NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1737, 12 July 1917, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

For the funds to educate orphans of sailors who have lost their lives in action during the war, the Navy League is promised £20,000 from Johannesburg, £5,000 from Shanghai, and £25,000 from Victoria. Grand. Admiral von Tirpitz is credited with tlie gift of £250 for a prize for compositions on the subject of “The Importance of fleetbases from the point of view of maritime war law.” Only Germans are eligible for the competition. Dogs do not perspire; in hot weather they regulate the temperature of their blood by breathing more quickly, which produces a rapid evaporation of water from the surface of the lungs. That is why a dog pants in hot weather. Colchester celebrated the Kaiser’s birthday recently by holding, on behalf of the Red Cross, a sale of relies from the Zeppelin captured in East Essex last September. A machine-gun jettisoned by the raiders was also on view. • Among the crew of a torpedoed trawling vessel who were landed at an East Coast port was the “boy,” who was seventy-four years of age. Owing to the shortage of men he had gone to sea again after a retirement of twenty years. A good method of telling a silver spoon from an inflation One is by placing both in a cup of hot coffee or water. The real silver one will get hot on (he end much quicker than the other one, silver being the best conductor of heat known. The blue or sulphur-bottom whale is one of the largest animals that has ever existed on earth. Although its mouth is so largo that a dozen men can stand upright in it, its throat is only nine inches in diameter. Another curious thing about this enormous creature is that its diet consists chiefly of tiny crustaceans,. shrimps three-quarters of an inch long. One of the most competent experts on ophthalmology calls attention to the fact that those near-sight-ed persons who take off their glasses to read or to do any near work, thereby increase the convexity of the eye lens, which is the cause of near-sightedness, and thus gradually (-reatc a need for glasses of greater power. He advises them to wear their glasses always, and to use them both for near and for distant work. . A current of three or four miles an hour in the outer portions of the Panama Canal seems to result under certain conditions from a difference in water density. At the lower ends of the Maritlores and Gaton locks, when the water has been brought down in the lower chamber to the level of that in the approach, the water in the chamber is more than half fresh, and this causes an inward flow against the outward passing vessel. Luxemberg is the largest of five miniature states which have retained their independence in the hurlyburly of European territorial adjustments of the last 100 years. Compared with the 175 square miles of the almost unknown Republic of Andorra, isolated among the Pyrenees, Luxemburg’s 1,000 square miles assumes almost the dimensions of a great Power; while the smallest of Europe’s sovereign “babies,” Monaco, could iind accommodation for its five square miles in more than one London borough. Some 30 square, miles of mountainous country in North-east Italy, in which 1,000 years ago the Republic of San Marino was formed, still exists to prevent Andorra being the smallest 'European Republic. A statement made by the Hon. J. A. Hanan shows that for the year ending 31st December last there were in the gaols 808 male prisoners and 82 females. In 1912 there were 58 female convictions, in 1913 there were 54, in 1914 78, in 1915 82, and in 1910 82. The principal offences in 1910 were as follow: —Incorrigible, rogue 19, rogue and vagabond 14, idle and disorderly 12, conducting or assisting houses of ill-fame 10, soliciting prostitution 4, theft 4, procuring abortion 4, and other offences 15, The average age of female prisoners is 40. Forty of the prisoners are under 37 years of age and the other 42 over 39. During 1916, 244 women were received into prison. Of these none were of superior education, 233 could read and write, two could read only, and nine were unable to read.