ODDS AND ENDS.

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 88, 19 October 1878, Page 3

ODDS AND ENDS.

It is estimated that the flax mills of Russia give employment to 300,000 operatives, and produce 120,000,000 dols, worth of goods per annum. An old German song says the world is like a bottle of beer, witli froth at the top, clear wholesome drink in the middle, and hard work, trouble, sorrow, and crime at the bottom. Mrs Shoddy lately puckered up her mouth genteel y, and told a gentleman friend that one of her lovely daughters was a ‘blunet’ and the other a ‘bronze.’ Why ' are heavy showers like heavy drinkers ? —Because they usually begin with little drops. Artemus Ward said of the Mormonites —“ Their religion is singular, but their wives are plural,” Whisky and the Fairies. —“ How do you account,” said a north country minister of the last age (the late Rev. Mr M‘Bean, of Alves) to a sagacious old elder of the session, “ for the almost total disappearance of the ghosts and fairies that used to be common in our young days?” « Tak’ my word for’t, minister,” replied the old man, “ its a’ owing to the tea ; when the tea cam’ in, the ghaists an’ fairies gaed out. Weeldo I mind whan at a’ our nabourly meetings—bridals, christening, lyke wakes, an’ the like—we entertained ane anitherwi’ rich nappy ale; and when the very dowiest o’ us used to get warm i’ the face, an’ a little confused in the head, an’ weel fit to see amaist anything when on the muirs on yur way hame. But the tea has put out the nappy; an’ I have remarked, that by losing the nanov we lost Waith ghaists and fairies.” —Hugh MtflcJ-. “I’m afraid of the lightning,” murmured a pretty young woman during the storm “Well you may,” sighed her despairing lovir, “when your heart is .-teel.” “Recollect, sir,” said a tavern-keeper to a gentleman who was about leaving his house without paving the reckoning, —“recollect, sir, if‘you lose your purse, you didn’t pull t >iu mre.” Expounding his theory, a zealous vegetarian said, “A man who eats pork becomes a little sw.nish, does lie not? And, if lie eats mutton, he is inclined to be sheepish.” “Perhaps so,” replied a well-known medical man ; “ but I have noticed that men who live on vegetables are apt to be rather—small—potatoes. An itinerant jeweller, who is very honest in his business transactions, lias a great horror of telling lies. Every morning, ere he sets on his day’s journey, he spreads his wares on the family table, and bis wife is summoned when all is ready. “ Barah, offer me £ls for that watch.” Sarah makes the bid, which the husband refuses to take. Sarah then makes other offers tor the rest of the articles, which her spouse habitually declines to attempt. He then marches away with a clear conscience. When a customer bids Ll 4 for the watch, his reply is, “My dear sir, I assure you I was offered Ll 5 for the article this very morning, and I refused to take it.” And so he proceeds wiih the remainder of his goods, in each instance swearing that he has had such and such a bid already, which he refused. The jeweller is a thriving man, and clings to the old adage, “ Honesty is the best po l icy,”

Volcanic Action in the Moon. —ls the moon utterly dead ?is a question that has long occupied the attention of stenographers. Are those forces which produced the craters and other configurations of the moon’s surface seen in a telescope still at work, or is it an utterly worn-out world, dead to all the forces of nature ? The surface of the moon has been carefully studied for years ; the drawings of the different parts of its illuminated surface would fill a modex-ate-sized library ; but still no positive answer can be given to the question. Dr Klein, of Cologne, has recently observed a great black crater on that part of the moon which is known lo astronomers as the Mare Vaporum, and, as all previous drawings of that region exhibit no trace of it, the obvious inference is that some force, probably volcanic, still exists in the moon. The crater has appeared on a part of the lunar surface which has been well studied and observed, numerous drawings of it exist, but in none of those possessed by Dr Schmidt, of Athens, is any trace of it visible. Mr Burt, our English selenographer, and the depositary of all the drawings made by amateurs in this country, cannot find it on any of the sketches in his possession ; but the crater is visible now, and has been detected by several observers in Britain. Previous to 1876 it is certain that the crater did not exist, and the conclusion follows inevitably that it has been produced by some forces still at work in the moon.

Cua!,. —During the last year the output of emi in the British Islands amounted to 13. H),l)00 tons. A popular notion : s that a ■ r ‘at part of l:,,‘earth is In <• -nn’nr used u by mining operations, and tha! if the s.dl that has been dug out of our mines were piled up it would malm quite a mountain range ; let us, therefor -, riduce this to figures also. A cubic mile is equal to 147,198 millions of cubic feet, and, allowing cubic feet of coal in the solid to weigh a ton, we get just 5000,000,000 tons of coal in one cubic mile, and this is a greater weight than all that has yet been raised in the British Islands. According to the most reliable statistics, the end of 1877 will just about complete the first cubic mile of coal, exclusive of waste in mining. If our fuel had been stored in mountain-heaps on the surface instead of buried in the bowels of the earth, a very small mountain range indeed would have been equivalent to all the coal fields available to man in the whole of our earth.— ‘ Nautical Magazine.’