INTERESTING ITEMS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8179, 11 August 1906, Page 4

INTERESTING ITEMS

Tin daughter of the President of America, lea clever afaot with a rifle.

TheKingofSiamis an expert cook. He dto"° D tat preparea menua whenever a State

The Saltan of Turkey objects to darkness and hia apartments in the palace and antrounding gardens are well flooded with light •Terr night. % • • *

" Signed " with 3,514 thumb-marks, a petition of the Sioux Indians will shortly be submitted to President Eoosevelt at Washing ton. *

A travelling pawnshop, consisting of a big red motor oar adorned with three golden balls, is the latest development of American Ton enterprise.

The Bight Hon. Wm. Golly, K. G., who has resigned from the position of Speaker of the House of Commons, will receive a pension of 24,000 per annum. Formerly a Speaker's pension £2,080 per annum for two lives. One Speaker, however, who was without any children, wished that the pension should be »4,000 a year for one life—his own—and ft baa since remained at that sum.

"Lord Canon has decided to restore the famous throne of Delhi, and has written to the British Ambassador asking him to find artists capable of continuing the work which Italian artists began three centuries ago. The Ambassador entrusted the task to Mr. Bagot, who has found the man he wanted In one of the greatest Florentine artists is bard stones."

In the Island of Luzon, one of the Philippines, a lily of tulip with a black flower eight or nine inches across, has been discovered by an Amsrican. It flowers before the leaves appear, and has an odour of tainted flesh, which attracts insects to it for the purpose of cross fertilisation. It stands under a toot high, and grows in the shade of dense vegetation. Altogether it upsets our notions of the pure lily, and reminds ns of the ob ■oene vulture among birds.

A Bussian timber dealer has discovered a valuable mine of oak. It exists m a river of South Bussia, in layers three or four feet deep, scattered ovor 150 square miles, and its most striking feature is its variety of colours ■apposed to be due to the variegated soil of the river bottom. Not fewer than twelve shades of pink, blae, yellow, and brown, have been noted, each log having its own uniform shade. The logs taken out have ranged from forty to 200 feet in length, and from fifteen to twenty inches in diameter, and it is estimated that more than 150,000, averaging seventy feet, remain.

In Polynesia, and the Pacific islands gen. erally, the outer hnsk of the cocoa-nnt Is braided into strands of uniform texture, known to the natives as sennit, and nsed by them for a variety of purposes. The frame work of their houses is held together by braided sennit, and the shakes of their boats are united by it. It is the staple from which string is made to bind the adze blade to its handle, and to tie the different parts of their implements securely together. In short, whatever things are nailed or screwed, or pegged or glned, in other lands, are tied together with sennit by the South Sea Islander.

In the Japan Sea, about three nautical miles to the South of Iwo Island, a new Is land made its apperance recently as the reams of a volcanic eruption. The new island is about two and three-quarter miles in cir eumference, and 480 feet above the surface ol the water. There is a boiling lake at the northern end and a precipitous mass of rock at the southern end, covered with a thick layer of earth. On the highest point of the island a pole was raised with the Japanese Sag and an inscription : " New place. Great Japan. Many banzais." The discovery has been reported to the Governor of Bonin Is land, who has named it Nushima. If one really got to the Pole he would, in common parlance, be utterly " at sea," simply because at the Pole there is no possibility of ascertaining one's whereabouts. Hiscompletely changed position would be accounted for by the fact that when stationed at the Pole the direction to the north would be found to coincide with the line to the zenith —that is, to the point, exactly above us. Hence an astronomical determination of the locality according to latitude and longtitude is altogether precluded. The same may be said as regards determining one's bearings in any direction. The compass, too, will fail there, because its horizontal intensity is so slight as to preclude the possibility of its action. Worse than all the rest one cannot eount the passing hours there. There is no criterion for determining the time of day.

Self denial is as important to financial success as it is to health. The man who has a sound body and a sound fortune at fifty can trace both quickly to this same underlying and ever-active cause. Later success comas from early saving, and the man who is going to win a large fortune, and, what is equally important, be .able to keep it, must leam early what it is to hare a bank account, and what careful investment means. The man who can save a few pounds a year and invest It in the safest and most remunerative way has already mastered the essential character of the problem, and is farther along the road to wealth than he may imagine. What vou earn at the start matters little. The important question is " How much do you save ? " Once you have established the saving habit, the rest will be easy and your fortune will grow.

The man who is too lazy to work keeps out of Holland if he is wise, or makes his escape as soon as he discovers that there, at least, a means has been found to make him work. When a prisoner or pauper refuses to work he is lowered into a. cistern, which is provided with a pump at the bottom. A stream of water is turned on and the idler is left to his own devices. The capacity of the pump b) but silghtly in excess of the stream flowing into the tank, and to keep his bead above water he must keep pumping. As a rule, he spends some little time before he finds that the water is slowly creeping upon him. He la not srged to go to work, but presently he takes his place at the handle and begins the task. By working quickly he is able to clear out the water after a short time, but he has to keep at work if he wishes to keep his feet *ry.