BREVITIES.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 30 September 1901, Page 4

BREVITIES.

Eight men die suddenly to one woman Greater London has forty-two corpora' tion.

In 1801 coal was sold in London for £2 Ifis a ton.

A large quantity of Louis Botha’s farm stock has been captured. Within the last few years 174,591 foreigners have settled in England. Tho first daily paper was published in Germany. It was printed in 1524. Ten American locomotives have just been delivered to the Paris Lyons Railway.

Four additional Gin quick-firers are being mounted aboard H.M.S. Terrible and Powerful. Sir Wolfe Barry estimates tho loss caused by tho congestion of tho London streets at £2,154,000 a year. The total number of coal gasworks in the United. States is 905. Of this list only fourteen are under municipal control.

What is believed to be the oldest statue in the world has been dug up in Egypt lately. It was mado about 8.0. 38C0. A meeting of women at Wanganui passed a resolution affirming the justice of equal pay for equal work, irrespective of sex.

Tho largest gulf in the world is _ the Gulf of Mexico -800,000 square miles; almost twice as big as the Bay of Bengal.

From the Atlantic Ocean to the head of Lake Superior a vessel may sail in Canadian waters a distance of 2,260 statute miles.

At a sale of a collection of English and foreign coins and war medals the sum of £O(S was paid for a Victoria Cross and medal for Berks's Drift.

The toll for parsing the Suez Canal is 7s 2d a ton, wirh 8s a head for passengers so that a 4,000-ton steamship with 200 passengers would pay over £1,500. There are now 1,142 different submarine cables, with a total length of 19,880 miles owned by Governments, and 018 cables, altogether 146,000 miles long, in tho hands of companies. At the village of Wold, ISewtor, tno ruial postman, who is a Wesleyan local preacher, has taught himself Greek during his long and solitary walks between the villiage and Gantqn on his daily round. A curious effect of lightning was observed at Florcnvillc lately. A fir tree by the road thence to Izei was struck at tho top, and a ribbon of bark stripped from the trunk in a spiral lino of almost mathematical regularity. Aluminium has just been employed for the construction of a new fire-proof curtain to be used in theatres. The curtain is 60ft wide by 34£t high, is composed of aluminum sheets one-twelfth of an inch thick, and weighs 4,0001 b. In the western part of British Columbia is a novel railway, two miles in' length. Tho rails are made of trees from which tho bark has been striped, and these are bolted together. Upon them runs a car with grooved wheels ten inches wide. The cost to New South Wales of the pursuit and capture of the Breelong blacks was £6,371. The amount paid to civilians who took part in the pursuit was £<ol, besides £2,100 as a reward. The amount irrespective of salaries granted to the police, was £2,511. The full strength of Great Britain’s Indian Army is 800,000 men, of whom 230,000 are native and 70,000 British soldiers. In addhion to this military force there are about 20,000 enrolled European volunteers, and a rnuive police, offered by white men, nearly 200,000 strong.

It is fifty years since gold was first discovered at Golden Point, Ballarat. It is estimated that not less than 18,707,109 ounces of gold, of the value of £74,828,836, has been won. The population of Ballarat, including Sebastopol, is now about 45,000. The rateable property in Ballarat City is now valued at £161,027, and that of the town at about £BO,OOO.