n ists since the revolution. He lias travelled during the past year from end to end of Russia, and the book he has recently published, “ Russia Before Dawn,” deals with events as recently a 5 last August. He describes the scene in a Russian cemetery:—“ ‘ How many people do you bury each day r I asked the grave-digger. ‘ T don't know. We do not count. They come in cart-loads.’ be replied stolidly. He strode down the cemetery path to make ready for the next arrivals. I followed him. He stopped in front of a big pit. Load after load of bodies had been flung in here, men, women, and children together, coffinless. stripped of clothes, naked as when born. Why should you waste good garments on the dead when they were needed for tho living? Fifty yards away was a big stack of corpses heaped on the surface, nearly all of them stripped, like the others in the pit—a two day’s collection, piled higgledy-piggledy. Faced by that pile. Death seemed to have lost its dignity. Stained, twisted, distorted. these might have been the bodies of another race than ours. Dysentery ! Typhus! Famine! Their two days’ harvest. Not all of the harvest, however. Many bodies still lay in the houses, where they might remain undiscovered in this winter weather for weeks. Others still lay in the streets, no man troubling to clear them away. The only living things that seemed to notice them were the dogs. These had learned to love human flesh. Thev slunk and cringed and crawled nearer with lowered heads, as though ashamed. Then they bit and tore, turning fiercely on you if you attempted to disturb them.” PRESCRIPTION FOR LONG LIFE. The gathering of centenarians which took place recently in England, recalled the case of the eminent German physician, Dr Fischweiler, who died recently at the age of 109. He often declared that he possessed an infallible rule for securing longevity, which lie would reveal to the world in his will Upon his death, then, this formula was disclosed : —‘ l Put your bed, orienting it by means of a compass, so that you will have your head placed north and lie in a horizontal position. Sleep solidly with closed fists.” This is the whole secret. This position, it s asserted, brings the body in com muni cation with the great tellurian currents coming from tho north, and insures extremely happy (blood circulation.