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Show FOR LITTLE FOLKS. HE WILL BE KING OF SIAM. Slim Touns Tadjira Vndh Is Made Crows Prince. The young crown prince of Siam has been formally invested with all the insignia in-signia of his office. He is only 16 years old and is studying study-ing at Ascot, England, so as to learn tc be a king His name is almost as big as he is Cbowa Maha Vadjira Vndh. The ceremony was performed in the drawing room of the Siamese legation at Sonth Kensington, because it was not thought advisable to recall him to Bang- kok on tue aeani or. tne late urown Prince Maha Vadjirunhis. The young crown prince is the eldest ion of King Chulalon Korn by his second sec-ond wife. Chulalon Horn's name is quite enougl for several people. In full it is Phrabai Bomdet Phra Parainindr .Maha Chulalor Korn Phra Chnla Chom Klao Phra Chow Yuhna. Besides he has chosen another name, more familiar George Washington. The young prince may also choose the name of some foreign great man if he outlives his father and is permitted to ascend the throne. Eight special envoys from tho king brought over the swords. One of these was the boy's uncle, Prince Svarti Sab-hana, Sab-hana, and to him the king gave the commands for every detail of the ceremony. cere-mony. All the representatives of the Siameso kingdom in Europe attended, all the men in gorgeous uniforms and the ladies la-dies in brilliant costumes." The crown prince wore the glittering uniform of a lieutenant, of the royal bodyguard. The ceremony was very simple. Prince Svasti approached the crown prince, and having presented tho proclamation procla-mation invested him with the insignia of the White Elephant. The commission nnd proclamation were read, and the investiture in-vestiture was completed with tho high civil and military commissions which the rank of the prince compels him to hold. Then followed congratulatory ad- ureases iu uio tiaiucao lauguago, ijjo first being delivered by the Siamese minister in Paris. The crown prince replied, and the ceremony was at an end. Among the insignia presented were two magnificently jeweled sworda, which have been in the possession of the crown princes of Siam for the last 100 years. One is of the rarest workmanship, workman-ship, set in rubies and emeralds on a background of pure gold. The ceremony was too much for the little fellow, and after it was all over he was ill. Britain Slowly Washing Away. The British board of hydrographen nave made a report which is startling in some of its details. It appears that after a long series of observations it has been ascertained that the little Thames is carrying 14,000,000 cubio feet of British soil into the sea annually. In order to get an idea of what the above figures really mean, let us imagine a huge mass of stone 100 feet in width, 100 feet long and 100 feet high. Theo let us imagine that 14 of these immense cubes are yearly floated out to sea from the British mainland. The Thames basin ba-sin has, however, an area of 6,160 square miles. The immense amount of solid matter alluded to above is taken grain by grain from this large extent of surface, so that it only wears away the surface of the basin as a whole at the rate of oner-eight hundredth part of an inch each year. At the rate of wear and tear mentioned in the opening paragraph para-graph of this article one would naturally natural-ly suppose that within a few hundred years the whole of the main British isle would be deposited at the bottom of the ocean, but owing to the vast area frvm which that 14,000,000 cubic feet of solid sol-id matter is gathered the basin of the Thames ha only been lowered one single sin-gle inch siiio" the Norman conquest. Some of the riders of this will no doubt be disappointed to find that the rate of erosion is so slow and will declare de-clare that the head line conveys a different differ-ent impression. The island is. however, "slowly washing away," for the stitis iician of the hydrographio board aye Jiat it will take 3,500,000 years more to reduce Bi itain to the level of the sea Sfc Louis Republic. |