RANDOM READINGS.

Waipa Post, Volume VII, Issue 322, 12 June 1914, Page 7

RANDOM READINGS.

“NO FRILLS” IN BUSINESS

The average Englishman begins his letter “Dear Sir," and, although he may sometimes “have the pleasure” of attending to some quite ordinary or even unpleasing detail of business, he is seldom more than “Yours truly," or “Yours faithfully” at the end of his letter. On the Continent they are more ceremonious. They pray us to accept the assurance of their most distinguished consideration; if they are Spaniards, they kiss our hands; if Gormans, they throw a “Hochachtungsvoll!”—“full of high esteem” — at us. In Germany, however, there is a movement on foot to suppress the latter expression, together with all oilier unnecessary etiquette and polite formulae in business correspondence. The North-Western Group of German Iron and Steel Masters, for instance, are advocating this change, and the journal of the Association for Promoting German Export Trade has, for several months past, placed the following notice at the head of all, its letters; “We call attention to the fact that we avoid all'polite formulae and other flourishes in our correspondence, and we shall be obliged if correspondents will treat us likewise.” Even the legal profession is following this example. The leading legal journal of Germany considers that the mere courtesy phrases should be removed from legal correspondence, and that a label should be attached to letters stating, “It is requested that polite forrJau’ae such as ‘Honoured Sjr,’ ‘most devoted,’ ‘I have the honour,’ ‘Yours most respectfully,’ etc., l-o entirely omitted from correspondence addressed to us, as we omit it from ours.” WHAT THE HAIR TELLS. To the unassisted eye, all hair is apparently similar, except that some is long or short, coarse or fine, dark or fair, or straight or curly. When, however, hair is closely examined under the microscope, this is not so. The European’s hair is round, and the negro’s oval, while that destructive rodent, the mouse, possesses hair that is evidently jointed. The bat’s is jagged. Indeed, every animal possesses filament of a peculiai quality. Human liair, the root of which is bulbous, is enclosed in a skin follicle, associated with which are sebaceous glands, whose secretion gives food and glossiness to the hair. Another fact 'that emphasises the wonders of Nature is that each hair, insignificant as it is in size, holds a colouring pigment. It may be brown, black, red, or flaxen; but when the colouring matter fails the hair adopts the dreaded grey hue. The microscope and the hair have frequently provided the means of bringing about a criminal’s conviction. There is one case on record —that of a murderer who bad killed his victim by means of a blow' on the brow —in which hairs that had been found on a hammer in the possession of the suspected man, after being subjected to careful scrutiny under the microscope, proved to be those of the human eyebrow. This, coupled with the fact that the victim was killed by a blow on the brow, proved to be the link in the chain of evidence which sufficed to convict the prisoner.

SPIDER-MADE SILK It is not generally known that spiders make their webs, nests, and eggcocoons of a kind of silk that is well adapted for certain of man’s uses. The filaments of spider-silk are much finer than those produced by the silk-worin but they are relatively stronger. The webs of some of the largo spiders of tropical •countries are strong enough to entangle small birds. As early' as the seventeenth century travellers in Paraguay found that tlie natives made clothing from the webs of a species of Epeii’a, the genus to which the common garden spider belongs. Spider-silk has been’ used for centuries in China, India,land West Africa—notably in the Chinese Province of Yunnan, where the socalled “silk of the Eastern Sea” is produced. In the year 170 S a French jurist, M. Guenaux, of Montpelier, succeeded in making • several pairs of gloves and stockings from tlm silk of garden spiders. The first really practical experiments however were made by an Englishman named Rolt. By his process he drew the silk directly from the body of the spider; and the material he obtained was much stronger than that spun under normal conditions. The end of the filament lie attached' to a bobbin, which was revolved by steam. The process does not seem to incommode the spider. it has been robbed of all its silk }t fc" J .s for ten days, and is then read.v to yield another supply. ’ . t As the silk comes from the spinnerets it is covered with a viscous subi (stance, which is washed off in run r Ving water. The filaments are very fine; from eight to twenty-four must combined to form a single thread, j The fabric that these threads proI duee is mch lighter than ordinary 1 feilk. For that reason cords of spider Bilk are especially suitable for the I nets that enclose balloons.