NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1889, 12 October 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Steps towards the organisation of a volunteer lire department, in York, with at least 2,000 men, as auxiliary to the 4,000 paid firemen now employed by the city, are announced. The move follows the refusal of the War Department to exempt city firemen from the draft.

Poisoning her father to avenge a whipping was the inhuman act ’of a young girl in Texas. Eor some time the mystery of the man’ death puzzled the authorities, but the other day the man’s thirteen-years-old daughter confessed that she had poisoned her father because he whipped her so often. Quite the most wonderful feature of the war is the continued absence of epidemics among the troops, such as typhus and dysentery. Judged by the experience of former conflicts, they would by this time have numbered thousands of victims.- No more colossal token emdd be furnished of the effectiveness of san it ary pre cautions. How large, really is the world in miles? The most careful figures make it nearly 53 million of square miles. Can you grasp that? Just map out one square mile of your own neighbourhood, see what houses it would take in, and then think of that 53 million times multiplied. On that area about 1,751,700,000 folks arc living.

Equipped by the women’s branch of the American Zionist movement at a cost of £50,000, a medical unit is about to leave New Aork for Palestine. A hospital in Jerusalem has been placed at (heir disposal by the military authorities. The unit is taking £B,OOO worth of medical supplies, and a complete equipment of surgical, dental, and radiographic instruments. The result of the appeal for hoy recruits for work upon the Canadian farms this spring and summer lias already exceeded expectations. From reports available the provincial organisation announces the cn--000 boys who are ready to undertake patriotic work in helping production. Ontario’s objective was 15,0(H). Judging from reports received from the other provinces, (he Dominion objective of 2a,000 will be easily attained. A scheme for preventing parasites of the cabbage family from depositing their eggs comes from the U.S.A. Department of Agriculture. It consists iu placing sand saturated with kerosene —a eiiplni to a bucket of dry sand—at the base of (he plants along the rows. It will also kill young maggots.