NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1760, 4 December 1917, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The growth of'municipal golf courses in the United States goes ahead amazingly. Nearly every city of 200,000 inhabitants has at least one course in which the fees are almost nominal. One of the most durable woods is sycamore. A statue made from it, now in the Museum of Gisch, Cairo, is believed to be nearly 6,000 years old. It is entirely sound and natural in appearance. M. Nicholas Ambaticios, a Greek shipowner, has given £20,000 to the French Government, the interest on which is to provide pensions for the families of the French sailors killed in Athens last December. ■ The discovery in Buda Pesth that forty thousand pairs of soldiers’ boots were made with brown paper soles resulted in the arrest of eighteen bootmakers, nineteen factory managers, and ninety-six other persons. Mr Henry Dove, who has died at the age of ninety-three, began his working life as office boy to Robert Stephenson in 1837, and was in Stephenson’s employ while the London and Birmingham railway was being constructed. The head has seventy-seven muscles—eight for the eyes and eyelids, one for the nose, eight for the lips, eight for the jaw, eleven for the tongue, eleven for the larynx, eleven for the car, seventeen for motions of the head and neck, one to move the hairy scalp, one the eyebrows. Ten out of the thirteen members of the Royal Commission which investigated the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland reported that two and three-quar-ter millions annually had been taken from Ireland for imperial purposes in excess of her proper contribution. A labour census is to be held in France of all males between the ages of 16 and 60 resident in that country, regardless of nationality. Each person affected will be asked whether, if he left his present occupation, he would be willing to accept agricultural or industrial employment, either near home or elsewhere. Among the jeyels which the Kaiscrin recently sold in Copenhagen is a magnificent diamond necklace, consisting of three hundred and seventy-five large and small brilliants. It was a gift from the late Pierpont Morgan. A diamond hair ornament worn by the Empress at Court functions and a tiara were also disposed of. The income tax was originally granted by the British Parliament in the face of tierce opposition, in 1798, “as an aid for the prosecution of the war” against France. It was repealed in 1816, and reimposed in 184-2, nominally for three years only, a! 7d in the £, Subsequently it was granted for' terms of three years, one year, and seven years. The one hotel at Bagdad, the Hotel Tigris, has been renamed Hotel Maude, in honour of the British general who captured the city; and it is crowded at lunch time. There were no stores when the British army entered, and not enough chipken to go round, but the proprietor did wonders with three courses of rajitton prepared ip different ways. The roar of the Hon carries further than the sound of any other living creatui’e. Next comes the cry of the hyena, and then the hoot of the owl; after these'the panther and the jackal. The donkey can bo heard many times farther than the dog. Strange as it may seem, the cry of the hare can be heard farther than that of cither the cat or the dog.