GENERAL INFORMATION.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 435, 31 January 1912, Page 7

GENERAL INFORMATION.

The best way to reach perfection, suggests a cynic, is to follow the adrice which we give to others. Kissing is now prohibited at French railway stations. It is blamed for having kept the trains late ! An American humorist thinks broth should be very good to-day—there are so few capable cooks to spoil it. A hero or a genius, or both, declares a philosopher, is the man who guesses right most of the time, and then docs it. Oh, Jerusalem ! Seven-tenths of the articles and souvenirs sold to tourists in the Holy City are said to come from Germany. An Edinburgh cabman has been asked to find £5 caution for making a practical protest against a taxi-cab by cutting its tyres. The rubber boom has had curious ramifications. Brazil nuts are up 11/ a cwt., because of the displacement of labour on the plantations. The factory chimney may now be considered doomed. Mechanical draught is stated by an engineer tc cost only one-sixth as much as chimney draught. By the various simple contrivances composing the modern umbrella, some half-dozen persons have divided among them more than £2,000, 000. The highest lakes in the -world arc in the Himalayas, in Thibet, where there are some bodies of water as high as 20,000 ft. above the level o' the sea. The finest specimen of engraved gem now in existence is a bead ol Nero carved on a first-water diamond by the brothers Castanzi in the year 1790. Coke-making is first recorded ir July, 1C56, by Sir John Evelyn, whe writes in his diary of a "new project cf charring sea coal to burn out the sulphur and render it sweet." A fly will lie motionless at a temperature of freezing point, begin tc crawl at 53 cleg., to buzz and fly at GBdeg. : 113 deg. of dry heat wil usually kill a fly in a short time. The pulse of a new-born infant beats 130 or 140 times a minute ; oi a man from twenty-cne to sixty, 70 or 75 a minute ; in old age betweer 75 and 85 times. If all the factories in Lancashire should work day and night, prcduc ing 155,000,000 miles of thread every twelve hours (the usual output o one day), it would take them 20C years to spin a thread long cnougt to reach from the earth to the nearest of the fixed stars. The surface of the sea is estimated at 150,000,000 square miles, taking the whole surface of the globe at 107,000,000, and its greatest deptl: supposedly equals the height of tin highest mountain,, or four miles. Tin Pacific Ocean covers 78,000,000 square niles, the Atlantic 25,000,000, the Mediterranean 1,000,000. A man weighs less at noon and midnight than at sunrise or sun.-et, at the time of new moon an 1 fub noon, owing to the moon's anl sun's attraction then acting to >cther. In fact, he is subject to the same force which causes the tides. The wonderful glistening materia 1 :; in ladies' shops that look so like silk, and yet which cannot be silk seeing the price they are sold at, an among the knowing ones styled "art.ficial silk." The demand for artificial silk is attaining enormous proportions. The basis of such silk is wood pulp. Cotton has proved satisfactory for the purpose, a't':o'igl the cost has been a serio is drawback. Apart from these materials, any substance susceptible of chemical conversion into cellulose is available for the manufacture of the art: ficial silk, and experiments will be conducted to develop the possibilities. The most luxurious prison in Ui. world is in Japan, about fifteen miles from Tokio. In the midst of gar dens, where flourish medlars an: cherry-trees, where arc seen ornamental ponds with water-lilies, a:i-<cs this palatial prison. The cells avc spacious and airy. The HOitine throughout is by electricity, ml tin apartments arc furnished luxuriously Bath-rooms with marl le i at lis art provided, hot and cold water l:;-in: laid on. There arc dressing an: reading-rooms, and nothing seems wanting to make the sojourn in this prison pleasant. In fact, it is mere like a country residence than a pri 800,