All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 16 March 1911, Page 502

All Sorts

-—' "..,.,♦ ~- ;,.;' _/ v ! . Volapuk, one of the most pretentions attempts at a universal language, was introduced early in the eighties. The United States surpasses all Europe in the manufacture of paper, its production amounting to 1,330,000 According to careful estimates, three hours of close study wear out the body more than a whole day of hard physical exertion. What's the biggest interest you ever had to pay on a loan?' 1 When I borrowed trouble.' Contributor: 'What has become of that poem, "The turtle dove," 1 sent you ' # . . Editor: 'l've placed it in a pigeon-hole.' According to a French scientist, the rays from incandescent lights are beneficial to human health, destroying bacteria, stimulating circulation and cellular activity and reducing pain. 'They say/ Mrs. Oldcastle remarked, 'that he has made a study of occultism,' 'Has he?' replied her hostess, as she straightened the 900 dollar rug. He's about the last man I'd pick out for ,an eye doctor.' ' So there's another rupture of Mount Vociferous,' said Mrs. Partington, as she put on her specs. The paper tells us about the burning lather running down the mountain, but it don't tell how it got a-fire.' 'What a beautiful costume, dear!' Do you like it?' ' Oh, my dear, I love it! _ It's just too hideously fashionable for words!' And it was. Teacher: ' Now, Tommy, suppose you had two apples and you gave another boy his choice of them. You would tell him to take the bigger one, wouldn't you?' Tommy: 'No, mum.' Teacher: Why?' * ' Tommy: 'Cos 'twouldn't be necessary.' Sidney was walking on the beach with , his Uncle John one day, when his uncle told him that if he could find two pebbles exactly alike he would give him a dollar. Full of glee, Sidney began searching. By and by he ran to his uncle, crying, ' O Uncle John, I've found one of them !' ... It is estimated by the census and statistics branch that at the close of the last fiscal year, on March 31, the population of Canada was 7,489,781. Next June it is expected to be over 8,000,000. Quebec, as estimated, has a population of 2,154,034, as compared with 1,648,898 in 1901. Ontario is estimated at 2,687,801, as compared with 2,182,917 ten years ago. Sausage has even from very early times been a popular table delicacy. Aristophanes was familiar with it, and in Roman clays the sausages of Lucania were in high esteem. They were made from pork, flavored with bay leaves and other things more familiar. Bologna was celebrated for its sausages long before the German sausage had even thought of invading the rest of the world, and until quite lately it was commonly called in England a ' polony.' In jumping human beings are backward. Rougnly speaking, a jump six feet high and twenty feet long is » man't limit. ' A red deer has been known to clear a wall ten feet high, the chamois can do at least a foot better, while the springbok of South Africa will shoot up ten feet in the air just tor the fun of the thing. Some of the beasts of prey are wonderful athletes. The black jaguar, for instance, can reach a branch fourteen feet from the ground. The greatest jumper; of course, is the kangaroo. It can leap with ease a width of from fifty to sixty feet. The record cleared by a horse is thirty-seven feet, while the ostrich, in running, often clears from twenty-three to twenty-five feet at a stride.

The volcanoes of the Mediterranean and of the Eastern and Western Coasts of Africa, are all situated on a line and all. the volcanoes of the world have this remarkable linear arrangement. It is as though they were situated on lines of weakness in the earth's crust, where great' fissures had allowed of the escape of the pent-up forces from within. Another remarkable feature in connection with volcanoes is their proximity to the great ocean basins. All the Continental volcanoes lie along the coast line, and the islandic ones are of course situated in the midst of water. This relation of volcanoes to the sea is very suggestive when we remember that the explosive violence of a volcanic eruption is due to the escape of highly-heated , steam; in fact, in a sense a volcanic eruption is like a steam-boiler bursting. The popular conception that a volcano is a burning hill is erroneous, for fire does not occur during an eruptive discharge, neither is there any smoke. What has been mistaken for flame is the glow of the molten lava,, and the dust mingled with steam at a distance looks like smoke. A volcano need not be a hill at all; it is essentially a fissure, through which superheated steam, fragments of rock, and lava are discharged with explosive violence, - .. ,