NEW, ODD, INTERESTING.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 734, 6 January 1915, Page 3

NEW, ODD, INTERESTING.

Half of the coffee consumed throughout the entire world is supplied by Brazil. Milliners do not prosper in Mexico. Nearly every woman in that country goes bareheaded. An American can-making, factory produces 42,000 different kinds of tin articles in a year. Among every 1000 bachelors there are 38 criminals, while among married men the ratio is only 18 per 1000. At Quito, the only city in the world on the line of-the equator, the sun e'ets and rises at six oclock the year rouad. The Chinese have a' god for every ■ disease, even for childhood's afflictions,, like the mumps and measles. Men attending the pans in salt works are never known to have cholera, smallpox, scarlet fever, of influenza.When it is completed, thei great Siberian Railway will be the longest in the world. During- last year 41,620 book's were published in Japan, whilst Germany, the most bookish of European nations, had only 31,281 volumes to.her credit, Tha heaviest motor truck yet construe! Ed has been introduced in the French army. "With its trailer, it has a carrying capacity of twenty tons. Asphalt was known to the ancients, and is said to have been employed as a bindcK in masonry by the Babylon-, ians.

A recently invented safe that will float in caso of shipwreck is a steel cylinder divided into 'two compartments, one air-tight, the other to hold valuables.

Meat inspectors in Berlin are employing- tbo cinematograph in their work.' They produce enlarged photographs which show micro-organisms in motion if the meat is diseased.

The black apes of Guinea have long silky hair, and their fur is used for muffs and.oapcs. During the last eight years one million seventy-five thousand skins have been shipped to Paris.

Thirty-two years ago women were admitted to the Massachusetts Bar to practise as lawyers on an equality with men. To-day of the two thousand 21'ght hundred lawyers in the Boston Directory only sixty are women.

There has recently been erected in Galveston a five-storey concrete •buttling, the concrete being made of oystershells from the reefs of Galveston. This material" is,said to be better ind made with grayel^. [,.■■' : ' }? "■.'■'

_ the eye is.'a strong ■solvent*!'-. Many- persons"' have gone: to bed troubled; with aforeign,substance in the eye and' have awakened in the -mprniagfto find it gone. In many cases of this kind the foreign matter has been dissolved by the moisture of the eye.

In Berlin the firemen wear waterjackets with a double skin, which tbey nr'e able to fill with water from the hose. If the space between the two layers becomes overfilled the water escapes through a valve at the top of the helmet, and flows down fire- ' ■'■■■■ , r man like a cascade, protecting bim doubly. '.'..''

The" cotton handkerchiefs supplied to Trench soldiers have printed upon them a number of sanitary precepts to be observed on the march and during e. campaign, " and are further decorated with pictures of officers of all grades, so that a French private can tell at a glance to what grade any officer he may see belongs.

Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in the world, at the gateway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, nor has a population—decidedly cosmopolitan —of more than twelve thousand..lt is listed as one of the big wool shipping ports, and sends out something like sixteen million pounds a season. It is well lighted by electricity, has waterworks, two theatres, is well supplied with schools, and has quite a number of public buildings.

In Servia and Montenegro many blind, lame, or crippled minstrels earn a comfortable living by travelling from town to town with the ancient onestringed lute and singing to the peasant of the deeds of their fathers and the ancient glory of Servia. From the fourteenth century to the present day every national hero has been immortalised m verse by humble versifiers. The authors of this wealth of epic poetry must for ever remain unknown.

The origin of the salt in the sea is usually attributed to the constant washing- of salts from the land by rainand rivers, and the gradual depositing of them in the sea through' evaporation. In every one hundred parts i>? sea-water there are about two and a half parte of salt. It has been computed that there are four and a.half trillion cubic miles of rock salt in. the oceans—fourteen and a half times, the bulk of th> Continent of Europeh^tovo.