All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 28 April 1910, Page 678

All Sorts

An offender never pardons. The path of virtue is the path of peace. The truest jests sound worst in guilty ears. They need much whom nothing will content. They must hunger in frost who will not work in heat. During the nineteenth century sixteen islands disappeared and fifty-two rose from the sea through volcanic action. Mrs. Jaysmith; ‘What are you reading, Lou?’ Miss Jaysmith: ‘Pope’s poems, ma.’ Mrs. Jaysmith: ‘ Are they the poems of the present Pope or the last?’ The largest bed of salt in the world is said to have been discovered. at Fort McMurray, Manitoba. It is 200 feet deep, and extends for 300 miles. Tigers will readily take to the water ; panthers and leopards, on the contrary, decidedly object to it. A leopard has a great aversion to wet his feet; tigers are good swimmers. Mrs. Malaprop sometimes hits the nail on the head. It rained in torrents as she left church one Sunday morning lately without an umbrella. - ‘How irrigating this is!’ she cried. Mrs. Boardem ; How do you find the chicken soup, Mr. Boarder?’ Mr. Boarder: ‘I have no difficulty in finding the soup, madam, but I am inclined to think the chicken will prove an alibi.’ Mother (at lunch): ‘ Yes, darling, these little sardines are sometimes eaten by the larger fish.’ Mabel (aged five); ‘But,-mamma, how do they get the cans open?’ ‘ My doctor ordered a trip to Europe for me.’ ‘And you took it?’ ‘ No. He presented his bill and took a trip to Europe himself.’ The Lady (to hero who had risked his life to save her little dog from a watery grave, and looks for some reward): ‘ Poor fellow, how wet and cold you are! You must be soaked through to the skin. Here — I’ll give you some quinine pills; take a couple now, and two more in an hour’s time.’ Lawyer: ‘You say you left home on the tenth?’ Witness: ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And came back on the twenty-fifth?’ ‘ Yes, sir.’‘What were you doing in the interim?’ ‘ Never was in such a place.’ A farmer, noted for his absent-mindedness, went to town one day and transacted his business with the utmost precision. He started on his way home, however, with the firm cojivictiou that he had forgotten something, but what it was he could not recall. As he neared the home the conviction increased, and three times he stopped his horse and went carefully through his pocket-book in a vain endeavor to discover what he had forgotten. In due course he reached home, and was met by his daughter, who looked at him in surprise, and exclaimed, ‘ Why, father, where have you left mother?’ ‘ A dinosaur has been found in Wyoming which is something more than a fossil skeleton. The very skin has been preserved, so that paleontologists are at last able to determine definitely the character of the hide that covered one of the world’s greatest extinct animals. Needless to say, the American Museum of Natural History has acquired this valuable relic. The animal must have died on some dry, sandy spot, exposed to the sun, so that thv; carcase was mummified. Then it must have been suddenly buried by a flood of sand from a freshet, so rapidly and deeply that the skin had no chance to soften and decay, but was preserved and petrified . with the bones. The walrus is a real monster of the deep. It is now seldom found outside the Arctic Circle, although there are evidences that it once inhabited British waters; and the skull.of one was found in the peat at Ely, thus proving that it ascended the rivers. In appearance it bears a slight resemblance to the seal, but it grows much larger. It has an external ear passage, though no external ears, very thick, bristly whiskers, and the upper canine teeth are developed into enormous tusks of hard ivory, which are put to many practical uses during life, and after death are much valued for the ivory. These long tusks, bristly whiskers, small bloodshot eyes, and great size, led to strange and awful stories being told of the walrus by the early explorers of the Arctic seas, but Captain Cook described them ‘as harmless beings, which followed the ships from sheer curiosity. They lie in' herds on the ice like elephantine pigs, and dive to the sea bottom in search of food, such as clams, cuttle-fish, seaweed, etc. The long tusks help the - walrus' to climb on the ice. Walruses are now scarce, but as they are only hunted for the sake of their ivory, there is a chance that they may not be killed off altogether.*.- - -