MISCELLANEOUS EXTEACTS.

North Otago Times, Volume I, Issue 7, 7 April 1864, Page 5

MISCELLANEOUS EXTEACTS.

For some cause or other, weddings rye very bad for the eyes. The moment the knot is tied, the bride, bridesmaid, and two aunts and a mother rush into the " hall bedroom," and hare " a good cry " for hours together. Why a poor fellow's promise to pay " a young woman's board bill " Bhould operate thus on the " finer feelingß of our nature," puzzles us to divine. —American Paper. An editor in the Far West recently bought a race-horse, and on being asked what an editor could possibly want with such an animal, he replied that it was to be used in catcliing runaway subscribers. A pamphlet is just published which broaches the marvellous theory that " a man is what a woman makes him." According to the author's dictum, we presume that when a wife makes her husband a pudding, he is a pudding. An American chemist has lately discovered a fluid of such extraordinary cleansing powers that it will not only remove marks from all articles of dress, etc., but could even, it is asserted, take Staines out of Middlesex. Vegetable ivory, in contact with concentrated sulphuric acid, takes a splendid red colour, almost equal to magenta. At first it is pink, but gradually becomes deeper, until it attains a purple, when the acid has been allowed to act for 12 hours. It may be interesting to those who desire to live to a hundred, to know their chance. In England there have been 49 persons die during the last 100 years, aged from 134 to 175 years ; in Russia 1338 attained to more than 120 years. The highest age attained in France was 126, and one who lived to 118 had a son on marrying at 99. i j

Stbengthening Jelly fob an Invalid. —Two ounces of white sugar candy, one ounce of isenglass, one ounce of gum arabio ; put these ingredients into a basin, cover them with cold water, let it stand all night, the next morning put it on the fire and let it simmer until it all is dissolved. Then add one pint of port wine and boil it altogether Half an hour; strain it, and let the patient trie • table spoonful throe times a day.

Mr. Banting, a gentleman who has suffered for years from excessive corpulence, has contrived to bring himself down to a reasonable size. He had tried everything from excessive exercise to starvation, and everything failed ; till at last he took to living on animal food. This reduced his flesh rapidly, the fatness having been nourished by milk and farinaceous diet. Doctors are well aware that cream will cure excessive thinness almost as rapidly as cod-liver oil j a complaint more frequent and, to women especially, scarcely less annoying than over-fatness. Poultry, well cared for, pay by the eggs and manure produced. The secret of having eggs all the winter is, to give the hens the advantages of summer, viz., warmth, shelter, light, water, and some animal food to supply the absence of insects which they gather in summer, with lime enough to make egg shells. They devour and grind up the weed seeds among the grain tailings fed to them ; they eat almost every kind of grain. Bones pounded fine, and scraps of fresh meat, thoy devour greedily and convert them into eggs. We find that a cake of scraps from the fat boiling establishments, placed where the hens can pick at it, always keeps the egg machine in operation j if the supply runs out the eggs are missing.