All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6, 11 February 1909, Page 238

All Sorts

It is a remarkable fact that the deepest parts of tlia sea are in most cases very near the land. A whale is ,able to remain under water for an hour and a half. /In the reign of Queen Anne there was a tax of £28 per ton on soap. . , The cross mark instead of a signature did not originate in "ignorance. It was always appended to signatures in" medieval times as an attestation of good faith. A petition 7J miles long, containing 750,000 signatures, was recently presented to the House of Commons. It was so long that it had to be split into 35 sections, and convoyed to the House in a lorry. When a Chinese boy baby is a year old he is placed in a big sieve, together with money scales, a foot measure-, a pair of shears, a brass mirror, -a: pencil, ink, and books. The article he grabs first is considered a symbol of his future proclivities. A traveller making his way through an impoverished section of Ireland was moved to ask this question of a native: 'What do the people round here live on, Pat?' The answer was : ' Pigs, sir, mainly, and tourists in the summer. 5 'If you do not take "care of your money,' said the ant to the grasshopper, 'the world will simply sneer, arid ask what you did with it.' ' Yes ; and if I invest it and become rich, the world will sneer and ask me where _£. got it.' ' Madam, are you a woman suffragist ?' ' No, sir ; I haven't time to-be.' ' Haven't , time ! Well, if you had the privilege of voting, whom would you support P' ' The same man I have supported for the last ten years — my husband.' . ' " x A mule once drew a heavy load up a steep hill; when he had almost reached the top he -kicked himself loose, and the load rolled down the hill. .That mule had to go back and draw the same load to the top of the same hill again. There are lots of mules in the world. Ponder and be wise. Edmond Thery, in his- Economic Progress in France, declares that the total wealth of the nation is divided among its inhabitants more equally than is the case in any other nation. The reports of the savings institutions show that there are nearly 2,000,000 persons in the Republic having deposits of- £400 each, and 4,000,000 having £200 each. Government, postal banks were established by France in 1881, and have encouraged the habit of thrift. A treatise on sheep, published in the early ' eighties ' of the last century, says that, although with the exception of man and the dog, no animal has a wider geographical jrange than the sheep, extending as it does from Iceland almost to the equator, and from a few degrees south of that to the polar extremity of South America, it must not be inferred that it can come to perfection in them all. It delights in the temperate zone, and can evidently only attain the highest excellence in N the countries of the vine. Also, better sheep are produced in the western parts of continents than in the eastern,- and better "in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. A French statistician who has been searching records calculates that there is one newspaper published for every 82,000 inhabitants of the known world. In Europe Germany heads the list with 5500 newspapers, of which 800 are published daily. England comes next with 3000 newspapers, of which 809 are dailies, and then comes France with 2819 newspapers, of wliich only one-fourth are published twice or thrice a week. Italy comes fourth with 1400 papers, and' is" followed by Austria-Hungary, Spain, Russia, Greece, and Switzerland, the last having 450 -newspapers. Altogether Europe has about 20,000. "newspapers. There are 12*500 newspapers published in the United States; about 1000 of them are published daily, and 120 are managed, edited, and published by negroes. In Asia there are 3000 periodical publications, of which the greater part appear in British India and Japan. The latter country publishes 1500 newspapers. Africa has only 120 newspapers, of which 30 are published in Egypt and the rest appear ia the various European colonies. , < , -_ .