All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 20, 16 May 1907, Page 38

All Sorts

According to recently compiled figures, a .locomotive engine earns annually on an average in England £4452, in Scotland £4654, and in Ireland £4448. On the premises of a brick-dnakfrig firm situated- on the Surrey Canal, North Camberwell, the kiln fire has never been permitted to go out since it was first set alight, a 'hundred years ago. Judge— Have you anything to offer the court before / sentence is passed upon you ? Prisoner"— No, sir. My lawyer"lhas took everything I had. Magistrate : ' Have I not seen -you twice before under the influence of liquor ? ' Prisoner : ' If you were in ■ that condition, your honor, you probably did see me twice.' - ' Oh, my friends, there are some "spectacles that one, never forgets !" exclaimed the lecturer, after describing graphically a violcano in eruption. •>' •' -I'd like to taow where they sell them I , ' said an old lady in the audience, who is constantly mislaying her" glasses. ' Mendelssohn began to compose in his twelfth year, and so methodical were his habits even then- that the manuscript volumes containing his''own scores of his wiQrks are in an unbroken series .until his death. There are forty-four of these great volumes.. Little Harold" s mother looked very severe as she said : ' I shall have to tell your father what a naughty tuoy you've been to-day.' ' Oh, mothe-,' said Harold, ' can't you keep a secret better than that 1 \ _ Carrier pigeons are put to novel use in, a thinly settled district in. the north of Scotland. On long rounds a doctor ta/tes several pigeons with him,- -and when a prescription is to be filled at once he sends a message to his surgery, where an attendant prepares and forwards' the medicine. If a patient- is liable to need an *ex,tra call a pigeon is left to send for the doctor. Experienced doctor to young medico— l'll give you a tip, -my 'boy: always he careful to ask your > patient 1 what ihe 'has for dinner. Young medico— l see, so that I may be able to tell him what to eat, and what to avoid, and so on. Experienced doctor— Not at all ; so that you may be able to know what to charge him when you send in your Mil. . .- ' • ' Details of the new railroad, which will cut through the Bernese Alps and form a connection with the Simplon at Brig,ue, show that the length of the line will be thirty-five miles, which will include a tunnel through Lotschberg nearly eight and a half miles long. The cost " of the scheme is estimated at over £3,000,000. The line will tafre five' and" a half years to construct, and will make the journey from Calais to northern Italy fifty-two miles less than that through- the Simplon. • A record- time for converting* grain into bread has been established by a Canadian farmer. Wheat , which was in the sheaf at three o'clock in the afternoon was made into scones before six. When operations began a wagon stood in the bam with about half a load of grain in the sheaf. Beside it was a thresher ; connected with this was a gasoline engine. The engine was started, the sheaves were fed into the thresher, andj the grain was deposited in a bin. The power'was then transferred to the cleaner, and the work' of changing the newly-threshed wheat into flour was quickly carried- through. The rest of the task was easy. Some interesting particulars on the routes taken by birds . are supplied by a naturalist contributor to ttoe 1 Scotsman.' The routes by which birds pass to and fro from one country to another- in spring and autumn. 1 are regularly followed. One great -thoroughfare, of course, is in the spring from south to north, and conversely in the :< autumn from north to south ; another is south-east to north-west ; a third south-west to north-east, -with the return to the same startingjpoints. The great southern wintering region is south " of the north of Africa. All migratory birds have not the same range g some fly longer, some shorter,, distances. The test known of all the birds "of passage, the swallow, has one of the longest ranges— from 7000 to 10,000 miles. In iMs extended range are also, included such birds as the grey plover, the knot, the pectoral, and curlew sand-pipers, and the Asiatic golden plover ft