NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1727, 19 June 1917, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

“Fireman Jack,” the dog charity collector, and pet of the Tunbridge Wells Fire Brigade, who is dead, brought in £I,OOO in thirteen years. The only peace treaty ever negotiated by Avomen is known as the “Ladies’ Peace,” arranged by Louisa of Savoy and Margaret of Austria. Not until 1872 was the administration of German naval affairs separated from the Berlin War Office. Even then an Army General Avas placed in charge! It is announced from Berlin that a ncAv commercial treaty incorporating all phases of the economic relations between Germany and Turkey has been signed. The entire city of Bagdad is surrounded by a brick will, five miles in circumference and 40ft. high, but( in some places broken doAvn, and by a deep, dark ditch. In Mexico everything and everybody pays a direct tax, from the

street porter to the largest mercantile establishment, and the stamp tax for documents is equally lucrative. The tallest soldier in the British Army is an Irishman named O’Connor, at present serving in the Australian infantry. O’Connor stands 7ft, 3in., and is a well set-up man of middle age. The armament of some of our modern first-class battleships is capable of discharging in two minutes over 30,0001 b. of metal, not including ■ the discharge from the small machine-guns. Stockings made from human hair are worn by Chinese fishermen as the best preventive of wet feet. They are drawn over ordinary cotton stockings, being too rough for putting near the skin. The- world’s champion typist, Miss Owen, has actually broken her previous record, which was the typing of 8,379 words in an hour. She has lately typed 8,549 words in the same time, making only 02 errors. The Swedish papers report that a large number of Germans who left Sweden at Christmas, and should have returned at the beginning of the New Year, have not arrived. The reason is supposed to be that the civil mobilisation is now being put into force, Mr T. W. David, a Cardiff timber expert, declares that wood pulp for papcr-makingcan casilybe produced at home, and cites the case of Glamorgan, where, he says, there are whole districts of waste land where timber for pulping could profitably be grown. Statistics show that a religious life tends to prolong existence, and that ministers arc among the long-est-lived individuals. Brain workers live longer than those who labour with their muscles, women longer than men, and the married longer than the single. A statistician has discovered that at the London Palladium last year there were 1,543 performances, which were attended by 3,000,000 people. Of the audience 01 per cent, were women, 8 per cent, children, and 31 per cent, men, 40 per cent, of the latter being in uniform. In England, army nurses are paid as follows: —Matron, £75, rising by £lO a year to £150; sister, £SO, rising up by £5 to £OS; staff nurse, £4O, rising by £2 10s to .£45. The following gratuities are given at the end of an engamenent: Matron £ls, sister £lO, staff nurse £7 10s. Possibly the youngest pensioner from the British Army is a boy at present engaged at a Portsmouth brewery works. Although not yet 10 years of age, he has served a year as a band boy in the Dorset Regiment, and was discharged with a ruptured lung and a pension of 5s a week. The famous picture, “The Thin Red Line,” by Robert Gibb, R.S.A., which appeared at the Royal Academy in 1882, was bought at Christie’s by Sir Thomas Dewar for £BB2. The picture shows the 93rd Highlanders at Balaclava, and is familiar to the public by numerous engravings. Mine-trawlers work in pairs. Each carries one end of a steel rntble, several hundred yards long, which they draw through the sea between them. When the cable encounters a mine it rips it free from its anchoring gear. The mine floats to the surface; picked men then tire at it, puncturing the air-chamber and letting the water in, and it sinks harmless to the boltom’of the sea. In France a very practical system is adopted to test the nervous syslem of air-piiots. The would-be pilot has to bold the handles of a special registering machine, which is so finely adjusted that it will show (he slightest tremor, Whilst he is so occupied a pistol is fired suddenly, and if the machine records more than a very slight tremor the candidate is disqualified.