HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17179, 24 October 1923, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. FEW FRENCH TELEPHONES. In France, with a population oi 40,000,000 people, the telephone is so poorly developed that two telephone directories will contain, the names of all the subscribers. Tho Government, which operates the service, issues on® directory for Paris and on© for the ■ rest of the country. Both books together, contain fewer names than, there are in the Chicago telephone directory. AHEAD OF THE TIMES. The new halfpenny stamp issued for St Christopher and Nevis, the two Leeward Isles in the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493, and now British possessions, shows the discoverer looking through a spyglass. Columbus, of course, died more than a century before Zachariah Hacssen, maker of spectacles. made someone else’s fortune by devising th® telescope. WHERE IS THE FAT ENGLISHMAN ? Where, to-day, is there a fat Englishman? Certainly not in England! Perhaps nothing strikes the visiting American more forcibly than the slimness of j the English. In New York, Philadelphia. even Boston, almost everyone weighs too much. Few Americans take definite exercise after college years ar® over, however athletic they may have been up to that time. Englishmen do not eat sweets to anything like tho same extent as Americans do. The cartoonists will have to invent some other shape for tho figure of John Bull as well as something different for Unci® ' Sam. ABSENT MINDED INVENTOR. Edison .is one of the most absentminded cf men. This story of him relates to the visit of the inventor to the office of the tax collector. Standing in line, with a score or more of taxpayers in front of him. Edison’* mind reverted to an important experiment on which he had been engaged. When his turn came at the window to which, he had moved mechanically, he was aroused by a clerk asking his name. He looked at the man vacantly. ** I could no more have given it than I could have flown,” he confided to an acquaintance. Luckily an offii cial who recognised him and knew of l his forgetfulness helped him out. | THE FLY’S FOOTPRINT. The mysterious death of four chi!- > dren in a Liverpool family is attri- : luted to the flies which infested th® > house. A scientist caught three flies. They were not special flies, but he hap- [ pened to be a man with a special purr pose. He was & scientist, and wanted t to know how much truth there might be in the idea that flies carry disease. ! One fly was caught in a living-room. One was caught out of doors. The third one was trapped in the household refuse can. He allowed each of the three flies t-o walk over a sheet of specially prepared sterilised jelly, which was incubated. At the end of the fourth day each germ deposited on the jelly had > grown into a little mass or* “colony** > of microbes, visible to the naked eye, and could bo counted and identified. TRUE STORY OF A DOG. Here is a true story of a dog which stole carrots to giro to a sick horse. Mr Burgess, a resident in Paris {say® the Newcastle “Weekly Chronicle”), had' noticed his Irish terrier for some weeks past hanging around a certaingreengrocer’s shop. One day he saw the terrier scuttling along the Avenue Hoeh carrying a bunch of carrots. Mr Burgess watched his dog enter a stable with tho carrots, and leave the stable without them. Again, on the following day, the like happened. But this time the owner followed the dog to the stable. It was barking and wagging its tail, and it trotted to a stall where 1 \ a lame horse greeted it with unmistakable signs of satisfaction- The terrier jumped into the horse-box. and laid its bunch of carrots at the feet of I the sick horse, which munched them. They later proved to have been stolen, from the greengrocery shop. Mr Burgess whistled to his dog, which came «* him. He patted the dog on the hack, and took it round to the plundered shop* where he paid three francs, the estimated value of the carrots hitherto stolen for the sick horse. Further. Mr Burgess hade the proprietor hand to j the terrier a bunch of the best carrots • for liis sick friend daily until further notice. «** ; i WIRELESS IN LIFEBOATS. At the luncheon given at Gravesend i to the .survivors of the Trovessa it was “ suggested that the dangers of shipi wreck would be a good deal lessened if lifeboats were fitted with wireless. A - wireless expert points out that fitting lifeboats with wireless is now beyond - the experimental stage. Several of th© big shipping companies have installed or are now installing a special wireless set on one or more of tlie lifei boats carried by t-heir liners. The set, that is being used has. a range of fifty miles, which is considered sufficient to summon a rescuing ship. Tho wireless mast can be easily put up and taken down, and the apparatus is only about three feet square. The idea is t-o have two boats fitted with wireless, and in case of shipwreck all the boats would keep together as far as possible while signals were sent out The Trevessa boats did not. sight single ship during th© three weeks' 1 journey, but visibility at se* is onlv about- twelve miles, and it. is at leas? possible that wireless would hav® brought a ship to the scene at ecm® point in that sail of 2000 miles. KNITTING FOR TIRED NERVES. “ For jaded nerves—one ball of yarn and two knitting needles, every hour until relieved. Children in proportion to age.” This is the prescription doctors are giving nowadays in cases or nervousness. Senator Royal S. Copeland endorses the prescription given above. “ For women especially.” Dr Copeland said. “ knitting is to be recommended in mildly nervous cases. These cases mhy simply be the result of wrong living habits, rather than of any serious organic disturbance. The intense .speed at which modem life i* sustained; the increasing desire of a woman to have both a home and a career: the wear and tear ot city life, and the fact that people nowadays seem to have lost tho power of intelligent relaxation, all tend to bring on a depleted nervous condition. The intensely busy woman who does not know how to relax should take up knitting. When they are told to relax they carry out th© physical part of it by lying quietly in a darker.ea room perhaps, but their mental activity becomes keener, and they spend the fiflio of enforced physical rest torturing their minds with memories of what might have been and what probably will be. The result is. of course, that they get up more nervous and taut tixesi, were before they tailed to rest.”/fr t "