GENERAL INFORMATION.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 370, 17 June 1911, Page 2

GENERAL INFORMATION.

The greyhound appears on the oldest Egyptian monuments. Only domesticated dogs bark ; in the wild state they howl or whine. All Arctic dogs are provided with a i thick mat of wool under their hair. The chief supply of platinum comes from the Ural Mountains, in Russia. Soldiers in the Italian Army are allowed cigars as part of their daily rations. There are over GOO proverbs in the English language which relate to dogs. There are four times as many words in the English language as there are in the French. It is estimated that 150,000 persons in Germany earn their living in connection with music. Alligator eggs are eaten as a delicacy by the people of the West Indies. Eagles have been known to fly to a height of 6,000 feet. A lark will rise to the same height, and so will crows. As a rule, however, birds do aot fly at a greater height than say 1,000 feet. From 1-lb. of tubers, Mr. George White, of Ilkeston, has obtained a yield of 229 lb. of potatoes,, which constitutes a world's record. In Germany and Holland girls, are employed as clerks at the banks and hotels, as cashiers and bookkeepers at restaurants, and at railway stations as ticket clerks. Sometimes the colony of bees in a single hive will gather from fourteen to eighteen pounds of honey within twenty-four hours. The Japanese are an extremely tidy people, and fold, brush, and put away their cherished dresses with a neatness which would charm and teach even an English lady. The most violent thunderstorms in the world occur in French Guiana. The thunder there in an ordinary storm is almost deafening, while peal follows peal in quick succession. An inmate of an old woman's bouse near Vienna is Frau Katharina who is now in her one hundred and eleventh year. She was married at twenty, lived happily with her husband for seventy years, and reared her) ten children according to her own words, "in the fear of the Lord." Her husband was a tailor, who received about the Austrian equivalent of a shilling a day.

Many of the giant reptiles of long ago had enormous horns. The great lizard known as the triceratops had a big horn over each eye and a little one on its nose. The dinoceras and the tinoceras, gigantic mammals of the Tertiary epoch, had three pairs of prominences on their heads which are believed to have supported horns. However, the material of which horn is composed quickly decays, being largly composed of gelatine and other animal matter, so that these appendages are apt to be found absent when the fosil bones of beasts which had tbem are found.