NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1866, 20 August 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Australia was first used as a naval base about 1840.

Penny stamps on cheques yielded £1,804,000 last year.

Tickets on the Underground Railway consume two tons ot wood pulp daily.

More than 10,000 linns, with 2,500,000 employees, are making munitions in England. Silver is so scarce in some parts of Ireland that change is given in postage stamps. More than 30,000 women volunteers are now on work connected with the German field army.

Over 3,000,000 ft. of lumber is cut by Canadian forestry companies in France every day.

According to an eminent doctor, the excessive use of salt tends to paralyse the sense of taste.

There is a 250-year-old pear tree at Glynde, Sussex, which still bears fruit heavilv each year.

British paper currency has risen 52 per cent.; U.S.A. 401 per cent., and Germany 510 per cent.

A gun is being made in the United States which will be callable of hurling a projectile 105 miles. New Zealand was the lirst of the Dominions to offer naval assistance when war broke out in 1014.

The total wage bill of the railways of: Great Britain to-day amounts to no less limn £4( ,000,000 a year. A mill has been started in Scotland which is capable of turning out 200 tons of paper u week from sawdust.

According to the Inlesl statistics, ihere are 4,500 cinemas in the British Isles, with an annual attendance of 1,750,000,000. It is staled that every twentyninth person in the I nited Stales is the owner of a motor vehicle of one sort or another.

Statistics show that 05 per cent, of our soldiers recover from wounds, and that about 00 per cunt, return to the firing line.

If America adopted the same vigorous military (-ailing-up standard as Germany, she could raise an army of 17,000,000 men. Banyan trees are remarkable for the fact that their branches droop down (o the ground and take root as separate stems. One-third of the world’s 713,000 miles of railway.- are owned or controlled by Hie Governments of the countries in which they operate, Petrograd is famous for its vapour baths, to which an immense crowd flocks on Saturday evenings, each person carrying his own towel. While workmen were demolishing an old building at Krugersdorp, Johannesburg, they unearthed a bar of pure cold valued at £3OO. Some of the British battleships have searchlights so powerful that a newspaper may he read by their light by a person eighteen miles awa y. The total expenditure of France from A turns) Ist, 1014, to December 31sl, 11)17, was £4,0-10,000,000, the net war outlay being £3,428,000,000.