NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1744, 23 October 1917, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

About 60,000 tons of fish of all descriptions were imported into England frqnr' Norway and the Netherlands during the first six months of this year. A record of the R.F.C. during the war is being compiled, and out of over 700 officers who have died, the compilers have biographies of about' GOO. - In Jewish marriages the woman is always placed to the fight of her mate. With every other nation of the world her place in the ceremony is on the left. The Gotha type of biplane is 78ft. wide, 40ft. long, has two Mercedes engines with a total of 520-h.p., and two propellers at the rear. It can carry 800 lb. of explosives. At many of the camps in France crests of British regiments have been artistically laid out in stones and coloured glass. Some of the designs are 20ft. in circumference, There are £5,400,000 worth of steel and wooden vessels under construction, or contracted for, in British Columbia to-day, while a year ago there was not a large ship being built. An orchestra of disabled soldiers, some of them with only a stump of a leg, and n conductor who has to wave the baton with his left hand, is the pride of a military orthopaedic hospital. Lost children in Japan do not long remain astray. It is the custom for parents to label their children with their addresses, so that in ease they wander any wayfarer may send them home. . Every oyster has a mouth, a heart, a liver, a stomach, besides many curiously devised little intestines, and other necessary organs, such as would be handy to a living, moving, intelligent creature. Divers in the clear waters of the tropical seas, find that fish of different colours, when frightened, do not all dart in the same direction, but that each different kind takes shelter in that portion of the submarine growth nearest to its colour. It cannot be said that the navy has been given a large number of V.C.’s during the present war. Of nearly 250 conferred, the senior service, including its branches, has won just over a score, while before this campaign its total was forty-one out of over 500. To safeguard the Londoner and his property, not to mention the country cousin staying in town, an army of over sixteen thousand police superintendents, inspectors, sergeants, and constables is employed. The pay of the “force" - comes to nearly a million and a-half pounds per year. A curious needle was in the pdssission of Queen Victoria. It was made at the celebrated needle manufactory at Redditch, and represents the Trajan column in miniature-. Scenes from the Queen’s life are depicted on the needle, so finely cut that they are only discernible through a microscope. In the bacterial treatment of sewage at Birmingham, England, some of. the contact beds were filled with coal, and it is stated that the effluent was so clear, sparkling, and odourless that the men working about the beds drank from it. The flow from these beds was very much better than from beds filled with other filtering media. The Duchess of Connaught was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, heiress who ever married into our Royal Family from Germany, Her father, the Red Prince, was a very rich man. Princess Patricia receives £50,000 under the will of her mother, and £25,000 goes to the Crown Princess of Sweden, on whom a settlement was made at the time of her marriage. It is quite a new departure to make public a Royal will, and a sign of the democratic times in which we are living. Even the Duke of Fife’s will was kept secret op account of his relationship to the King.