NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1745, 25 October 1917, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Myrrh is a gum-resin. The plum had its origin in the sloe. ; /

PiJlpries and stocks were abolished in 1837.

The Forth Bridge contains 48,000 tons of steel.

Photographs were first taken in England in 1802. The first document on linen paper appeared in 1308. Storm-clouds move at the, rate of thirty-six miles an hour. Lightning does hot generate heat in its path unless obstructed, The first paper mills in-Europe, near Ancona, date from 1340.

The Tartars have the strongest, the Chinese the weakest voices.

Sheet lightning is but the reflection on the clouds of a flash elsewhere.

Otto of roses is the oil which swims on top in the distillation of rose water.

The longest word in the English language is “ nonintercoinmunicability.” Forty per cent, of all foreigners in London live in Stepney, in. the Bast End.

The Tartarian alphabet contains 202 letters, being the longest in the world.

The assessed value of real and personal property in New York is £1,700,000,000. The down of thistles was spun by the ancients to make acanthine garments. ,

Private William Jones’ V.C., won at Rorke’s Drift in 1879, has been sold for £llO.

For every tree chopped down in Norway the law requires three saplings to be planted. The average duration of life in towns is thirty-eight years; in the country fifty-five years. The earliest mention of shoes is in an Egyptian papyrus, about 2200 years before Christ. In the private schools of China a teacher is paid about one halfpenny a day for each pupil. Roses came from Persia, and into Persia from India. They abound in the countries round the Caspian. St. Pierre believed that every square league contained at least one peculiar vegetable and insect.

The muscles of the human jaw exert a force of 5341 b,, and those of mastiffs, wolves, etc., far more. Eighty existing plants are depicted on Egyptian monuments, and many have been found in mummies. Thunder is the noise made by the concussion of the air closing after being parted by a lightning flash.

A double-fronted shop and dwel-ling-house in a main street of Dover has been sold for £1 at a property sale.

Fifteen chaplains have been kill-, ed in France during the war, whilst seven have died of wounds and five of disease.

Lord Rosebery has the finest collection of snuff-boxes in the world, including one which belonged to Napoleon.

Japanese officials in Korea are hoping to establish a leper colony on an island to be placed under the control of missionaries.

New Zealand has shipped more than thirteen million pounds’ worth of frozen meat to Great Britain since the beginning of the war. The number of different species of animals known to naturalists is, roughly, 156,000, of which 15,300 are vertebrates, or back-boned. The negro skull and skeleton are heaviest and hardest. A Greek skull averages 27£ ounces. Negroes vary from 28 to 37; Chinese, 23J ounces.

The shaft of an aerial torpedo which fell in London during a raid was recently raffled for, and resulted in £IOB being added to the Lord Mayor’s Fund.

A curious criminal law still exists in Greece. A man in Greece who is sentenced to death has to wait two years before the execution of his sentence.

Some of the machines for making match<s make 200 revolutions a minute each, and turn out about 2,500,000 matches daily, or about 900,000,000 annually. A bottle of wine, 1900 years old, was dug out of a Roman tomb at Speyer, in Bavaria. The seal was broken, and the wine proved To be in excellent condition.

The biggest American skyscraper is the Woolworth Building, the site, foundation, and construction of which cost about £2,800,000, The