Varieties.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 429, 4 August 1904, Page 3

Varieties.

NAMES WITHOUT VOWELS. places have carious names, W&m. k nfc apparently there is only one ffljJGk Piace which has a name without

any vowels That place is the little hamlet of Wb, near Paris. Ws being an unpronounceable same, the inhabitants of the hamlet have transferred it into 'd' Us,' but this change haa not been sanctioned legally, asd on all the c facial records, the name Ws still appears. So far as known, there is only one person in Europe whose name is without vowels. This is M- Srb, the mayor of Prague.

INEXHAUSTIBLE SHAKSPEARE. The inexhaustible Shakspeare can be made to afford a motto on any theme, and now he ie being used in an English prise competition to supply apposite quotations on questions of the day. That he can be made to do this with remarkable point was shown lately when, apropos of the penny pirated kerbstone edition of Kipling'a Barrack Room Ballads, a recest reader of Henry VI, part 11., quoted, Pirates may make cheap pennyworths oj their pillage.' This is as happily apposite as the quotation used many years ago by a wit who was asked to define 'treadmill' out of Shakspeare, and at once gave Leai's words, * Down, thou climbing sorrow.'

THE PRISON EDITOR. The prison editor became an important functionary in a Hewepapar office during the Second Empire in France. He. was a ragamuffin whose dntj it was to drop ia and ask if he had to go to prison. He had nothing to do with the paper except to suffer for its faults. His name blazad gloriously on the front page, while he fuddled himself is a convenient cabaret. Bat when the order went out for the arrest of the editor—he was the editor, and the paper proceeded calmly.

LIQUID SUNSHINB. A series of experiments recently given before Borne American engineers, showing the marvellons proparties of radium, was most suocessfal, When the room was darkened glasses containing ' liquid suushins' were passed round, and a professor explained ths exposition of the novel drink. Aggr&tt of esculia, a fluorescont cheisicW, waa dissolved in each 0 f water. In the glass was a tiny tube, containing a minute portion of radinm, which, aoting on the esonhn, caused the contents of the glass to glow in darkness. A toast to Science was drank in • liquid sunshine/

UNREHEARSED ACROBATICS. In the old days of sailing vessels part ot the English fleet happened to be in the Bay of Naples, and soma Neapolitan acrobats were allowed to come on board the flagship to amuse the sailors, They performed various wonderfel feats, and won great applause, when suddenly a bluejacket who had been up aloft, missed his hoid, and, falling from a great height, jast managed to save his life by catching on to different ropes, and eventually landed on deck on his feet. Walking up to the chief acrobat, he said, ' There !—— your eyes, can you do that P' -

THE KOBE AN TOP KNOT. Every Korean wears a fcop knot. The top knot is more to him than the pigtail to the Chiuataan. A royal edict which enforced hair cutting, issued in 1895. almost set the country aflame. To the Korean the top knot means nationality antiquity and Banctity. A Korean without the top knot, even if of maure age, is treated in the light of a nameless and irresponsible boy only. In a few cases the Korean to escape this Indignity (although too poor to support his family) scrapes together enough to pay for the top knot ceremonies and the hat and long coat which are their sequence j but in most cases the top kaot is only assumed on marriage, withont which the wearer has the title of 'a half, man* bestowed upon him.

THE LARGEST BLOWN BOTTLE. The largest blown glass bottle in tho world, so far as the makers know, is on exhibition in a window in Barclay Street, New Jersey. It holds sixty-fise gallons, and is shaped like a baby's bottle—narrow &% the bottom, bulging at the middle, with a small neck and mouth. It is a little less than five faet high, and is about fou? feet In circumference at its widest part. The man who blew it at the factory in New Jersey is, just about as tall as the bottle. I! he could manage.to equeezo through the neck he could sleep very comfortably inßide it. Although blown by guesswork, the man, from his long experience, exceeded only by half an ounce his iasfcructions as to tbe size of the bottle—-sixty-fi?e gallons. -■' :

The manager of the factory had read in a newspaper of a' hitherto ucaccomplished feat,' as alleged, of a blows bottle holding forty gallons, Ha accordingly had this sixty-five gallon bottle blown jast to show that his firm were still ia the running, for they had sent one holdi&g forty gallons to the Philadelphia Exhibition twenty-five years ago 1 He says he could blow a hundred-gallon bottle if ha had a place to put it in his window..

Pinned to & card at the base of the big bottle is the smallest bottle in the world, its appropriate running mate. It holds just four drops, and must be filled with a hypodermic syringe. It is so s mall that it has to be fastened against a jet-black background in order that persons looking in at the wiadow caa see it. More time was required to make the four-drop bottle than the sixty fi>ff gallon one.

WHY HE4ET SOUNDS DIFFER, Thelunga are somewhat like sponges, and ween filled with air in the normal healthy condition they are very resonant when a doctor percusses the cheat. This resonance may itself ; indicate disease, when to any extent exaggerated, for then a state of 'emphysema'* is present, the little air chambers of tha lung being overdistended. Aathmstical people, players of wind instruments, glass- blowers, and otherß very easily acquire this condition. In other instances, instead of normal or exaggerated resonance, the physician, when he strikes, detects e certain degree of dnlaess, which he speaks of aa comparative j it is dne to several small areas of lung substance having become solid, but which are separated from each other by perfectly normal lung containing air. In this condition the whole lung cannot be as perfectly filled with-air aa it should be on aooouut of these little solid patches; conaeqaently, _ the normal amount of resonance being diminished, the sound given out on tapping the cheßfc will be one ofoomparativfrdulneaß,. . . ■» x