All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 26 July 1906, Page 38

All Sorts

Book printing in colors w a s begun by Faust in 1455 in an effort to imitate the illumined letters in the manuscripts. The earliest books printed were intended to resemble hand-made writings. It is said that the cross mark instead of a signature did not originate in ip,noranoe. It was always appended to signatures in mediaeval times as an attestation of good faith. The phrase ' almighty dollar ' was first used, so far as known, by Washington Irving. It has since passed into gene, al emplo> incut to indicate the worship of wealth. Twenty years ago 50 per cent, of eases of amputation terminated fatally, but under the modern system of antiseptic surgery the danger of this operation has been so far reduced that the rate of mortality does not now exceed from 5 to 12 per cent, of the number of cases. At the reception of Chinese Commissioners at Cambridge University, whin honorary degrees were conferred upon them, it was stated that the l amforidge University possessed the finest library of Chinese books in the West. A Wellington resident (says the ' Post 'j who recently explored the north on a holiday jaunt, has returned with a story which goes to prove that the Maori as well as the Japanese can improve on European examples. The wily native once went around the country as the henchman of a professional boxer, and when the partnership was broken he returned to his village and set up as a teacher in the art of self-defence ' No charge money,' he said, and it seemed that he was a prince of philanthropists, purely beirE on improving the physique of young manhood merely out of brotherly love. Yet his school kept the plumpness on his cheeks and set in his eye the light of a well-nourished man. I charge no money,' he confessed. ' loun.a; fellow come to my school, want to learn the box. f " teach him— chargo nothing. By-and-b) c that young fellow get big idea, think he lick me one hand, challenges me. I make myself look afraid, hul make bet £5. He box me, we make a lot of fuss long time. Then I have something up my sleeve '—the Maoii put his left hand on his right biceps and made a swinging gesture—' ami he co out I take the £5.' The first lighthouse e\er erected for the benefit of mariners is believed to be that built by the famous architect Sostratus, by command of Ptolemy Philadelphia, King of Egypt. It was built near Alexandria on an island called Pharos, and there was expended upon it about eight hundred talents, or o\er £20(1,000. Ptolemy has been much commended by some ancient writers for his liberality in allowing the architect to inscribe his name instead of his own. The inscription reads : ' Sostratus, son of Dpxiphanes, (o the protecting deities for the use of seafaring people.' This tower was deemed ond of the seven wondeis of the world anS was thought of sufficient grandeur to immortalise the builder It appears from Lucian, howe\er, that Ptolemy does not deserve any praise for his disinterestedness on this score or Sostratus for his honesty, as it is stated that the latter, to engross in after times the glory of the structure, caused the inscription with his own name to be carved in the marble, which he afterward covered with lime and thereon put the kind's name In process of time the lime decayed, and the inscription on the marble alone remained. The word encyclopaedia, literally meaning a circular or complete education, implied originally the whole group of studies taken up by Greek youth in preparation or active life, or what is now generally termed the liberal curriculum. The first worts of the kind were rather comprehensive, all-round text-books than books of reference such as modem encyclopaedias have become The earliest of such works to be compiled is said to have been that of a disciple of Plato, Spensippus who died B.C. 339. The first of the Roman Encyclopaedists was Marcus Terentius Vajro, who died about 27 B.C. One of the most famous of the encyclopaedias in. the first ages of the Christian era was that of Isidore Bishoo of Seville. It was complete in twenty books, but in the ninth century it was re-arran-ged m twenty-two books by another ecclesiastic Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz. In the thirteenth century a Dominican friar, Vincent of BeauvaS^compiled the most important of all early encyclopaedias, his 'Speculum Majlis.' He said he called it a mirror speculum) because it reflected everything worthy of notice in the visible and invisible worlds— as in fact it