News in Brief.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 20 October 1917, Page 1

News in Brief.

Tho vineries at Windsor, England, are so managed that they furnish grapes for the Royal household during every month of the year. The Paris Figaro announces that it has received a second offer of 5000 francs as a prize for the first aviator who drops-a bomb on Berlin.' The design of the Meritorious Service Medal has been changed to one of crimson, with white edges . and a white line down the centre. In four weeks the police of the Hitchin division collected 3019 rattails, 1020 fully-fledged sparrows> 1186 unfledged sparrows, and 3762 eggs. The value of all kinds of fish landed in England and Wales in one year is over £7,000,000 and the number of .men and boys employed over 40,000. About 60,000 tons of fish of all descriptions were imported into England from Norway and the Netherlands during the first sis months of this year. 1 A record of the B.F.C. during the war is being compiled, and out of over 700 officers who have died, the compilers have biographs of about 600. ' In Jewish marriages < the woman is always placed to the right 'of her mate. With every other nation of the world her placc in the ceremony is on the left. The Gotha type of biplane is 78ft wide, 40ft long, has two Mercedes engines with a total of 520-h.p., and two propellors at the rear. It can carry 8001b of explosives. At many of the camps in France, crests of British regiments have been artistically laid out in stones and coloured glass.' Some of the designs are 20ft in circumference. There are £5,400,000 worth of steel and wooden vessels under construction or contracted for, in British Columbia to-day, while a year ago there was not a large ship being built. An orchestra of disabled' soldiers, some of them with only a stump of a leg, and a conductor who has to wave the baton with his left hand, is the pride of a-military orthopaedic hospital. Lost children in Japan do not long remain astray. It is the custom for parents to label their children with their addresses, so that in case they wander, any wayfarer may send them home. Every oyster has a mouth, a heart, a liver, a stomach, besides many curiously devised little intestines, and other necessary organs, such as would be handy to a living, moving, intelligent creature. Divers in the clear waters of the tropical seas find that fish of different colours, when frightened, do not all dart in the same direction, but that each different kind takes shelter in that portion of the submarine growth nearest its own colour. It cannot be said that the navy has been given a large number of Y.C. 's during the present war. Of nearly 250 conferred, the senior service, including its branches, has won just over a score, while before this campaign its total was forty-one out of over 500. To safeguard the Londoner and his property, not to mention the country cousin staying in town, an army of over sixteen thousand police superintendents, inspectors, sergeants, and constables is employed. The pay ,of the "force" comes to nearly a million and a-half pounds per annum. A curious needle was in the possession of Queen Victoria. It was made at the celebrated needle-manufactury at Eedditch, and ■ represents the Trajan column in miniature. Scenes from the Queen's.life are depicted on the needle so finely cut that they are only discernible through a microscope. In the bacterial treatment of sewage at Birmingham, England, some of the contact beds were filled'with coal; and' it is stated that the- effluent was ,-so clear, sparkling, and odourless that the men working about the beds drankfrom it. The flow from these beds was very much better than that from beds filled with other filtering media.

The Duchess of ConnaugM was one of the greatest, it not the greatest, heiresses who ever married into our Eoyal Family ' from Germany. Her father, the Bed Prince, was a very rich man. Princess Patricia receives £50,000 under the will of her mother, and £25,000 goes to the Crown Princess of Sweden, on whom a settlement was made at the time of her marriage. It is quite a new departure •to make public a Eoyal- will, and-a sign -.of the democratic times in which, we are living. Even the Duke of Fife's will was kept secret on account of his relationship to the King. The death is reported by cable of Major Wardell, famous in connection with the promotion of international cricket. Lieut. K. Strack, killed in action, played for University Hockey Club and represented Wellington. He belonged to a well ; known Hawera family, his father being Mr C. A. Strack, J.P.,.; headmaster of the Hawera District High School. Mrs Theodore Eoosevelt, Jnr., daugh-ter-in-law of the ex-President of the United States, has arrived in Paris, where she is to devote the whole of her time to the service of the soldiers through the agency of the American Y.M.C.A. The son-in-law of President Wilson, Mr Francis B. Sayre, is also going to France with the American troops as Y.M.C.A. Field Secretary. Miss Adele Pankhurst, a member of the notorious suffragette family, was married the other day in Sydney to Mr T. Walsh, a seaman, at the rooms of the Free Religious Fellowship, by the Eev. F. Sinclaire, a Unitarian minister, The witnesses were Mr E. S. Eoss, editor of the "Socialist," Mrs Eoss, Mr Walter Crookes, and Mr R. Fraser. Other guests included Miss Walsh (daughter of the bridegroom.) Mr and Mrs Askew, the novelists who are reported to have been killed by an enemy action at sea, threw up all their work in London early in the war and went up into the Balkans as Eed Cross workers, risking their lives over and over again during that terrible retreat of the Serbians from their own country until they arrived at Corfu, when the Askews sent out descriptive messages which wrung the heart of the world and brought financial and other help to the distressed people. Mr Askew, the son of a clergyman, only took to writing after his marriage (in 1900), the first and most famous book of the husband-and-wife partnership being "The Shulamite," published in 1904, dramatised in 1906, and photoplayed in 1915. Nearly 30 novels have been the result of the collaboration. Mr and Mrs Askew leave a son and daughter.