All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 21, 28 May 1908, Page 38

All Sorts

1 'Johnny, did you take your cough medicine recun r S 8^ 0 ? 1 ' as * told y° u ? ' ' No > M a- Johnny Budds liked it, an' he gimme an apple for it.' The Child's Mother— How can you sit there and read a novel when that child is crying so ? Nurse— Oh the child's crying .doesn't disturb me at all, ma'am ' Waiter (who has just served up some soup)— Looks uncommonly like rain, sir. - Din A r r: Yes ' b y J° ve » an d i tastes ,like it too. Bring me some thick soup. The Senate of the new American State of "Oklahoma has passed a Bill debarring any black man from using the public telephones. A few special telephone's are to be provided for the use of negroes. There are . certain kinds of noises that attract snakes.. For instance, the whirr of the mowing machine instead of scaring these reptiles, as might be supposed, seems both to allure them and enrage them, and they dart towards it, rearing themselves in front of the .machine, which, of course, promptly kills them. After elaborate experiments, it is declared that the embalming -fluid in use by the ancient Egyptians is nothing more nor less than the castor oil of commerce. Instead of some intricate and involved process, the seventy .'days in natron ' was followed by the injection of castor oil, and Mr. Berthelot, secretary of the Louvre Museum, has established this fact beyond a doubt. Many investigators have vainly sought to fathom the mystery of the preparation of the preserving "unguents, but they have gone about their work' with the idea that complicated formulae were to be deduced, and have deieated their own ends through elaborateness of research. The wheat-eating population of the world— i.e., the white race or civilised humanity, as we understand itamounted in 1870 to 370,000,000 people. In 1900 this population had increased to 520,000,000 people, and taking this law of increase and projecting into the future we find that in 1920 this class of population will have increased to C 77,000,000 people. The area of arable lands, however, does not grow, in the same ratio that the population is doing, so that it is only a question of time when the wheat-eating population will have passed the point where the available arable lands will be able to supply it with the necessary foods to sudport life. Italic letters were first used about the year 1500 by Aldus Manutius, a Venetian printer. He observed the many inconveniences resulting from the vast number of abbreviations which were then so frequent among the printers that a book was difficult to understand. A treatise was actually written on the art of reading a printed book and thus addressed to the learned. By introducing the italic letter he contrived an expedient by which these abbreviations might be entirely got rid of and yet books suffer little increase in bulk. He dedicated his invention to the Italian States ; hence the name. It has also been distinguished by the name of the inventor and called the Aldine. The first book printed in Italics was an edition of ' Virgil ' printed at Venice by Aldus in 1501. The catching of elephants in the forests of India is carried on systematically under a carefully organised Elephant Department. When the department was first formed men were highly paid to make an exhaustive study of the manners of the elephants and the best methods of catching, training, and keeping them. India was dotted with depots for training the captives — headquarters for men like Petersen Sahib, the first great elephant catcher, who reduced the process of their to a science, taking not one or two, but fifty *" w at" a coup. When a herd is found a line of beaters is placed right round it, to keep it together, while a stockade or keddah is built. This takes two or three days, and when completed the herd of bewildered animals is driven down a narrowing avenue to an open gateway. Behind and on either side of them are men with gongs "^and rifles, and the huge beasts are glad- to get through the opening into the apparent quietness and safety beyond. Once inside the keddah a huge gate is closed behind them, .arid they are safely trapped. Well- - trained tame elephants are then taken in amongst them, and. with their help the captives are safely secured to . trees, and in a few days the process of taming and breaking them in is proceeded with.

Woods' Great Peppermint Cure for Coughs and Colds never fails. Is 6d and ls'6d.

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