Facts and Figures.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XVIII, Issue 3103, 24 July 1894, Page 4

Facts and Figures.

Glass shingles are used in Liverpool. Great Britain has 700 iron furnaces.

The big Washington monument sways with the wind. Queen Victoria signs 50,000 documents every year. A bout fifty gamblors commit suicide at Monte Carlo every year. Ninety-seven out of every 100 Arctic explorers have returned alive. There are 23,000 species of fishes, one-tenth of which inhabit fresh water.

In the United Kingdom there is stated to be a free library for each 277,000 of the inhabitants.

Silver was a full legal tender until 1816 in England, when the gold standard was adopted. The United States has a lower percentage of blind people than any other country in the world. About 90,000 cows, it is calculated, have to be milked twice a day to supply London alone with milk. The four equal arms of the Greek cross symbolise the gospel preached in the four quarters of the world. The first cattle brought into the American colonies were landed at Jamestown, Va., in the summer of 1607.

There are only 13 recorded cases in the annals of surgery of successful amputation of the hip joint. Out of the 200,000,000 who inhabit British India not more than 10,000,000 possess any education at all, and of them three-fourths have not attained any real knowledge. The kingdom of Siam, with its dependencies, occupies about 300,000 square miles, or about twice the area of Great Britain and Ireland. Its population is about 12,000,000. The highest place in the world regularly inhabited is stated to be the Buddhist monastery Halne, in Thibet, which is about 16,000 feet above sea level. Dr Mortimer Granville recommends as a remedy for “ grippe” five grams camphor in twenty minims tincture of iodine, and one dram of glycerine, with sirup, to be taken frequently. Strong meat juice is commended ; no antipyrine. If a musket ball be fired into the water it will not only rebound but be flattened ; if fired through a pane of glass it will make a hole the size of the ball without cracking the glass ; if suspended by a thread it will make no difference, and the thread will not even vibrate.

Though it is not generally known, Persia is the vineyard of the world, and its supply of grapes is practically unlimited, for grapes are one of the staple foods of the Persians. A bottle of good wine costs but fourpence ; a donkey-load of grapes can be bought for a couple of shillings ; and grapesugar is manufactured in Persia by the ton.

Perhaps there is no more curious place on the Pacific seaboard than Iquique. It stands in a region where rain has never been known to fall, where, as was remarked by Darwin when he visited Iquique in 1835, the inhabitants live like people on board ship. These number about fourteen thousand, nearly all connected with the staple industry of the port, due to development of the nitrate industry on the adjacent pampas. The town is built at one end of a narrow strip of sand. This sand is so arid and saline that it defies all attempts at cultivation ; Iquique is thus entirely dependent on the sea for its food.

It is stated that one of the Sydney wool companies has a burring-machine recently imported from America which effectually eradicates all burrs and other extraneous matter from sheepskins, and its work is done in the most satisfactory manner. Skins thickly matted with burr and seed are put through this machine and turned out clean and free, without doing the slightest injury to the wool, while its value is materially enhanced.