All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 31, Issue 44, 31 October 1907, Page 38

All Sorts

A railway engine may roughly be said to fre equal in strength Zo 900 horses." "" In their native countries bananas are seldom eat§n before - Tine skin is discolored and the pulp is of so soft a consistence "that it can oe scooped out with a spoon. The trees of Finland are the money bags of the people. A peasant even makes his ' shoes from Wiroh, bark and thatches his roof from shavings. He. virtually lives on wood. ■ ' Please, mum, there's a gentleman downstairs, 1 Very well, Jane. Show him up to the drawingroom.' ' But he's coire to sweep the chimibly, mum.' ' Very well, then ; show him up the chimney.' The most expensive Parliament in n.urope is that of France, which costs £300,000 a year. The French people are very well represented. There are 300 Senators and 5~84 Deputies. t^ach receives a salary of £360 a year. Teacher— Do you know what ' im'bdbe ' means. Lucy — Yes, ma'am ; to take in. Teacher — That's right. Suppose you give a sentence, using that word. Lucy— My mother imbibes boarders. Very High" prices are being paid for original manuscripts of famous poems just now. The other day the manuscript of Tennyson's well-known poem ' The Brxipk '> was sold for £300. It consisted of eight pages. The original manuscript of Pope's ' Essay on. Man ' was sold for £895. During the course of a geography lesson recently the teacher asked the following 'question : ' Who can tell me what useful article we get from the whale ? ' 1 Whalebone,' promptly replied a boy. ' Klg'ht. Now, who knows what we get from the* seal ? ' ' Sealing wax ! ' shouted a little girl. The orange is the longest lived fruit tree. It begins-, to bear the third year after budding, and for one hundred years it will yield abundant crops. Orange trees have been known to attain the ripe age of three hundred years. The orange requires less care and attention than any other fruit tree. its early growth is rapid. In the first two years it grows more Mian it will in the next fifty, 'lhis refers, of course, to its height and breadth alone — its fruit stems and consequently its crops increase more rapidly after the iirst ten years. A" curious and very interesting fete was celebrated . on September" 8 . at Braine le Comte, in Belgium. On that day fifteen couples living in the locality celebrated their golden wedding,s. It would be interesting to know the opinion of the fifteen couples on the question of wedlock, of which they have certainly had considerable experience. La Rochefoucauld declared • ' ihe most perfect miarriages are the le,ast imperfect ; the most pacific are tlie least stormy.' There is a Russian proverb which says : ' When one travels on land one says a prayer ; when one travels on sea one says two ; ' when one marries one must say three.' Some remarkable statistics as to the rush to Canada have been supplied by the Government Departments concerned with the Colonies. Ten years ago the nun> ber of BritTsK passengers from the United Kingdom to the Dominion was only 15,571. There was then little increase until 1902, when they numbered 26,000. me total tfien rose with rapidity to 59,000 in. 1903, to 60,000 in 1904, to 82,000 in 1905, and to nearly 115,000in 1906, while in the lirst seven months of one current year they already total 107,000. During the latter period the emigration from Great Britain and Ireland to Canada has exceeded that to all the other >^it,isb. colonies and possessions combined. In tHe two villages of Luceran and' Lancoiqme, in'tfae .Alpes-Maritimes, France, June 10 was kept as a puhlic holiday to celebrate the end of a great lawsuit which had kept the two villages divided since November 14, 1462. The question of dispute was the. possession of a piece' of land at Lova, ■ which each village claimed. A few days previous the court -at Nice definitely settled the mafter by dividing the land equally between the two villages. The total cost of this lawsuit during tjhe 444 years amounts to 150..000 dollars, white ithe value of The lajnd in dispute w«s. iabout 2000 dollars. The law papers which had accumulated were docketed in 1856 parcels, which weighed several tons, and were stored in a large disused church.