INTERESTING ITEMS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 26, 29 March 1907, Page 7

INTERESTING ITEMS.

Prison authoi it ies find whni is known as "Swedish drill" for female prisoners a notable aid to health and discipline, Napoleon was a general at twentyj liv(‘ : inil this is not a record. An- ' other Frenchman Marceau—bora mo a. 'general at lwent\-two, j It is an odd fact that we never | read of any of the knights of old times, who wore steel armour, being killed by lightning. The only dumb soldier in the world is a conscript in Lite army of the Duchy of Oldenburg. He was rendered dumb through an illness contracted after his enlistment. Might Victoria Crosses were won at liorke’s Drift by lilt) British troops, a record for any single action .since the institution of the order, London pays about .Cl,(500,000 a year to keep criminals in check, that being the sum paid out. for her police-courts, prisons, and prosecuting o dicers. The last refuges for criminals fleeing from justice were the Bonin Islands, off the Japanese coast; but men ill these criminals are now no longer safe from justice. I Emigration produces marvellous \ changes in a race which emigrates, f The modern Freuch-Canadian is two inches taller and quite ten per cent, stronger than the average Frenchman. »♦. Of the Puited Stales foreign trade its own ships carry only 1(5 per cent, .while British slips carry over Go .per cent. Fifty-two per cent, of I Japan’s trade is also carried in British ships. A homing pigeon, five month;; old, released on the Isle of Man, with .others, in August, llkd!, did not return to Liverpool with the others { and was given up as lost. Decently it returned, t I The cattle of Somaliland, says a recent official report, are fattened on date stone;-:, ami milch animals fed on such a diet are said to produce belter and more copious milk than others. | The Danube river flows through countries in which fifty-two languages and dialects are spoken. It is, 2,000 miles in length, and bears on its current four-fifths of the com* I merce of Eastern Europe. | *4* | Englishmen smoke one-third more | tobacco than they did thirty years I ago, eat half as much again of sugar ami drink, forty per cent, more lea, while the consumption of intoxicants per head lias tended to decline. 1 ’ * **' ' It is an odd fact that South Africa owes three of her greatest industries to Jews. De Pass developed, the whaling and guano industries,| Andrade that of ostrich farming, and' Mosenihal the wool and tiide trades, The mosquito is most common within and about the Arctic circle. On coasting-trips to the North Cujsj vessels are .sometimes invaded by. maddening swarms at every stopping place, in Alaska they are said to form clouds so dense that it is impossible for sportsmen to aim at objects beyond, while native dogs are hv them. . 102Su(