NEWS IN BRIEF.

Kumara Times, Issue 2755, 21 July 1885, Page 2

NEWS IN BRIEF.

London now claims a population of 5..200.000. China, it is said, will reorganise her military system, as Japan has done. The net debt of the United States has now gone below £300,000,000 for the first time since the war. Twenty years ago it wns £540,000,000. The highest tenement house in New York city is 15 stories high, and measures 200 ft. from the tower to the ground. It will accommodate 38 families. The depreciation of land in England continues. An estate in Devonshire, one of the most beautiful and fertile counties in England, has been sold for £BOOO, for which £IB,OOO was refused a few years ago. The new Archbishop of Dublin is the most versatile and accomplished prelate of his time, as in addition to speaking six languages fluently, he is a brilliant amateur pianist and an expert shorthand writer. St. Petersburg advices state that the building of the Central Asian Kailway-

is proceeding with extreme rapidity. Thirteen hundred labourers have left Baku to work on the road, and it is reported that 6000 more will follow immediately. It is stated that the Chinese Government, casting aside national prejudice, has called in the aid of European miners to work its coal mines. There are immense deposits of coal in China, and, with the aid now called in, they are expected to be very quickly developed. An endowment policy for £2OO, payable at the age of twenty-one, is to be purchased out of the Patriotic Fnnd for each of Sessei's children. The Patriotic Fund Committee will consider at their next meeting what shall be done then with the £BOOO now to the credit of the Fund.. Euting with a knife is an accomplishment familiar to most English frequenting foteign tables d'hote. An old American has been so horrified by the sight that he has bequenthed a large property to be used in the best manner for suppressing the custom of eating in this uncivilised manner.