NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1751, 25 August 1917, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Scarlet flowers stand drought better than any others. A horse has been known to jump 37ft. in a steeplechase. Few insects live more than a year in their perfect state. Over 8,805 soldiers have been supplied with artificial limbs. Some £51,000 prize bounty is living distributed in the Navy. Dead people in Germany are being interred in paper shrouds. A lion is able to make marks with his teeth on a solid iron bar. The army of Brazil consists of 40,000 men, besides 20,000 gendarmerie. A man’s hair, as a rule, turns grey five years sooner than a woman's. Sheep thrive best on land which is infested with moles, because the soil is then better drained. The tip of the minute-hand of an average watch travels nearly fourlifths of a mile every year. Canada will be able this year to pay her war expenditure up to £14,000,000 out of surplus revenue. The village of Penhurst, Kent, contains only one man, all the remainder having joined the colours. ' Eagles are said to rarely change their mates. When one chooses a mate the partnership is usually for life. The shark, which holds the record for long-distance swimming, has been known to cover 800 miles in three days. The Sultan of Turkey has conferred the Madjidjo Order and the Iron Crescent upon Herr Krupp von Bolden. Pistols are said to have been named from Pistola, a town in Italy, whore they were invented, or at least first used. In Asia and Africa, in places where grass will not grow, most beautiful (lowers and shrubs attain a Imosf perfection. Swallowing twenty-four raw eggs in two minutes, a man won a bet recently in Cuba. He broke five into a glass at 'a time. Sierra Leone schoolchildren have sent £(i() 8s 5d to the Children of the Empire Fund for disabled and blinded soldiers and sailors. The hairspring of your watch weighs but one-twentieth of a grain per inch. One mile of such wire would weigh much less than half a pound. Seven hundred and fifty thousand tons of Norwegian shipping have, been sunk during the war, representing a third of the entire Norwegian tonnage. An ostrich in California has been harnessed to an automobile, and has pulled it up a slight incline, at (he same time carrying a driver on its back. ✓ So many’ negroes attended the. funeral of the late Rev. R. B. Williams, of Macon, Georgia, that ik was necessary to hold continuous sendees for four days. A'second member of Sir Ernest Shacklelon’s recent Antarctic expedition Ijas been killed on active service. This is Timothy McCarthy, who was one of the Weddell Sea party. During 191 (i the. Austrian Lloyd Shipping Company lost £125,000. The reserves are now exhausted, and the company’s total deficit amounts to £191,000 at pre-war rates. If an express train moving at the rate of forty-five miles an hour were to stop suddenly it would give the passengers a shock equal to that of falling from a height of 54 ft. A bullet was successfully extracted from the heart of a Russian officer. The surgeon who performed this delicate operation was Professor Gaudier, chief surgeon of the Nice centre. , Snow and ice are melted in Siberia, not directly by the sun, but by the south winds. Even up to the beginning of June, the burning sun scarcely produces any thawing effect.

The present pact between Austria and Hungaria expires on December 31st, 1917. This date explains, to a* certain degree, the growing nervousness of the governmental circles in Vienna and Buda Pesth.