MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 350, 22 January 1903, Page 6

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

' The first balloon ascent took place in 1783. In ls7l there were 1,208 'buses in London. There are now 3.200. Ireland ha» 103 members in the bouse of commons, while Scotland, with a larger population, has only 72. England has a yearly surplus of Mrths over death* of 369,000; Scotland. 51,000; Ireland., of 27,000. The shipping- trade along' the Central American coasts is to a large extent in German hands. English imports of bacon and ham have grown from 000.000 to 6.000,000 hundredweight in the last 30 years. For mountain-climbing camels are rery inefficient and seldom used in Abyssinia and other mountainous countries. The figure 9, which came into the calendar on January 1, 1869, will stay there 111 years from that date, or until December 31; 19U9. For Vermont the enumerators report :»3.109 farms; in ISSO there were :;.>,522, and in 1890. 32,573. The number of farms in 1900 is 53G in excess of that of 1690, and 2,413 less than in ISB.O. A photographer of Zurich has invented ;ui apparatus with which he asserts he has taken photographs of comparatively small objects at great distances. He claims recently to have made telcophotographs at a distance of 120 miles.