News in Brief.

Hastings Standard, Issue 274, 18 March 1897, Page 4

News in Brief.

The amount of air inspired in 24 hours is about 10,000 quarts. The sun's surface is so intensely bright that an electric light held against it would look black. Mulhall says that " in 20 years ending 1889 the railways have absorbed 48,500,000 toiio of steel, or almost half the total product." Scientists say that we are separated from the molten liquid with which the earth is filled by a crust only eighteen miles in thickness. Sometimes in the course of a year as many as 400 bodies are taken out of the Nile, from which the Egyptians obtain their water supply. The Arabic vernacular furnishes a singular illustration of the popularity of war in the East. It has more than fifty names for the sword. The Queen has never entirely given up wearing earrings, and occasionally dons a pair of some considerable length and magnificent lustre. It is a sign of rain when cattle stretch their necks and snuff the air for a long time. In 1547 all London house were compelled for the first time to be connected with sewers. The area of the great Sahara desert is almost exactly the same as that of the United States. The Portugese say that no man can be a good husband who does not eat a good breakfast. It is asserted that a healthy baby should cry at least three or four times a day, in order to give its lungs the needed exercise. Nearly 6000 pieces are required in the construction of a modern locomotive. It takes an ingenious man to properly put them together. Iron is the only metal which appears in more than one color. It is found of every shade, from almost white as silver to as black as charcoal.

There are fewer Roman ('atholics, proportionately, in Sweden than in any other European country—only 810 out of a population of 4,744,400. Fine-edged tools assume a blue color and lose all temper if exposed for any considerable length of time to the light of the sun, either in summer or winter.

In the private schools of China a teacher it paid about one half-penny a day for each pupil. The largest book ever known is owned by Queen Victoria. It is 1-Sin. thick, and weighs 681b. It contains the addresses of congratulation on the occasion of her j übilee. From the records of the Madras High Court, it'appears that the practice of offering human sacrifices to idols is increasing in Southern India.

As an unexpected result of the Tsar's visit to Paris, President Faure's character as a humorist has been established. The Tsar was crossing the Place du Carrousel, and, much interested since his late experiences at Balmoral in the state of the weather, he looked up anxiously at the weathercocks on the different pavilions of the Louvre. He found, to his amazement, that they all differed, and, pointing this out to M. Faure, laughingly asked for an explanation. The President said ho had not observed it before, and could only think of one solution of the problem. They were almost certain to have been put up under different Governments, and they still showed, by a kind of inscrutable fidelity, the way the wind blew at the time of their installation.

Mr Bryan, the defeated candidate for Presidency, has a fine vituperative flow. Not long since he was attacking Secretary Morton. He started by callhim "a vain and voluble vendor of noisy and noxious notions," whose wrath was " a turbulent and tempestuous torrent, radiak, rampant, and rantankerous." But worse was yet to come. Commenting on Secretary Morton's advocacy of honest money, Mr Bryan said, " These words (to borrow the style of Mr Morton) are not referred to because they are vastly volatile and voluminously vacuous, and because they betray a contempt for natural law which is wonderfully wide and wildly weird." It is only fair to add that the Boy Orator did not often construct sentences like this.

INTERCOLONIAL. A proposal has been made in Brisbane to send GO lioys, forming a physical drill team, to England to take part in the Queen's record reign celebrations. A letter from Mr Walter 11. (Jors, of Port Moresby, publisher 1 by the Sydney papers, warns miners against a rush to the New (luinea goldfields. Mr (Jors says that no payable gold is known of a present in the colony. The Premier of Queensland (Sir Hugh Nelson) and Mr T. J. Brynes (Attorneys Jeneral) will leave for England in the Cerman mail steamer Barbaros on the 27th instant to attend the record reign celebrations. The Victorian gunboat Albert, which originally cost LlS>,o<)o, was ofl'ered for sale last week, but was bought in at LI 100. From Newcastle it is reported that every steamer from West Australia is bringing back batches of miners, who tell dismal tales of the condition of hundreds of nun 011 the other side of the continent. Last month the Mount Morgan ( Company, Queensland, treated 7<>D!) tons of stone for a yield of l.'{,oo~>o/s of gold. (Jold to the \aliu? of L2OOO was obtained from the <ioldeii Crown mine, at Jones's Well, West Australia, in 24 hours. The gold e\|K>rt. d from Western Australia for 1-Ybimrv was ;!2..">200/.., as compared with 17,!>220/ for the miiii' period of hist year. Tin- jKipuiutioti of l'.n-(ian< and -uhurb- within a radius of five miie« of the Post I Ml ice toulh d lu 1 at the end of last veitr. Th« Salvation Army in New South Walt's has raimtl upward.* of A" 100 in aid of the Indian Fataioe Relief fund.

! At Tamworth, on the S'h inst., a baby girl named Alice Fleming got | hokl of a box of pills and swallowed 15. She died shortly afterwards. The last of the Adelaide tribe of i aboriginals, -Tames Phillips, has died in the Adelaide Hospital. John Norton, editor of the Sydney newspaper Trut'i, has been fined £SO for contempt of Court, in regard to a case in which he had been committed for trial at the instance of Win. Freemau Kitcheon, the contempt consisting in so fully reporting the case as to set out the summons, and so repeat the libel. Robert Hesketh, the blind hatmaker, who won the first prize in Tattersall's Sweep on the Hobart Cup, has been for upwards of ten years a pensioner on the Ladies' Benevolent Society at Tamworth, and has donated £IOO to the funds of the institution.