NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1781, 26 January 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Salmon, pike, and goldfish are supposed never to sleep. Glass windows are still scarce in the City of Mexico.

Twenty thousand women clerks are employed on British railways. Lord Brasscy, in 50 years, has sailed 322,000 miles in different yachts. Darwin states that there is insanity among animals just as there is among people. Granite is the only common rock which shows no traces of either animal or vegetable life. The sale of tobacco in any form to persons under eighteen years is now illegal in New York. In Camberwell there are 560 milkshops, the largest number on the register for any one borough. The apteryx of New Zealand is a bird absolutely without wings, though its ancestors had them.

' The production of good alum alloys has contributed to the m that light metal in airships.

The use of fireworks in England without the permission of the naval or military authorities is prohibited.

There is at present about 163,020 motor cars in use in Canada, ... n crease of 50 per cent, over last year.

An “acid’* soil, when ground up, loses acidity, and often becomes “basic,” especially when the soil is sandy.

Four women have been admitted to the bar at Moscow, Russia, the first women ever accorded this privilege there. During the last six years 183 new minerals have been discovered, as against 202 for the entire decade previous.

Careful measurements show that the North Star is as bright as a standard candle at the distance of one mile.

If we were at the moon looking at the “full earth,” its light would be forty times as bright as the full moon is to us.

The United States is growing lumber at the rate of about twenty billion board-feet a year, and using it at'twice that i-ate.

The project of constructing a port at Rome, at a cost of £1,600,000, has been finally approved by the Italian Government.

To keep the supjfiy of cheese required for the front the Army Contracts Department purchased in 1017 167,000,0001 b. of cheese.

The production of apples in the United States equals one and a-half bushels for every man, woman, and child in the country.

New concrete ships are built by first making a steel framework and then encasing this in concrete applied by compressed air.

D’Annunzio, the Italian poet, lias received his fourth medal for bravery in recognition of his services during the air raid on Cal taro.

The latest determination of the sun's beat shows that at (be earth’s average distance it can melt in a year a layer of ice 426 feet, thick.

Modern dredges are able even to dig into rock, and one of them can excavate from 7,000 to 10,000 cubic yards of rock in twenty-four hours.

A sergeant in the Chertsey (Surrey) Volunteers walked over 50 miles in a recent week between his home and headquarters to attend drills.

Artificial legs and arms were in use in Egypt as early as 700 B.C. They were made by the priests, who were the physicians of that early time.

It: is stated that the stained-glass windows in Cologne Cathedral are being replaced by ordinary glass as a precautionary measure against air raids.

Contractions of the stomach wall cause the sensation of hunger, and these contractions may be measured. Tightening a belt actually lessens flic feeling of hunger.

At one station-hut alone, somewhere in France, during the month of August, the Y.M.C.A. gave away to troops who were travelling 119,680 cups of hot tea and coffee.

A nurse giving evidence ir . Shoreditch County Court, London, said she was standing in a tramway car, having given her seat to a soldier, “ as most women do nowadays,”

For aa Aberdeen Angus five-year-old cow belonging to Lord Rosebery £609 was paid at a sale at Aberdeen, and £SBB was paid for a seven-year-old eow of the same herd.

London is mentioned by Bede as the metropolis of the East Saxons, in the year 504, lying oa the banks of the Thames, “the emporium of many people coming by sea and land.”

Weighing 21b. 13£0z., a potato grown by Mr A. Bonham on a Wandsworth (England) allotment, 'was the winner of the first prize in the Vacant Land Cultivation Society’s Competition. The full moon Ls 8.7 times brighter than the moon in the first quarter, and 10 times brighter than in last quarter; the latter because the last quarter shows more dark patches than the first.

A Danish inventor, it is announced, has discovex’ed a process for making newsjirint paper from seaweed. The new process is said to entail half the cost of making paper frous wood pulp.

Firemen fighting a blaze destroy-

ing a chicken house in Lawrence, Kansas, recently, were inspired to see two setting hens inside amid the lurid flames. The hens refused to 'leave their eggs. Intent on saving the faithful biddies, the firemen doused the fire, and the hens continued to set.

The Pamirs, sometimes called the “Roof of the World,” consist of a number of bleak plateaux and shallow valleys situated about 13,000 ft. above sea level. They lie to the north of India.

Venetian gondolas are black, in consequence of a law passed 500 years ago compelling uniformity of colour. It was passed to restrain the extravagance of ornamentation then prevailing.

A motor-boat, the Northern Messenger, to replace the one wrecked last year, has been built to serve the settlements along the Labrador coast, by taking to-them physicians from one of the Grenfell hospitals. ' Drop-by drop watering has been proved far more beneficial to plants than water given all at once, A strip of linen or cotton cloth is laid on the ground near the plant, one end being placed in a jar of water. Laboratory experiments with a lead target riddled with bullets have produced a surface so closely resembling the moon’s as to revive the old theory that the moon’s “volcanoes” were caused by the impact of motors.