NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1915, 14 December 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

A square' emoralcl fetched £I,OOO and four rows of pearls sold for more than £2,000. at a sale at auction held in London recently. The Nile has the fewest Tributaries, for il ls a feature peculiar to that river that for 1,500 miles it receives no affluent whatever.

At certain points in Sweden s lumber district where there are sulphite factories, lubricating oils tire now being made from liquid resin. Clergymen of Germany have been urged by the Government to fight (he hunger unrest by preaching patience until the next harvest. According to a vote taken at a gathering of soldiers in a Y.M.C.A. hut near the front in France, the first and worst sin is cowardice. Recent tests made of a fire-proof varnish for aeroplane wings are said to have been so successful that tire-proof aircraft may be an early possibility. The Marquess of Milford-Haven, belter known as Admiral Prince Louis of P>allenbei’g, is appointed Rede Lecturer at Cambridge for the

present year. Portobello Pier, on the kirlh of Forth, is to he demolished. The pier s trot dies a quarter ot a mile seawards, and is the linest structure ol its kind in Scotland.

.Observations at the front and elsewhere have proved that, as fur as birds are concerned, all the forces of warfare are merely regarded as nothing out of the common. The lirsl test of shrapnel was made in England 112 years ago, when a committee of British Army men reported favourably on the invention of a fellow officer, Henry Shrapnel. A claim recently received by (he

Air Raid Compensation Committee was for a, monkey, which was the only casualty in a house in the London district during a Gotha rani.

Japanese children begin to go. to school when six years old. During I lie' first four years they learn Japanese and Chinese; m the next lour every child Inis to learn English. Travellers have recently reported that California's active volcano, Lassen Leak, apparently is becoming extinct, for its crater, once a seething cauldron cmiti ing jets ot steam, is now only mildly active, and is freezing over.

A sew belonging lo a farmer on Lord Jj!! 1 limn’-s estate. near Onuskirk, Lancashire, Inis {riven birth to ji litter of 23 pigs, nil alive, which is believed to be u “record.’’ The same sow lias now had 70 pigs in live litters.

The reported lasi words of the former Tsar Nicholas, of Russia, just before he was shot by the lir-ing-s«iu:nl, were: —“Spare my wife and my innocent and unhappy children. May my blood preserve Russia from ruin.’’

The Hungarian Franehise Ret'orm Dili permits vr*>lll<>11 Id sil in Parliament. They must bo twont y-i'our years of age, and must be able to read and write the Magyar language. The women voters, it: is estimated, will number 2(10,000.