EXCHANGES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5713, 17 August 1897, Page 4

EXCHANGES.

—♦ — A Now York man Ims been lined | for plantiuif potatoes on Sunday. ( It is estimated that the annual! production (if wino in the world is! 3,671,973,000 gallons. A number of engineering firms in England keep roady-mado iron | bridges of nmny sizes. About 60,000 stumps nro found looso iu the letter-boxes of tho United Kingdom evory year. Tho wine cellar of tho House of Commons is 100 feet long, and usually contains about £4OOO worth of wine. Mora than 11,000,000 yards of tweed are used annually for clothing the male population of London alone. More cases of consumption appear among needle-makers and file-makers tlmn any other class of labourers, It costs £2BO to maintain the refreshment plant—such as glass china, and crockery—in the Hotiso of Commons. In all tlio world tliero is in coin £716,521,000 of gold, £808,.540,000

of silver, and £1)21,000,000 of copper. Russian railways are .the most dangerous in tho world. Thirty persons in every million passengers are either killed or hurt. On Jubilee night 500 detectives in plain clothes were stationed in different parfs of the city of London during the illuminations. A scientist calculates that the pressure exerted by Jubilee sightseers against each other during the procession was equal to 4,000,000 tons. The bicycle has increased tho demand for false teeth, and more particularly for gold crowns. Accidents frequently result in tho loss of one or more teeth. Edinburgh has 22,000 cows, while Dublin comes next with 11,000, and London comes third with a cow population of 8,000. Glasgow lias but 2,000 cows. Tho British soldier receives daily as rations 20 ounces of biscuits, 14 ounces of meat, 7 ounces of peas or * beans, two ounces of sugar and an ounco of cocoa. The largest boy of his age in the world thrives iu California. His name is John Bardin. Ho is 15 years old, 6ft oin tall, and weighs 220 pounds. During 1896 only one passenger in Great JJritain was killed for every 100,000,000 miles of travel. The number of railway employees killed during the year was larger than usual, being iilS, London lias 405 miles of railway track, and if you reckon the double or treble lines, taking no account

whatever of sidings and recent extensions for efootls traffic, you will find that there are 750 miles of railway within the four-mile radius. 36,000 applications for patents were received during IS9G at the London Patent Office. This was at. the vale of 700 per week. Of the applicants, C9l were women, 153 of this number being for inventions connected with articles of dress. It has been ascertained by experiments that persons who use the telephone habitually hear better with iho loft ear than with the right, The common practice of the telephone companies is to place the telephone so that it will be applied to the left ear. When you pinch your finder yon think you feci pain tlio very sumo instant, but really the hurt and the pain are not quite simultaneous, although they seem to be so. If a person had an arm long enough to reach the sun, it would be 132 years before he would feel the pain of the burn.

A German doctor who lias baen collecting information about the habits of long-livecl persons, finds that the majority of those who attained old age indulged in late

hours. Eight oat of ton persons over eighty never went to bed till well into the small hours, and did not get np again till late in the day.

The King of Denmark is essentially a "homely" man. He always walks ahout the streets unattended—or apparently so-ready to help anyone to do anything, So charitable is he that, though hia purse may be full wlieu commencing Ilia daily walk, is invariably empty on his return, In connection with this constant state ot being without money, an amusing anecdote is tolrl. One day, after an unusually long walk, he met an old and crusty courtier to whom he offered refreshment. When it came to the paying part of the proceedings he found that lie was penniless. Seeing his sou, however, he approached him and said :-"lend me some money; I have been treating and I can't pay!"

Hester Woolf (twenty-seven) was charged, at Soutliwark Police Court, with assaulting William Puller, brick, layer. Prosecutor slated that his daughter, aged thirteen, had been in the employment of Mrs Woolf, who was the wife of a market salesman, 27, Merricksquare, Trinity-street, Borough. The girl was engaged as nursemaid, but she wrote homo complaining that she had to wash her master's feet—(a laugh)— and witness and his wife went to fetch her home. Mrs Woolf, after some demur, allowed the child to leaye, but she struck witness over the right eje with the gilt knob of her umbrella, and inflicted a nasty cut down to the bone. Mrs Fuller, wife of the prosecutor, said she was poor but respectable, and she strongly objected to her daughter being obliged to wash a man's feet. She told Air Woolf she thought it disgusting, but Mrs Woolf jeered her, und said it. was to be hoped the girl would never do anything worse. She pushed witness out of the passage and shut the door, and upon her knocking at the door for an explanation Air Woolf aimed a blow at her, which missed, and Mrs Woolf hit liim with the umbrella oyer l her husband's shoulder. The magistrate ordered the prisoner to pay a line of 20s and 20s costs to the prosecutor, or go to prison for fourteen days. A ghastly discovery was made in a field near Birmingham, the body of a respectably dressed man being found with his head nearly severed from his l)otly. Grasped in his right hand was found a blood-stained razor. In his pockets were discovered a £5 note, several postal orders hearing the Liverpool postal mark, and a pocket-book which contained the following lines;— "Here lies the body ot W.W., who no longer will troublo you, trouble you, trouble j'ou. Where he has gone, and how fares, nobody knows, and nobody cares.- Signed, Walcott." '

A sail and disgraceful story' of ruin was revealed in Paris recently by the arrest of Yieomtesse Eugenie de Forville, who was reeling about intoxicated on (be l'laec de la Bastille and sinsing objectional ditties, She was placed in a cell at the police station, but hardly lmd the door been closed when she made _a determined effort to bant; herself with a cord made from her bootlaces and other .strings. The attendants heard .the noise wade by the prisoner's .kicking away the stool on which she stood to attach her cord to the window bars, and they arrived in time to save her life. She had, however, to bo conveyed to the hospital.