Show CONSULAR CURIO curiosities odd facts concerning foreign co commerce silks with floor and win wynm worth nine cent a bottle sold for I 1 one dollar clever tricks of trade the prompt issue of consular reports on british trade is an achievement for which merchants and shippers should be grateful to bur our foreign office says casscells Sat saturday niday Jo journal urmal some of the m are arc it if we accept the cynical definition that gratitude is a lively sense of favors to come for in the latest batch of reports several consuls complain that enterprising tradesmen have baves sent nt them patterns of cloth goods etc with I 1 prices for prompt cash and ask asked ed them to obtain orders but these annual returns from our representatives abroad are of interest and value to others besides those engaged in trade they contain a lot of out of the way facts on imports and exports the social condition of various peoples the curious industries of the world and a thousand other subjects last year it appears there was a decrease in the importation por tation of sandalwood sandal wood into bankow china the product is used in incense burnt mostly by women and our consul remarks that here and surely elsewhere too one of the natural economies of the working classes is a reduction of the religious expenses of the family similarly the statistics of imports and exports bring to light many facts about adulteration ladies being great on pongee e silk just now will be interested to know that that material is weighted with a size made from bean flour and that when a bale of inferior pongee is opened the starch in it raises a dust which fills the room on opium wo we learn leam that it is not only faked in various ways but largely smuggled into n to china by being squeezed into large bamboo pipes in morocco it is customary to adulterate beeswax with composite candles considerable quantities of which are imported for this special purpose we seem to do a little in this line ourselves or cr how is it that in madagascar they can tell lancashire from american calico from the ame smell U prom from la rochelle comes comas a startling fact about wine of which no fewer than tons were imported se seaward award last year from spain italy and africa this enormous quantity after being mix mixed ed and blended with natural or artificial french wine is con consumed mined in this countey collary prance france or exported export ea as french wines to other countries 1 thus does art assist nature which is the better natural or artificial grape juice it seems hard to botell tell our consul at cadiz relates that he and a friend visited visit one of the native sherry cellars and tested two samples which appeared to be of the same wine they were so much alike that it was with difficulty they decided 1 which they preferred one of the partners in the firm then told them that one wine ame was sold at 50 a butt and the other manufactured f for or one of the largest mail steamship companies in the world at the rate of ad per bottle and retailed to their passengers at as a bottle among the suggestions made for opening our trade is one from dantzig with regard gard to newfoundland fish a great deal of which our consul thinks might be sold in the inland towns he thoughtfully adds however that travelers would have to be fumi furnished shed with printed directions in two languages german and polish showing how the lish fish should be dressed for table or the people would eat eal it raw as they do herrings and then they might not like it A hint is thrown out too that some english houses might do business with the ivory carvers of dieppe where the handi handicraft craff of carving established two centuries ago still flourishes the work is said to be far superior to that of the japanese chinese and indians ten or twelve workmen wor lanen do nothing all the year round but carve crucifixes cruci fixes some gome of which are worth MO 30 or f quite a new industry is that of japanese floor matting as made at biogo and osaka the body of the fabric is a kind of native gr grass rass interwoven with afine fine thread sometimes to the yard is said to be as soft and pliable as cloth prices for a roll forty yards long hy by one yard wide are from 13 to 15 an atoni astonishing shing fact act considering that the trade is in its infancy is that aae airm has sent away mare more than PaI patterns terns firearm makin making 9 carried on af liege in belgium is another industry touched on forty thou thousand men are employed ill in this trade like the english nail and chain makers makem these work at home at their domestic forges the various vii rious pieces are put together at the factories the output of the downin town in guns g uns etc may faintly be imagined from the fact that from to cartridges and forty tons of powder are co consumed annually in testing them by the way there are only fi five ve houses for this bis purpose in europe liege where there is the largest in the world birmingham london st Eti etienne linne I 1 france and fellah in austria are the places which POSS possess ess them ar |