Items.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7371, 19 November 1898, Page 4

Items.

An interesting calculation has been made which shows that the energy produced by a pound of good coal equals the work of one man for one day. One square mile of a seam of coal only four feet deep could therefore be made to exceed the work of 1,000,000 men for twenty years. One of the most beautiful sights in the world is the annual migration of butterflies across the Isthmus of Panama. Toward the end of June a few scattered specimens are discovered flitting out to sea, and as the days go by the number increases, until about July 14 or 15 the sky is occasionally almost obscured by myriads of these frail insects. A farmer was charged at Woodstock with brutality to his wife. After brandishing a knife and threatening to cut her throat, he cut the whole of her hair oft her head with a blunt pocket knife. He was sentenced to six monihs' hard labor, the wife was granted a separation order, the husband to allow her L2 weekly for the maintenance of herself and four children. Society now eschews kisses. Kisses are filled with microbes. Now a substitute is found for the kiss, and a genial warmth is once more noted when greetings are exchanged. Two pretty girls meet. There is a faint murmur Irom bath, a slight inclination of the body, two rosy cheeks are pressed together for an instant, and there you have the new kiss. At an inquest on a young lady shop assistant in Bradford the mother stated that her daughter complained-of being compelled to stand. The coroner remarked that in some shops in Bradford the assistants had to stand all day. If people would pay as much attention to that kind of cruelty as was paid to cruelly to animals some good might be done. A peer cannot: resign his peerage. The fact that skeleton remnants of elephants are so rarely found In any part of Africa is explained by an explorer, who states that as soon as the bones have become brittle from climatic influences they are eaten in place of salt by various ruminant animals. The nails of the Chinese nobility sometimes attain the length of 18in, and the Siamese belles wear long silver cases at the end of their fingers to protect the .nails iif they are long enough tb need it, or to make people believe that they are there even if they are not. The otter is the fastest swimming quadraped known. In the water it exhibits an astonishing agility, swimming 7 in si nearly horizontal position with the greatest ease, diving and darting along beneath the surface with a speed equal, if not superior, to that of many fishes. L 6,000,000 worth of ready-made clothing is produced in Paris' yearly. In Havana there is a device, for protecting passengers fromtheqxtortion of cab men which mighb profitably be imitated in other countries. The lamp-posts are painted in various colors—red for the cenl-. tral district, blue for the second circle, green for the third, etc. —and thus the "fare" knows immediately whenhe has passed the legal boundary, and pays'aecordingly.