NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1902, 14 November 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Paper dresses of proved durability have boon invented in Germany. Darwin asserted that there is insanity among animals, just ns there is among people. Aeroplanes can now be launched from the decks of vessels .while the latter are moving swiftly. The-apteryx of New Zealand is a bird absolutely without wings, though its ancestors had them. A man and two women were arrested in New York recently for attempting to sell a baby for 35 cents. Seventy-one pounds of raw wool is required for the initial equipment of a United Stales soldier. It takes eight times the strength to go upstairs that is required for the same distance on the level. An ordinary silver fork will write on coated book-paper almost as clearly and easily as a lead pencil. Vacations for worn-out nurses from all the lighting armies are provided by Norway’s people and hotels. An “acid" soil, when ground up, loses acidity, and often becomes “basic,” especially when the soil is sandy. More than £220,000.000 worth of steel in all forms was exported from the United States in the year ending April, 1918. A single U.S, torpedo-boat destroyer steamed 74,000 miles, searching for and pursuing submarines, between April, 1917, and August, 1918. The War Department has issued an order enabling coloured nurses registered by the Red Cross to render service for their own race in the army. There were; 137,408 gross of human hair nets invoiced at Chefoo, China, for the United-Stall’s during 1917, compared with ti 1,308 gross for 1910. Some boys who were burning a mattress thrown out of a Brooklyn house, discovered £4OO sewed inside it by its former owner, who died shortly before. •Japan is now printing text-books for California schools, and making bats for American baseball teams, because these industries are not protected by the tariff. A Los Angeles (Cal.) young woman invited 1.000 friends to her wedding, rented a. big hall, charged 50 cents admission, and gave the proceeds to the Red Cross. The American Red Cross has announced that the Government ban against foreign service for women who have relatives in the service does no! include a nay nurses. At least a million men will be constantly kept training in the camps of the United States while the war lasts, according to the plans of the War Department. (Lying to the scarcity of petrol, the taxi-cabs of Stockholm are now using wood alcohol, which is supplied in great quantities by the newly-founded sulphite mills. According to a prominent medical journal, farmers and their wives eat more, indigestible food, and suffer from dyspepsia in all its forms more severely, than city adults. A coloured trooper, boasting in public speeches of how he won the French Cross of War, was arrested recently in Bridgeport, Conn., as a deserter from the 3(islh Infantry. It look 590 years for a certain fall spruce to grow in (lie Oregon forest. It took 95 minutes for (wo United Stales soldiers to fell it, so it could be made into airplane frames. \\ imbledon Food Committee (England) widelv advertised that the necessitous poor could have milk at less than cost price; but only three persons, out of a population of (10,009, applied for it. President V ilson has commuted to life imprisonment the death sentence imposed by court-martial upon a private in the American forces in France, charged with desertion in face of the enemv. The United States Red Cross rolling canteens in Italy are distributing to Italian soldiers packels comaining socks, soap, cigarettes, chocolates, handkerchiefs, writing material, small mirrors, and combs. Ihe foreign Relations Committee’ of the American Senate has unanimously approved the revised treatv between the United Slates anil Great Britain, for reciprocal operation of the .conscription laws of the two countries.