GENERAL NEWS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8046, 13 February 1906, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS.

Ths undent Egyptians understood and pras!i'.»i! the art of brewing several centime! before the Christian era, as did alsn ' ( he ancient Greeks. Spaniards and Britons uiado a(ermentod drink irom wheat, which was U3fd in Spain under the name of ceria, and also in Giml. Tacitus tells us that in hid day, about 100 A.D., beer was the common leverage, and that the Germans understood how to convert barley into malt. Six hundred yean later Charlemagne gave orders that the best brewers should always accompany his court. • • • Her Htigelli, ft Gorman expert, says that a succession of deep yawns is of more benefit than n bottle full of the best tonic, and that the habit, practised as a regular lung exercise, is a grand aid to health. It is certainly true that deep and systematic breathing is an excellent tiling for our lungs, and it is on similar ground that Niigelli recommends a hearty yawn. He dec-lares that the expansion of the breast bones, and the stretching of the arms, which accompany awhole-heurt-yawn, together with the filling of the lungs, form a splendid daily exercise, and provide us free of cost with most perfect chamber gymnastics. Until the beginiining of the seventeenth Century English princes, and other babes, were immersed three times in the font when christened. The last Prince of Wales who was submitted to this ordeal appears to have been Arthur, the son of Henry 11., who died in 1502, at the age of sixteen. The abolition of the practice was strongly objected to by Sir John Floyer, a celebrated physician, who died in 1734, upon sanitary grounds. " Immersion," he says, " would prevent many hereditary diseases," and " the English will return to it, when physic has given them a clear proof that cold baths are both safe and useful." So our morning tub is the otficome of Royal immersion. • « * In 1713 the British Government offered £IO,OOO, £lo,ooo, or £20,000 to anyone diicovering a method for determing the longtitudeatsea within sixty, forty, or thirty miles. John Harrison, a carpenter's son, made his first chronometer in 1735, and was sent the nexr year to Lisbon and back to test it. The trial was successful, but the inventor was awarded only £SOO. He produced other instruments in 1732 and 1740, and finally in 175!) he constructed a chronometer in the form of a watch, live inches in diameter, which was only 1 min. 54J sec. in error after a voyage to Jamaica and back. This was equivalent to determining the longitude within eighteen miles, but full payment for his invention was withheld till 1773. » * The Kussian naval standard— a blue flag with a white cross—was adopted by l'eter the Great, who stayed for some months at Gaardam, near Amsterdam, working as a mechanic, to gain a knowledge of shipbuilding. During this time he look a strong fancy to a clever workman named Cruys, whom he persuaded to return with him to llussia, after he had revealed to him his true name and position. Cruys drew the plans for the first ships built for the ltussian Navy, and to show his appreciation, Peter the Great made him an admiral, and gave orders that the ltussian Navy should thenceforward have a special Hag with a white cross upon it, to perpetuate the memory of his trusted associate, Cruys being an old form of the Dutch word for cross. ft * * The fact that wheat should follow beans as a crop has been known for centuries; the reason has been discovered but recently. If the roots of a healthy bean are dug up, a number of nodules or tubercles will be seen upon them. All pod-bearing vegetables have such nodules, and microscopic examination has shown that they consist of milllions of bacteria, which are incessantly absorbing free nitrogen from the air, and converting it into forms suitable for the plant's digestion. In fact, much more nitrogen is absorbed than can be used, and the surplus is left in the soil, which thus becomes fitted to produce a larger wheat crop. These bacteria have been successfully cultivated by an American man of science, and beans and similar vegetables inoculated with them develop great tubercles and grow to a large size even in the poorest soil. Millions of them, absorbed by cotton, can be sent by post to any part of the world, and arrive in perfect condition.

An electvic motor coin-counting and wrapping machine has been invented, to facilate the rapid and accurate counting and bundling ot coins of all descriptions, from pennies to sovereigns, since there are many lines of business which necessitate the employment of a large staff of clerks, whose sole duty heretofore has been the performance of this laborious task. The machine counts and wraps coins at the rate of seven every second, or 420 coins every minute, and does this continuously as long as the motor runs and coins are fed into the "hopper." The coins are wrapped compactly at the rate of from eight to twelve bundles per minute, according to the size of the coins. Since an expert is only enabled to count and wrap fifty coins a minute manually, it will be seen that the machine will do at least as much work as light men, _ 8 • I

Intne old days, municipalities use to manage their own post-oflices. Aberdeen, for Instance, had a " council-post " as early as 1590; the letter-carriers—there was usually onlyone at ft time—being clothed in blue, with the town's arms in silver on the right sleeve. The burgh records of Glasgow for 1630 contain a resolution by the council that " ane trustie youthe he made aposte,"and he appears to have received os. bd., together with a suit of clothes and a pair of shoes, lor his trouble. This was subsequently raised to one shilling weekly in English money (12s. Scottish), and then, alas, the pay vanished entirely, for the •' post's" business increased to much that ho required a horse, to purchase which the canny City fathers advanced funds on condition that the rider of it served " thankfullie " without wages for a season. Then, when the steed had thus been bought on the instalment system, the same shrewd Scottish Council initiated the first penny post by making that sum the fee, from 1003, for every letter received or delivered. . . . ! Like the arranging of flowers, the tying of knots has been carried to the point of a complex art by Japanese. There is one wayone right way, that is—to knot the cord that confines a birthday-present. There is one way to tie the brocade-bag of thctea-jarwhen the latter is empty, and another when it is lull. Not only genera! ignorance of social customs, but deadly insults may be communicated by the way a knot is tied, foreigners often making dreadful mistakes, either through not knowing, or from ignoring the niceties of knot etiquette. Hooks and eyes, buttons and buckles, are unknown, so far as Jaganese dress is concerned. They do not have much to fasten, but what they do have they fasten with cord. That is why they have carried the tying of cord so far. The Japanese have hundreds of ornamental knots, some of them so old that they antedate writtenhistory. Japanese children are taught to make knots just as they are tanght to write and draw. All sorts of flower and animal forms are copied. There is the chrysanthemum knot, theirisknot, plum-blossom, pine-tree, and cherry-blossom knots. There is a stork knoSf a turtle knot, a knot named for the sacred mountain Fujiyama. An easy knot is called tho " old man's knot," IbflH is also uu old " woman's knot."