NEW, ODD, INTERESTING.

Waipa Post, Volume VII, Issue 343, 25 August 1914, Page 1

NEW, ODD, INTERESTING.

Only one-third of the world's population, use bread as a daily food. One-half Subsists chiefly on rice.

Most of the cats in the town oii Brockton, in Massachusott- ~~s always in an intoxicated conditio through feeding on brewery waste.

Nearly all savages have sound teeth Imperfect teeth are a sign of civilisation, c „

Doctors' coachmen in Berlin» wear white hats. Tills enables the public to promptly recognise a physician's vehicle, in case his iC-rvices are suddenly required.

A bell in a temple in North China has been kept ringing for a century. A tax is levied in the district for paying relays of ringers to work incessantly day and night.

A pen-nib is a little thing, yet there is more steel used in the manufacture of nibs than in all 'the swords and gun factories in the world. A ton of steel produces about 1,500,000 pens.

No machine has yet been invented in France which can supersede manual labour in the manufacture of champagne bottles. The men performing this difficult work are well paid.

The sunflower is a valuable plant. Its seeds make fine food for live stock, its bil is equal to the best linseed oil, and its stalks are as good as coal for producing heat.

The coal required for one journey between Liverpool and New York, by the present-day liners would fill 22 trains of 30 trucks, each truck containing 10 tons.

Paris now has a Chinese settlement. She first families arrived a year ago, and now one hotel shelters fifty-three Chinese in five rooms. The men are mostly engaged in making toys, which the women and children sell in the city.

Recent exploration around the Arctic and Antarctic poles make necessary a, revision of all geographies. These say that water covers two-thirds • of the earth's surface, land being only onethird. The latest figures are—Land, three-sevenths ; water, four-sevenths.

The new Chinese dictionary, published recently at Shanghai, represents five years' labour of many of China's greatest scholars, and supersedes as the standard the famous dictionary published in 1716 by the authority of the Emperor Khaugh-si.

. An electric process for keeping the hulls of ships free from barnacles has been invented. Boats fitted with the apparatus, it is claimed, will never be hampered in speed by barnacles, and the life of the , ship's hull will be longer.

In many of the monasteries of Tibet and Siberia the Buddhist monks stilt print in the manner which has been handed down from generation to generation. Movable typo is not used, but each page is carved upon a solid wood block, and thus whenever a new book is printed entirely new blocks have to bo made.

A novel signalling system is being tried on German railways. Parabolic mirrors about B£ft. long are fixed on an axle on which are revolved by means of electricity. They are , "worked" during the day by sunlight, and during the night are lighted up by electricity, land are discernible at a great distance even during foggy weather.

Clocks are now made to run five years with once winding up. In 1881 the Belgian Government placed one of these in ja railway-station and sealed it. It has kept capital time, having only been ifour times wound—in 1886, 1891, 1896, jand 1901; and there is a clock in the Church of St. Quentin, in Mayenoe, which has only stopped once during a (period of 500 years.