NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1941, 18 February 1919, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

Potash is obtainable from certain volcanic lavas. It is supposed that Vesuvius and other volcanoes of the Italian series contain at least some 10,000,000,000 tons of potash.

To commemorate the work of dogs during the war, the National Canine Defence League is to open a new home for stray or unwanted dogs and a hospital for sick dogs in London.

It is expected that the naval flight station attached- to the American flotillas at Queenstown will not be dismantled. It will be used as a base for Transatlantic aerial mail services.

The demands of the army and navy of cigarettes and tobacco continue as great as before the armistice, and there is no immediate prospect of an improved supply of civilians.

Owing to the word “asylum” being regarded as a handicap to pupils of the, Infant Orphan Asylum in applying for situations, it has been decided to substitute the word “institution.”

Excluding the engine altogether, the parts of the average biplane amount in round figures to 20,000. In the case of a seaplane the figures are more than doubled, and 44,500 is the total.

The city of Hyderabad, on the great Sind Desert of India, has the reputation of being the hottest place in the world, having a shade temperature of 127 degrees during the summer months. A Northumberland man who was attacked by a bull and severely injured, saved his life by hanging on to the ring in the bull’s nose until help arrived, for in this position it could not charge him.

A certain district in California is generous to its motorist visitors. A stretch of particularly tine road, sometimes known as the motorists’ paradise, bears the flaming announcement : “Speed limit, 150 miles!”

A record maintained at the Carina Observatory at Odder, Denmark, of meteors observed from stations in Denmark and surrounding countries, enumerates 6,554 meteors for the years €875 to 1917, inclusive. An oil pipe installation linking up the Clyde and Forth for the purpose of oil fuelling vessels on the Forth has been inaugurated at Old Kilpatrick, near Glasgow. The oil flows through an eight-inch pipe 36 miles long. What to do with Camp Borden, which cost £400,000, is one of the problems before the Canadian Parliament. Its uses for an Air Force, a demobilisation centre, or for hospital or convalescent purposes have been suggested.

A case in which a bullet remained embedded in the wall of the heart of a wounded soldier, apparently without danger to the patient’s comfort or health, is rpioted in the annual report of the Medical Research Committee.

It was no uncommon performance in the Royal Air Force for a dozen or more finished enlargements of a new enemy position to be in the hands of the Intelligence Staff, within 45 minutes of the plate being exposed in the air. It is calculated that the Earth, seen from Venus, would appear six times as bright as Venus ever appears to us. From the remote planets the earth would look fainter, until from Neptune it would be seen only as a faint star.

The “anti-glass week” observed by the Automobile Club of Southern California in Los Angeles resulted in the collection of 186 pounds of bits of glass on the streets, each piece of which was a constant menace to motorists.