Items from Everywhere.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11727, 4 September 1902, Page 2

Items from Everywhere.

A few; examples of the practical1 application of scientific education in Germany are given in the Journal of the Society of Arts. The sugar industry is the first illustration of the progress* of industry through science. In 1840, 154,000 tons of beetroot were crushed, from which 8000 tons of raw sugar were produced, showing about 5£ ,per cent of raw sugar extracted from the root. Twenty years later 1,500,000 tons were treated, which produced 128,000 tons of sugar, or about 8 per cent. Last year about 12,000----000 were crushed, which produced 1,500,----00 J tons of raw sugar, raising the percentage to 13. This advance is due entirely to scientific treatment. The production of dry colors, chemicals and dyes in Germany shows a corresponding increase in production and dividend-paying capacity. The great increase of earning capacity is due largely to tho constant labour of trained men, who, by application of their technical knowledge, have so cheapened production that they have succeeded in getting this trade out of the hands which previously controlled it. In the town of HiKdersheim, in Germany, is a lose bush 1000 years old, and sprouts from it 3 branches have realised fabulous sums. Some years ago a. rich Englishman offered £50,000 for the entire tree, but the sum was indignantly refused. Thia wonderful plant clings amid thicklygrown moss against the side of the famous old church of St. Michael. It is claimed that it has bloomed perennially since the days of King Alfred, and this statement has never been disputed, for its record has been as carefully kept as the pedigree of the bluest blooded family in the kingdom. It is sutmosed to have been discovered by some mysterious means through the medium of King Louis of Hildersheim as far back as 1022.

As is familiar to readers at large, the j-aillmon, leaving the sea each year, enter the rivers for spawning purposes. The rapid growth of young salmon in the sea has formed a subject of remark among naturalists ever since the development of the fish has been studied. The grilse comes back to its native river a huge fish compared with its size when it left for the sea. Lately it has been ascertained that the salmon does not feed at all in the river. It lays u>p for itself, as it were, a deposit receairxfc at the 'bank of nutrition from its feediag in the sea, and subsists on the store of fat and other things it has accumulated in this wiay. Lateliy Mr J. K. Barton has been investigating the food habits of the sea trout and salmon of the Tweed. He tells us that the sea trout feed to a later date relative to their entering the river than do salmon. Once in the river, both fishes exhibit the same rigid regime of fastinsr. Zoologists will see in this alternative of feeding in the sea and abstention from food in the river an illustration of Mr Herbert iSpencer's law that nutrition and reproductioni are antagonistic conditions of the living organism. The former, in fact prepares the way for the latter. A big burly man called on the wife of a minister the other day. "Madam," he said, "I wish to draw your attention to a poor family. They are about to be turned out in the street unless someone pays their arrears of rent, which amounts to £5." "How terrible!" said the lady; "here is the money for the rent. By. the way, may I ask who you are?" "Certainly madam. I'm the landlord." *

Some dwellers in the Matabele bush recently, after conferring gravely together, sent an order to a ohemist for 2000 whisky tabloids, at the same time warning the Customs Obce, informing the officials to expect the arrival of this shipment o tabloids, hoping that whisky m its concentrated form was not liable to duty. After a deal of patient waiting they were informed that they were a generation before their time.

Why do women of energy, brain and force waste themselves in the struggle for social pre-eminence, The secret charm of the contest is that it is one of the few known cures of ennui. Nobody but those who are on the ;nside have an idea how women of a certain secured income, and a certain unexhausted funl of energy, suffer from ennui. It is the nightmare of their lives, and it is a nightmare for which science has so far discovered no remedy, and time no palliative. The fashion of goino- hatless is gradually but perceptibly gaining ground. At the seaside, on the golf links, and in rural i*esorts, many men take evary opportunity of going bare-headed. Probably their paramount idea is to ward off baldness. Young women are beginning to follow their ex■amipite, but, as might be expected, with some degree of timidity. They are waking to the fact that there is no> hair tonic mora efficacious than fresh air and sunshine.

Two thousand miles at sea in a paper boat sounds like an idea from Jules Verne, but it is really the expression of a fact. In 1874 a brave man left Quebec on a scientific voyage in an 18-feet canoe, and on reaching Troy, on the Hudson River, he changed his wooden canoe for a paper one, one-eighth of an inch thick, and weighing less than £60. A Russian nobleman has upon his estate at Savinowka, in Podolia, a paper house of sixteen rooms, built in New York at a cost of 80,000 roubles, and its/ architect declares that it will last longer than a stone building. Bergen, in ixorway, has a church built of paper, seating a thousand people, and there was some talk not many years a.«o of paper wheels for railwp trains. We have not yet begun to ride on paper railways, but paper bicycles have been made to work, paper sails for ships are not unknown, and there ar esuch things as paper gas pipes. There seems, indeed, no end to the oossibilifcies of aper-^—on paper. In the "Engineering Magazine" for July Mr John Hays hammond discusses the probable duration of crold mining on ! the Witwatersrand. He thinks that there lies buried in the reefs around Johannesburg gold worth £800,000,000, and estimates *he future continuance of profitable operations on a larcr© scale at about 25 ■years.