MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 4029, 2 June 1931, Page 75

MULTUM IN PARVO

—So that it shall not be crowded out by its own seedlings, the creosote bush of America drops its seeds and then spreads a poison on them that slows up germination.

—“ Nothing under £2OO ” might be taken as the slogan of a new’ bookshop recently opened in New York by a society girl. The books for sale go up to as much as £7OOO in price. —When the official figures for 1930 are completed, it is expected, announces the Home Secretary, that the convictions for drunkenness in England and Wales will have exceeded 53,000.

—The amount pai l out by the British Exchequer in subsidies to the beet sugar industry was £492.040 in 1924, £2.854.239 in 1928, £4,229,729 in 1929, and £6,000,000 in 1930.

—There are 120,000 University electors in Great Britain. If they were ordinary electors they would be entitled to send two members to Parliament.’’ As it is they return 12. —The value of newspaper printing machinery of all kinds imported into England during 1928, 1929, and 1930 was £714,920. £881,652, and £1,009,696 respectively. The imports of type-setting machines during the same years were valued at £115,870, £123,578, and £167,038. —The approximate mileage of overhead telephone and telegraph wires at present in use by the British Post Office is 1,300,000 miles. The total mileage of underground wires is 7,600,000 miles. —Great Britain and Northern Ireland, together with 11 other countries, have ratified the Convention of the League of Nations for the “ Suppression of the International Trade in Arms, Ammunition, and the Implements of War.” —The annual expenditure on armaments services, which amounted to £110,000,000 in 1923-4, is £156,000,000 to-day. —A marked salmon put back into the water at Gweedore reached Ballysbannon, 60 miles distant, within 24 hours. —A German flying company which is making a strong bid for a share of the holiday and tourist traffic, is offering 12 days’ flying tours in Europe for £4O. —The Ministry of Health (Eng.) estimates that to provide pensions of 10s a week for the w’ives of old-age pensioners, such pensions to start at the age of 60, would cost £3,000,000 in the first year, rising to over £4,000,000 in 10 years. —ln 1929 (the latest figures available) 28,574 boys under 16 years of age were employed underground in the coal mines of Great Britain. Of this number 40 were killed and 7122 were seriously injured. ■ —British women live longer than their American sisters, whose death-rate between the ages of 25 and 64 is more than , 30 per cent, higher than in England. —Middle-class patients are to be treated at a weekly inclusive charge of from £7 7s a week, according to their means, in a new wing to be added to the West London Hospital. —As bad eyesight threatened to end the career of Sally Dun, an American racehorse, she was recently fitted with “goggles,” afterwards coming in first in one race and second in two others. —On January 31, £2,193,956 was standing to the credit of the Miners’ Welfare Fund in Great Britain. The amount paid out during 1930 was £1,361,466. —Since 1918 nine battleships of the Queen Elizabeth class have been modernised at a cost of £2.870,000. —The number of British Civil Servants earning £3 per week or less is 94,000. There are 174.000 who earn £4 per week or less, and 205 who earn £5 per week or less. The number who earn more than £5 per week is 61,000. —According to the president of the Board of Trade, the national income of England has remained at £4,000,000,000 for the last 10 years, while the wages of the working class have been reduced by £700,000,000 a year. —When Holland has completed her work of draining the Zuyder Zee, she W’ill have added 550,000 acres, or the equivalent of 10,000 farms, to her area. —Foreign visitors to Great Britain on holiday are increasing each year; in 1928 there were 224,000, and in 1929 about 238.00 G. while last year the number rose to 246,000. —Periodical cheeks show that the average number of homeless people found sleeping out of doors on any night in London is now about 90; not very long ago it stood at over 2000. —Headphones are supplied for the use of the deaf in some theatres in Chicago and Germany; this is an innnovation in regular theatres, although it has already i been tried successfully in at least one . London “ talkie ” theatre.

—Seats that become sleeping-berths, a buffet, and a wireless are to be fitted to new luxury motor-coaches to run between Paris, Berlin, and Warsaw. The trip between Paris and Berlin will cost about £3 and occupy 27 hours. —A man’s overcoat, lined with Russian sable and with a collar of sea-otter fur, was recently offered for sale at £3OOO by a London tailor. Sea-otter is the rarest of furs; there are, it is said, only four pieces in existence. The collar of this coat was valued at £lOOO. —Britain is not the only nation suffering from unemployment. America has between 8,000,000 and 10,000,000 out of work. France has 350,000 wholly unemployed, and 1,060,000 only partially employed. Put in the form of percentages, England compares none too badly; She has 14 per cent, unemployed as against the 23 per cent, of America aud the 31 per cent, of Germany. —lt is estimated by authorities on the subject that preventable disease costs England at least £250,000.000 a year, and that the primary cause of this disease iif bad housing. —The average weekly earnings of all persons employed in coal mines in Great Britain during the nine months ended September, 1930, were £2 3s 9d. For the same period in 1929 the average earnings were £2 5s 6d.