EXCHANGE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5715, 19 August 1897, Page 4

EXCHANGE.

A mansion, made entirely of coloured glass bricks. Ins been planned to be built at Newport, in Anicricn, for ut millionaire shipmerchant. This building is to be begun during the summer, and will bo the first residence in Ihe world constructed of such malarial and after the style of an old Poinpeian palace. An American inventor has just succeeded in completing the model of a submarine boat, which, it is claimed, will travel under water at the rate of six miles a minute, or about. 3GO miles in an hour. His boat is constructed on ut mechanical theory which, when made known, will astonish the world. It is to bo kept a secret, however, until his patents aie secured, A queer occupation is that of dragging for lost anchors. It is carried on in bays and rivers, and even in the open seas along the coast. Several sloops and schooners are engaged almost exclusively in this pursuit. The recovered anchors are generally sold again at a price of about twopence a pound, which is a halfpenny under the market price for new anchors.

Dining 18DG the deaths of 188 persons over 00 years of a^c—fourteen of tlicm being over 100—were recorded in Great liritain nnd Ireland. It if ti somewhat curious circumstance that the average longevity is greater in Scotland than it is in England find greater in Ireland than in Scotland, the birth-rate being largest in England and least in Ireland.

The depth to which the sun's rays penetrate water lias heen recently determined by the aid of photograpliy. It has bei'ii found lliat at a depth of o.'iiift tho darkness was, to nil interns and purposes, the same as that on a dear but moonless night. Sensitive plates exposed at this depth fur n considerable length of time gave no evidence of lightllctioil,

Tho web of the Madagascar spider is about to be utilised for tho purposes of sill; manufacture. A French iiiitnialisl, 11. (Janiholle, has recently ascertained that the spider produces at the beginning of its work more than 100 yards of thread per hour, increasing the quantity until it produces more than 100 yards per hour. Special winding machines are already boitig sent to the island.

At Prague, in Austria, no fewer than nine priests have been sentenced to from liftc-e:i days' to two months' imprisonment, and to pay heavy lines, for having acted illegally dining the last election, at which scandalous scenes were enacted, several priests being arrested ou the spot, while those who took to flight were pursued by Socialists, who stormed the buildings in which they took refuge.

A naturalist of eminence makes the following calculations in regard to the work done by the honey-bee: When the weather is line a worker cau visit Irom 40 to 80(lowers in six or ten trips, and collect n grain of nectar. If it visits 200 and 400 llowers, it will gather live grains. It would, therefore, take it several years to manufacture :i pound of honey, which would till about 3000 cells."