NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1872, 3 September 1918, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Bandits at Craik, Saskatchewan gagged and robbed of £3OO the manager of the Farmers’ Trading Company and set fire to the company’s grain elevator and lumber yards, causing a loss of 3,000 bushels of grain and 1,000,000 ft. of lumber. There has recently been a marked increase in the consumption of cigarettes. “This,” said an expert connected with the trade, “is ac-. counted for by a heavier demand for the army and by the fact that women and girls in factories have taken to smoking in larger numbers than eA T er.” The reason avliv moths Hy against • a candle llame is because their eyes n ,7 I can bear only a small amount of !' light. When, therefore, they come Avithin (he light of a candle, their sight is overpoAvered and their vision confused, and as they cannot distinguish objects (hey pursue the light itself, and fly against the llame. During excavation work in Cyrenaica (Tripoli) (wo statues have been found, one represent mg a Roman matron of Hie second century, while the other is a winged figure of victory. A new temple containing a eollossal statue of Demeter Avitii long inscriptions belonging to the third century B.C. lias also been discovered. A Bill has been tabled in (he French Chamber proposing (he abrogation of the luxury tax and the .-nbstilntion of a 2ep re cent, tax on the gross receipts of all tradesmen and manufacturers Avilhont exception. in the preamble the autlior.q of Hu- Bill calculate that this tax Avil! bring the Exchequer from one hundred and sixty million to two hundred million sterling. The U.S. Bureau of Standards has developed an improved mercury vapour air-pump so simple in const met ion that it can he built hy a reasonably skilled glass-blower, which readily evacuates to pressures much lower than 0.0001 millimeter. It works hy two stages in con-

nected units, each operated by mercury vapour from a single boiler, a single gas-lmrner being used to evaporate the mercury.