NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1768, 22 December 1917, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

It has been discovered that diseased noses and throats allow the germs of infantile paralysis to enter the system, and a preventive is cleansing them with warm water, in which table-salt has been dissolved. ■Fearing premature burial, the late Mr B. Halkyard left thirty guineas as fees for three surgeons to make known every test to discover if he was really dead, and in case of, doubt his body was to be cremated. Statistics show that the food bill of: an average workman’s family in Christiania, which in 1910 amounted to 645 kroner, is now 1,136 kroner. Christiania is the most expensive place to live in in Scandinavia. On a brig plying between the Thames and the ports of Northern France a woman of fifty regularly sails with her husband, the captain, and acts as cook for the crew. She has already made dozens of voyages, ■ Chemists are learning much about the changes in rocks by making polished sections of them, mapping them under the reflecting microscope, treating them with various chemical re-agents, and then studying them again. The agreement between Dickens and Chapman for the publication of “Our Mutual Friend,” dated November 21st, 1863, signed in full, and three promissory notes, for £3,250, endorsed by Dickens, Have been sold in London for £52. The faintest star known, one of the tenth magnitude, only one-three-thousandth as bright as the sun, is very near the sun, and moves more rapidly among the stars than any other star yet measured, namely, 10.3 in. a year. The honour of being the youngest soldier and N.C.O. in the army now at the front belongs to a-lad of eleven, who is attached to an A.S.C. unit. He was specially enlisted to act ’as interpreter, as he speaks English and French fluently. He was made a sergeant, and is now. regarded as a mascot.