All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 28 July 1910, Page 1202

All Sorts

- Horseflesh in Germany sometimes fetches 7d a pound. No English prison governor’s salary is higher than £7OO ft year. Quebec’s forest lands cover an area of over a hundred million acres. The Chinese made paper from silk 120 years before the Christian era. . Mar™°vaf7T8 t 5,000 ° “ nada a year ago las Rents of working-class dwellings are about 25 per cent, lower in Belgium than in England. . The Daily Chronicle says ; ‘ The tallest men taking part in the procession in the King’s funeral were the members of the Dublin Police Force. Even the shortest of this contingent was Oft 2in in height.’ The six States of the Commonwealth are indebted to the large sum of £250,000,000. It is believed that if one borrowing authority (Federal) were alone allowed to go to the Home market better terms could be received. Little Margie (after watching her small brother devouring several large sections of chocolate cake): Mamma isn t it funny how much larger Jimmy really is than he appears to be from the outside?’ Sportsman (to Snobson, who hasn’t brought down a single bird all day): Do you know Lord Peckham?’ bnobson :• Oh, dear, yes I’ve often shot at his house.’ Sportsman ; ‘ Ever hit it ?’ Beggar: ‘Sir, I am starving.’ Croesus: ‘ Here, take this penny, and tell me how you became so miserably poor.’ Beggar. ‘ Ah, sir, I was like you. I was too fond of giving away large sums of money to the poor.’ .. Mr. He Seiner (on being introduced to Adored One’s Mother): Pardon me, madam, but have we not met before? lour face seems strangely familiar.’ Adored One’s Mother: ‘Yes; I am the woman who stood up in the tramcar the other day while you sat reading a paper.’ Widower (to his ten-year-old daughter): ‘Do you know, 1 anny, that-your governess is going to get married?’ Fanny: ‘lam so glad to get rid of the hateful thing. 1 was afraid she was never going to leave us. Who is she going to marry?’ Widower: ‘Me.’ Mistress: ‘Mercy! What a kitchen! Every pot, pan, and dish is dirty, the table looks like a rag shop, and Why, it will take you a week to get things cleared up, What on earth have you been doing?’ Servant: ‘Sure, mum,- the young leddies has just been down here showing mo how they roast a potato at the cooking school. " The self-made man wrote his name in the hotel register, remarking in a grandiloquent manner, ‘ I’m one of those chaps who always pay as they go.’ ‘Any luggage?’ queried the clerk, as he swung the book around. ‘No ’ answered the other. ‘Then,’ rejoined the clerk, ‘you are one of those chaps who are expected to pay as they come. Eight shillings, please.’

Through the good offices of a powerful American residing in Paris an ambitious young girl from out West obtained an audience with the late Constant Coquelin, of the Comedie Francaise, who graciously consented to hear her recite. •- After listening to a classic or two, the great French actor went up to the young aspirant for histrionic honors, and placed his hand on her head, as' in benediction. ‘My dear child,’ said he; ‘marry soon. Good-bye.’ No one can watch a spider constructing his web without noting the methodical and almost prescient manner in which he sets to work, and the question arises: How he has learned his trade? To this, we fear, there is only the unsatisfactory and unsatisfying answer: ‘By instinct.’ The power of making webs can bo acquired neither by imitation nor by experiment, for a young spider will spin a beautiful web in the dark and without practice. Whether in days long since the early spiders acquired the art through long practice and much failure, and have handed on the knowledge to their descendants as a kind of ancestral memory, or,- whether it may not be that after all these instincts are properties in the very nature of the organs associated with them, we cannot tell. The most careful inquiries into the nature of instinct seem but to deepen the mystery. Yet one thing seems very clear in the case of the spider and his web, and that .is that, to begin with, the web was not a weapon of destruction, but a cradle in which to hatch and rear the young. That was in the golden age, before nature - became, ‘red in tooth and claw with rapine.’ Then some more intelligent spider, probably of indolent disposition, must have noticed that small flies and other spider delicacies often got entangled in the lines of the nest, and saved him the trouble of going forth and catching his prey in a sportsmanlike manner. The conclusion to be dra\yn was obvious to his dawning intelligence.