News in Brief.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 17 January 1918, Page 4

News in Brief.

A wireless telegraph has been invented which indicates the direction from which a message comes; two of these instruments at some distance apart, listening to the same message, enable the operators by triangulation to locate the sender.

•' Of the variable stars, some vary in brightness simply and regularly, the cause being the revolution of the pairs of a double star, each in turn eclipsing the other. Other stars fade out gradually and irregularly because of interior changes. Captain Laureati has broken the world's flying record by • piloting an aeroplane 920 miles without descending. He left Turin at 10.7 a.m., arrived a* Naples at 2.30 p.m., and after circling over that city returned to Turin, where he arrived at 8.40 p.m.

Italy is probabljr the only country in Europe where there has not been a single strike of any importance during the past two years. It is also noticeable that since the beginning of the war not a single Italian newspaper has been seized or suspended. Advice has been received by the Hon. W. M. Myers that permission has been granted by the Imperial authorities for the shipment to New Zealand of hoops and studs required in wool dumping. It is understood that as the result of recent surprise visits by the police to two Stratford hotels, cases will shortly be brought against the publicans and several residents for breaches of the Licensing Act relating to six o'clock closing. The L'J-year-old son of Mr Valentine, of Waimamu Road, near Mataura, was playing about the yard attached to his father's dwelling on Thursday afternoon, and later was missing. When search was made for him the child was found drowned with its head downwards in a water barrel.

The tradition that cattle kneel in their stalls doubtless arises from the fact that Christ was born in a manger. The Spanish are very kind to> all cows, because on the Holy Night they are believed to have breathed upon the Christ Child to keep Him warm. Matthew Tate, the pitman-poet of Northumberland, who recently attained his eightieth birthday, lives in a cottage provided rent free at Blyth by the late Viscount Ridley, and a colliery company with whom he has spent almost the whole of his working life provides him with coal.

Botanieally, the Christmas rose is known as the black hellebore, and was much used by tho ancients to purify their houses and sanctify their temples. They also believed that if a house were strewn with their blossoms their faint perfume would drive away evil spirits, and if laid upon cattle would render them secure against all spell and witchcraft.