NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1730, 26 June 1917, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

A doctor attached to an allied ambulance corps in France counted 35 species of birds that had built their nests in ruins of buildings and trenches abandoned by inhabitants and soldiers. Flocks of seagulls and curlews, driven miles inland by stress of weather, visit the camps in France in search of food, and may also be seen following the women and boys ploughing in the fields. A South African lance-corporal states that Germans who set fire to the bush in East Africa to burn the British out of their camps were frustrated by the wind, which suddenly changed its direction. The discovery in Buda Pesth that 40,000 pairs of soldiers’ hoots were made with brown paper soles resulted in the arrest of eighteen bootmakers, nineteen factory managers, and ninety-six other persons. With an aggregate of 100 years’ teaching experience to their credit, three schoolmasters of England are now working as clerks in the same A.S.C, camp in France. All volunteered in the early stages of the war. Persons breathe less when they are concentrating their minds on study or work, and also under the influence of depressing emotion. On the other hand, we breathe more when exhilirated by pleasure and amusement. The bulk of the people of Bagdad are of Arab blood, but there are thousands of Jews and a large admixture of other races, especially Persians. The Turks are compaiatively few, and are mostly Government officials. A sergeant of the A.S.C., and a corporal in the Inland Water Transport, who are doing excellent service in France, are two of the se\ en brothers Hall who regularly played Rugby for Gloucester City. The youngest to-day plays for Oldham. Nearly 400 rounds of ammunition, two haversacks, two bandoliers, and a bayonet, were found in a Dublin cellar by a t ailor. They were hidden under a pile of old documents, where they had evidently been placed during the revolt. A trade journal of England states that during last year there was an unprecedented boom in silk goods, and especially in women’s silk underwear, which “was in enormous demand in all industrial districts where formerly it had no -sic.” Dr. Bluett, house surgeon at St Thomas’ Hospital, stated at an inquest at Lambeth that the use of molten paraffin wax for burns had been a tremendous success in the army, where it was used for burns caused by liquid fire projected by the Germans. The wax should bo kept in every household. After being lost sight of for 50 years, Waunwyllt coal level at Abercanaid Merthyr, which was the home of Welsh steam coal trade, has just been re-discovered, and.is being worked. It was from this level that Mrs Lucy Thomas, the pioneer of the Welsh steam coal trade, obtained samples and took them to London in a basket in 1830. 'Jins led to the recognition of the merits of Welsh coal. The waratah was recently flowering in Kew Gardens. This is a rather rare horticultural event, because Australia’s “national emblem,” for some mysterious reason, refuses to flower in Great Britain, even under greenhouse treatment, though one specimen is said to bloom vigorously in the open air on the lawn of a Cornish rectory near Penzance. Tho botanical name of the waratah (Tel open) is derived from the great distance at which the brilliant crimson blossoms can be discerned.