Miscellaneous.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 301, 27 August 1908, Page 3

Miscellaneous.

It is proposed to paint the gun ports of the Victory yelsow, their colour at trafalgar, and to re-rig the ship as she was in Nelson’s time.

Fifty years ago Daniel Vincent Shortland won a prize in the Woolwich entrance examination. He had to leave school for Woolwich before the Speech Day, and the prize never reached him. Colonel Shortland has since spent many years in India, but recently be appeared on the platform at his old-college to receive his prize at the hands of Viscount St. Aldwvn.

“During the first trip I took into the interior, which lasted a month, I never once washed my face, as there was no water for wasting, and often none to drink,” Bishop Riley, of Perth, Western Australia, told a conference of Lancashire clergy.

What is described as the largest windmill in the world is .in course of construction at Ballarat, for the Geelong Harbour Trust. It will work three 14-inch doulle action pumps, lifting 72,000 gallons of witter per hour. It is stated that the biggest windmi I in the world at present in work is lifting only 12,000 gallons per hour.

Addressing the cadets at the United Sei vice College, at Windsor, on June 15th, Field-Marshal' Lord Roberts said : “ Fighting was now very different from what it was when he first joined the service. At that time troops were drawn up in close order and shooting "was quite a secondary thing. They were forbidden to shoot .until they could see the whites of the enemy’s eyes. Let them test how near they must approach one another before they could see the whites of the eyes. It was about 40 paces. At one point on the field of Waterloo, the French and English forces were drawn up on opposite sides of :t road, and actually fought across that narroiv space. Now when a force entered a zone of fire the troops took up extended order, ivhere a man might find himself

without an officer, 12 paces from Tiis nearest comrade, fighting by himself the whole day through. It involved a tremendous trial of pluck and nerve.”

Mr James Bennett, once th e American “ Coffee King,’’ committed suicide at Brooklyn rhe other night by shooting himself in the head with a revolver. Two causes are assigned foi the deed, the first the loss of a large amount of money in Wall Street speculation, and secondly the constantirritation to which he was subjected by advertisements published throughout the country advising’ people not to drink coffee, which is said to be bad for the health, but to try a new breakfas t driuk.

In a recent trial (says the “Argonaut ”) a San Franciseo judge made arithmetic a test of mental soundness. But if this test had been applied to certain great men they would have been declared imbeciles. Dean Stanley, for one, would have been set down as hopeless had he been judged by his incapacity to do sums in simple addition or multiplication. Had Keble, writer of famous hymns depended on Ins arithmetic,Oxford’ mill not long have known him. When bursar he found to his horror that certain accounts came out nearly £2OOO to the bad. In vain did the learned and pious men of the college go over the figures with him. Not until an expert -was summoned was it discovered that Keble, in casting up a column, had added the date of the year to the college’s debts.

Apparently the Standard Oil Trust"have been somewh’at slow in paying the record fine of six million dollars imposed bj the American Courts for then action in granting illegal rebates. The authorities have very effectively jogged the memory of the Trust by seizing almost the whole of their property in Texas. - The step appears to indicate the beginning of a new regime in America, where millionaire combines could always find loop-holes through which they might escape the penalties of illegal enterprises.