All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 1 November 1906, Page 38

All Sorts

Dr. Gengou, of the Belgian Iloyal Medical College, reports the discovery of the whooping cough microbe. It is said to resemble Pfeiffer's influenza microbe. The gardener (tendering his resignation)— No, - sir. It's the missis I _can't _ abide. She's got -into the 'abit o' talkin' ter me just like wofc she does ter you. She -iorgits I can leave : when I wants ter. ; ■ 'Has Scribblesmith .heard from that firm" that promised to teach him for £lhow to' make a good living by his pen?' . " _ , 'He has. Three days after he sent the £1 he received a- postal card from them saying, •"' Keep poul- . try." ' - ' -^ °- • • ' I'm goin' to stop bein' kind and helpful to people,' said little Willie. 'How is, that ?' masked his mother. ' Well, it's this way ; at school , to-day I-. saw - Tommy Jones putting a pin in the master's chair, so just as the master was about to sit down, I pulled away the .chair. The^master safc-dcuwn on the' floor, and when he got up he_ licked - me "for pulling" away I/he chair, and then Tommy Jones licked me for interfering. Yesj I'm goin' to stop helpin' people now.'' The .reptile known as the alligator, akin to," but 'not identical with, the crocodile, is unusually- slow of growth.- At fifteen years of- age it is_only two feet long, so that^ ♦ a twelve-footer,' says Dr. Smith, of the United States Fish Commission, ' may- reasonably be supposed to be seventy-five years old»' While it is commonly known that alligators'" hides can be tanned into an excellent leather, people generally are not so well aware that -their teeth are of ftne ivory valuable for carving into ornaments. , ' , It is supposed that the saddle, was invented about Ahe middle of the fourth century, but the fact, in the opinion of some, has not been positively proved. Zonoras, the historian,- tells us that Constantine the younger was killed in the year 340, when he fell from his saddle. The word translated into saddle also means, however, the back of the horse or the place where the rider sat. It is true, nevertheless, that Sidonius Apollinaris -used the word that unmistakably refers to the saddletree. i It onay interest the people of New Zealand, who have a valuable natural asset in the Colony's scenery, to know that, owing to the influx of tourists, during the last i 55 years the wealth of Switzerland, not including State , property, has risen j from £400,(100,000 to £680,000,000. The remarkable feature of these figures is .the fact, that no iess than twelfths of this total has been acquired by the hotel proprietors, whose annual income is estimated at upwards of £6,000,000. „In Switzerland economy and efficiency in hotel manage- - ment are probably combined to a greater extent than .anywhere else. Swiss hotelkeepers make their business -the study and science of a lifetime. _ -No word illustrates the changeable fashions of the English language more , curiously than 'asparagus.' No one could call it • sparrow-grass ' nowadays, says a ;. London exchange, unless he did not mind being thought . an ignoramus or a t'iresomely funny man. Yet all through the eighteenth century that was quite a regular way of referring to the delicacy, even in elegant society. A dictionary of 1791 says that ' l . spar- , ■ row-grass ' is now so general that ' asparagus ' has an air of stiffness and pedantry. ' Sperage ' had been the -usual English form in the, sixteenth century, but in the herbalists brought back the original Greek and Latin spelling • asparagus.' Pepys -vanes between sparrow-grass,' « sparagus,' and 1 sparague.' No doubt the -eighteenth-century's relapse was the last, and the « a is back for good now. ... The High Commissioner for Canada in London has .received from the Department of the Interior in the ' Cadadian Government a gratifying- statement as to "crops- of wheat, oats, bailey, and flax (linseed), which 'Jfave now been harvested in the three western provinces of Canada, namely—Manitoba, Alberta, \and Saskatchewan. It is estimated that ..'the aggregate jwheat yield for the three provinces .will total eighty-seven -million Tmshels, being an average yield of nineteen bush--els per acre ; of oats seventy-five million bushels, an average yield of forty-one bushels per acre; that of baTley seventeen million bushels, an average yield of thirty*jane bushels per acre;' and that of flax seven hundred •thousand bushels, an average yield of twelve bushels per acre. A New Zealand farmer would not think much of a wheat crop which averaged only 19 bushels to the acre.-