NEWS AND NOTES.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 4 July 1901, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Twenty-one per thousand of London's population is of foreign birth, 90 per cent of that of Paris. An agricultural implement maker in England, earns on an average B£d an hour, a furniture maker Bd. Two hundred canals have been charted on the surface of Mars. The nairowest are thirty miles wide. Sixty per cent, of English prisoners convicted in 1900 had previous convictions recorded against them. For a wager of £25 a Wolverhampton barber shaved a trainer in the lions' den of a travelling menagerie. English railway metal weighs 240 tons to the mile, that of Russia 125 only. England has 510 deaf mutes per mil- ; lion of her population, against 770 in Ireland. Reindeer are worth only 30s a head in Finland. They can travel 130 miles a day. A mulberry tree begins to decline at forty-five years, and generally dies at seventy. High roads cost on an average £BOO a mile to construct in England, and £1,200 in France. Glasgow spends £560,000 a year on buildings, £49,000 of which is for churches and schools. There aro 2,900 words which have th o same spelling and meaning both in French and English. London ha 3 1,800 acros of parks, Dublin 1,760 acres.

Ten pounds of mulberry leaves yield one ounce of raw silk.

It takes eleven tons of beet to produce one ton of beet sugar.

Lamps cause 500 fires in a year in London, gas 219, chimneys 179. Copper usually is worth £7O to £BO a ton. In ISBO it'foll to £4O. The Wellington city milk supply is drawn from 4000 cows.

The Carterton dairy factories have £SOOO worth of cheese on hand. About £SOOO a month is being paid in wages by the Dannovirk sawmillers. In 1835 Indian elephants were sold at £SO. Now it is impossible to buy a good working elephant under £7OO.

The largest sponge ever found camo from the Mediterranean. It was over 3ft across, and 10ft in circumferenco. Sevon thousand British soldiers have already applied to the War Office for permission to settle in South Africa. Shinfield, a village near Beading, boasts of an old man named Draper who was 104 last month (Junoj. His son is 84 Beer has only 4 per cent cf alcohol. Gooseberry wine possesses nearly 12 per cent, and Scotch whiskey 54 per cent.