NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1861, 6 August 1918, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Great Britain provides France every four weeks with the following steel materials : —2,900 tons plates, 15,200 tons of sheets, 3,000 tons of sections and joists, and 4,100 tons of rounds, squares and joints. Private Ivey Cleveland, of the United States army, who takes size 15 in boots, has been granted an honourable discharge. Otherwise a special bootmaker would have had to accompany him to France. Manufactures exported from U.S.A. during the first nine months of 1917 were more than four times as great in value as in the same months of 1914, the totals being 3,f | 020,000,000 dollars and 728,000,000 * dollars respectively. In parts of Australia, where the average rainfall is not more than ten inches, a square mile of land will support only eight or nine sheep. In Buenos Ayres the same area, with thirty-four inches of rain, supports 2,500 sheep. One of the most daring teats in the war —the bombing of Krupp’s — was carried out by a pilot nearly forty years of age, who before the outbreak of hostilities had no dying or military experience, but was a, peaceful grocer in a French village. For. refusing to ring the bells of the city, the burgomaster, aldermen, and town councillors of Mons have been condemned to pay heavy tines. They had been ordered to ring the bells when the Germans announced a victory on the Isonzo over the Italians. The Hying frog is found in Borneo. It uses an expansive membrane on each side of its feet in sailing from tree to tree. The webs enable it to do this in the same way as (he wings of the modern (lying machine enables our aviators to remain in the air. The common snail, although in every respect an air-breathing animal, can yet live for an indefinite period without inhaling the least atom of air. On the approach of winter (he snail retreats into his shell, and hermetically closes (he (ptening or mouth with it silky texture, which is absolutely impervious In both air and Witter.