All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 18, 7 May 1908, Page 38

All Sorts

Over sixty miles of tunnel been cut .out of the rock of. Gibraltar. ...

Jean Francois. Millet, painter- of ' The Angelus ' was a farm laborer, the son of a small farmer.-

Never in the history of the English Parliament have the full number of members .been present at one sitting.

William Shakespeare was the son of a glover ml a little country town ; both his^ grandfathers were husbandmen. Gibraltar is the smallest British possession. It measures less than two square miles. Canada is the biggest, with 3,746,000 square miles. '

In Russia an extensive domestic Industry consists of the manufacture of wooden spoons, of which as many as 30,000,000 are made annually. They are nearly all of birch wood. . . *

It is stated on German authority that • the astound-" tng number of two million glass eyes' are made "every year in Germany and Switzerland, while one French house ' manufactures three hundred, thousand of them' annually.

George Stojihenson, the inventor of the locomotive, was the son of a fireman at a colliery, and -began life as his father's helper. • ■ . * . - "

No other nation in the woxld owns so much absolutely useless territory as the British. Banks Land Ponce Albert Land, Victosia and Baffin Land, with hundreds of other Areific islands and ' lands, are at present q,u'ite 'useless.

Numbers. of -experiments have been made 'to test the^ speed and destination of ' corked bottles thrown into the sea at various portions af the world. The most remarkable example ever heard of was that in which a bottle travelled 6000 miles in about two years and a half ; roughly, at the rate of G£ miles a day.

The Japanese House of Representatives consist© of 300 members, elected by ballot, each member receiving a salary. Its House of Peers consists of members of the royal family, princes and marquises, counts, viscounts,, and barons elected as representatives of the several .orders, and persons , elected for seven years by and from the fifteen highest taxpayers in each city and prefecture. ,

' Oh, yes,' she said proudly, ' we can trace our ancestry back to— to— well, I don'jfc know who, but we've been descending for centuries.'

Tommy— Pa, what is the difference between fame and notoriety ? Tommy's Pa— Notoriety lasts longer ■mv son. ° ' 3 ''Mamma, have I got to take a bath to-nigjut'? » 1 m afraid you have, my dear.' ' But I Haven't done anything all the week to deserve it.' .It takes, it seems, 4,000,000 ft of roses to 'produce the yearly output of perfumery in the Maritime Alps and to ■ obtain lib of the essence of roses 22 000 ft of . roses, or nearly 3,000,000 single rose blossoms, are required. About 3d per ft is paid 7l for roses, 5d to 6d per ft for orange blossom. A pound of jasmine costs about four times as much as a pound of roses. Regarding the number of pounds of flowers annually consumed it is impossible to give- exact figures, but it is esrtil mated that there is used * every year 3,600 COOft of orange flowers, 4,800,0001 b of roses, 280,000 ft of violets about double that amount of jasmine, 14, 0Cj0 of tuberoses, 60,000 ft of cassia, and' 3o,oooft of -jonquils, -

on Protestant .Church extension in Boston, and the changes in that'fcity's population, the Congregationalism ' under ihe.\fttle,--Urelandsnas taken Boston,' says:— Of Boston's 595,380,^ i#aJ)itanVs, '410,965 considerably more than- two r thirdsv ate- of foreign} parentage. The Irish alone are 174-.770, within iess " than 10,000 as many as. the native-born. Americans'.- 'In eleven of the twenty-five wards the Irish are 'in the majority. Italians are in the majority in Ward 6, and Russians In Ward 8. Catholics fat outnumber Protestants. _ t .Jews are numerous and constantly increasing. In the next generation probably supremacy of '"the Irish .will pass to the Slav and the Greek, with immd--'grants from other countries of Southern Europe. For Ireland now sends only a small fraction of the newcomers to" ' Massachusetts,' while* ' Slavs, Italians, and : Greeks' ate"Mn<sreas. ing much faster? than cither -Germans or Scandinavians. . .