NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1851, 11 July 1918, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

More 1 obacco is-smoked per liond in Iho United States limn in nny oilier country except Holland. In 1913-14, just before the war, nearly 3,50(1,000,000 .leitors were dealt with in England. It fell a little in 1914-15, Iml even with the decrease 3,409,000,000 letters were carried, equal to 74 letters per head of (he population of the United Kingdom. Lung gas is the name which the soldiers have given to the suffocating vapours that are used against them hy the Germans. The gas comes over in waves, and immediately sets up irritation of the breathing passages, which subsequently develops into tuberculosis. If one big ship containing 0,000 tons of wheat is sunk, it means the loss of 5.370,000 half-quartern loaves of 21b. each. That represents the loss of a week’s bread ration for 2,088,000 people, or the starvation in bread of a fair-sized town for fifteen months.

Unique features marked the celebration of the golden wedding of a couple in Pennsylvania recently. They held the anniversary in the same house in which the wedding had been solemnised, and wore the same clothes in which they had been married lifty years ago. At the beginning of the war broken meat and other table refuse in camps and barracks was generally thrown into the tubs outside of the cookhouse, and sold as swill for pigs. But now glycerine for munitions is (d)lained from this “waste’’ at the rate of 1,200 tons a year. The navy offers financial inducement to the men to become good shots. A gunlayer, Ist class, receives 8d a day in addition to the pay of his substantive rating, and there are corresponding allowances for the various grades'of proficiency, down to 3d a day for a sea-man-gunner. The speediest of all dogs, the Russian wolfhound, is to be used in Utah to rid the Slate of wolves, which have lately been very destructive to stock. The dogs ought to be profit-makers, for it is said that each wolf (hey run down will not £39 to the dog’s owner, the slock owners paying .020 and the State £lO. Burma is (Ire world’s largest producer of rice, and, though less than a tenth of the crop is exported, even then her exports constitute more, than half (he rice which comes into international trade. The Burma rice crop averages twenty-eight million lons a year, and upwards of two and a-half million tons are exported. The tallest chimney in the world has recently been completed in Sagoivoseki, .Japan. It is of reinforced concrete, and stands 570 ft. high, on a hill -!3()fl. higher than the copper smeller with which it is connected, so that it discharges its poisonous fumes I,oool't. above (he plant. The chimney is 12fl. in diameter at (he base. Caught iu the nets of some Gulch fishing vessels, a German aeroplane was destroyed and the pilot turned over to the Dutch Government. The Germans sighted (he fishing boats and came towards them close to the water’s surface. The ’plane had been riddled by French shrapnel. An explosion occurred after the aircraft had dipped into the water and had become enmeshed in the nets. The officers were rescued and interned in Holland.