NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1761, 6 December 1917, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

•In the three years of'war 933 Scandinavian ships have been torpedoed or ■ mined, and 500 sailors lulled. In England weekly payments of pensions have now been authorised to close on 750,000 men, women and children. Mr William Jennings Bryan, exSecretary for State, has offered to enlist in the United States Army as a private. There are 32,430 buildings, churches, and chapels in which’marriages can be legally solemnised in England and Wales. There is no “substitute” for fat. Oils and fats are identical in composition, their only difference being in their melting point. ■ No European country can produce its own requirements in fat. Germans can only produce same from linseed and tallow. Plans for an aerial fire-fighting unit, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, are announced from San Diego, California. The wealth of the United States is now about £48,000,000,000, which is more than the combined wealth of Britain, France, and Germany. The small eolewort is the origin of the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower, Seakale and asparagus were insignificant marine plants. Lightning is prevalent in the summer and autumn because of the greater evaporation, the conversion of water into vapour developing electricity. Mr Kermit Roosevelt, son of exPresident Roosevelt, has accepted a commission in the British Army operating against the Turks in Asia Minor. Bastions were invented by the Italian engineers of the Kith Century to prevent the enemy from collecting in the ditch round a fortified town. Mr J, Forbes, of Surbiton, Hill Park, England, has collected 4,000 old leather gloves to be converted into lining for soldiers’ and sailors’ winter vests. A thoroughbred which won eight races and £1,509 for his various owners has been sold in the Maltou cattle market, Yorkshire, for five and a-half guineas. Called up for military service, the organist of St. Jude’s Church, Preston, has been succeeded by Miss Norah Ashton, who is only fourteen years of age. Paper-making is to be taught in future in the Government schools in China. It is thought that this action may prove a factor in relieving the paper shortage. The approximate number of male Russians over the age of eighteen years in Iho metropolitan police dis- . trict is 31,000, and in the rest of England and Wales 14,000. The discouragement of cow-keep-ing in Germany 750,000 cows have already been killed)' and the encouragement of pig-breeding was for the sake of the fat from the pigs. Seven brothers named Killick, whose father was for twenty years a guard on the Great Western Railway, England, are, with six of their sons, in the service of the company. At Petrograd recently an English sovereign was sold by auction in aid of the funeral expenses of the Cossacks who were killed in suppressing the mutiny. It realised £(500. In the Royal Botanic Gardens, Regent Park, recently was seen blooming a native of the Amazon lagoons. The large leaves contain air cells, and will bear a man sitting in a chair. During the war 437 aeroplanes and seaplanes have been received by the Government as gifts from different parts 1 of the Empire and from British subjects in neutral or allied countries. Though the population is only 1,700, of which 250 are with the forces and fity in the workhouse, a war savings association at Bingham, Notts, has collected £6,103, averaging £SOO a month. Contracts for German iron made to Dutch importers contain the clause; “Contract shall be void if in the time specified for the delivery the iron districts of Lorraine are not German property.” The silver war badge is to be given to officers and seamen of merchant ships who through wounds or illness attributable to war service are compelled to give up their employment in the merchant marine. While trench digging atNewhaven, soldiers discovered several bronze implements'in the chalk in a good state of preservation. They are supposed to date from about 700 years 8.C., and arc now in the museum of the Sussex" Archaeological Society. Mr Alexander Ashby, an estates proprietor in Barbadies, who died recently, bequeathed his two sugar plantations to the Secretary of State for War. These estates have just been sold, and will, it is expected, realise between £40,000 and £50,000. - , The Mauritius sugar crop is expected to exceed that of last season by nearly 100,000 tons, and the Java crop is placed at probably 1,800,000 tons. The Cuban crop seems likely to increase to the level of the previous season-of roughly 3,000,000 tons. This, with a prospective large increase in the yield of the American beet crop, should provide adequate supplies this season,

While ploughing at Meopham, Kent, a labourer was surprised by one of his horses disappearing into the earth. It was discovered that a subterranean passage, 10ft. in height, and believed by experts to be the,course of an old stream through Ihe chalk, had collapsed.