INTERESTING ITEMS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 466, 18 May 1912, Page 3

INTERESTING ITEMS.

■■ Science takes giant strides in these days. Timbuctoo, it is announced, is to be linked up with the rest of the world with wireless telegraphy. An itinerant fruit-vendor in the streets of Berlin makes his rounds with a small motor-car, and, thanks to his enterprise,, does a very good trade. Flies are not the only things found in amber. In a big mass of clear amber, dredged up out of the Baltic Sea, there was distinctly visible in its interior a small squirrel—fur, teeth and claws intact. An ornithologist who has given much study to the subject states that the longing on the part of a bird to migrate is a fever in the blood, which works itself off in a fortnight or so if the bird be unable to leave with its congeners. The green ants of Australia make nests by bending leaves together and uniting them with a kind of glue, hundreds having been seen on one leaf drawing it to the ground, while an equal number waited to receive hold, and fasten it. A husband in Finland has no claim to anything earned by his wife, who may, moreover, by ants-nuptial agreements, retain all she has as well as all she may acquire, and may reserve to herself the privilege of managing her property and its income.

It is one of. the hopeful signs for the future —and one which those who have analysed democracy and described its perils have not sufficiently appreciated that it responds promptly and unmistakably to those who speak to it, not in veiled flattery, about rights, but in appeals to do one's duty.—"Times."