NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1960, 3 April 1919, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The rat population of large cities is probably equal to the human population, while in the country districts there are at least 10 rats for every person. The French city of Epernay is undermined by miles of vaults used chiefly for the storage of wine. They are hewn out of solid chalk on which the city is built. It has been estimated that tho total number of cells in the human body is 26,500,000,000,000, and that of this number 22,500,0000000000 are red corpuscles. Things cum be said in English much more quickly than in any other language, because English is made up to an extraordinary extent of words of one syllable. At an American aerodrome a bulldog seized the propeller of one of a fleet of five aeroplanes just as they were leaving. The machine was wrecked and the dog killed. On the ground that Denmark may recover the German proviee of Holstein, an English town council refuses to change (he names of Holi stein Parade and Avenue. The most successful whaling ground just now is the youth Atlantic, in the neighbourhood of South Georgia, South Shetlamls, and the Orkneys. If placed side by side, the German guns which have been delivered to the Allies under the terms of the armistice would stretch nearly twelve miles. The Talmaud, the book containing the civil laws of the ancient Jews, says that Adam was created cm a Friday, sinned on a Friday, and was thrust out of Eden on a Friday. Toronto raised a total of £6,000,000 for war purposes, incurred u civic debt of £2,400,000, and made munitions for Great Britain and (he Allies to the value of £400,000,000. The distance of the Great Xebuhi in Orion from our system is more than thirty-eight quadrillion seven hundred trillions of miles, in figures 68,702,581,000,000,000 miles. The British Graves Commission has, so far, located 26,000 graves of fallen members of the A.I.F. in France. The graves are being photographed, and copies will be sent to the relatives. (Several days before he died, JUr Roosevelt requested the Red Cross to give £1,280 of its share of his Xohel Peace prize to (ho French village near which his son Qnenlin is buried.

One of Iho peculiar properties of iodine is Hint a seve.nl!i-lliousandl'n pari of il will give waler a drop yellow colour, and starch a purple. When healed it rises as a dense vio-lel-eoloured vapour. in Paris, in the cycle and automobile show ol' 1!)!).], a large American automobile manufacturing concern was refused permission to exhibit its machine by..the police on the ground (hat it was “dangerous.” Anthracite is more valuable for heating purposes than any oilier coal, it contains as much as nine-ty-eight parts in a hundred of pure carbon, while bituminous coal averages only about eighty parts of carbon in a hundred. A jade seal which had been the property of the Chinese (leneral Tsi Chiknann, in the reign of the Ming dynasty, was found by a lisherman in the stomach of a (isii and sold, for a few cents; Curio collectors established its history, and a foreign collector paid £IOO for it. The French aviation service has decided to build an aviation museum at Issy-les-Moullineaux, France, where machines of the Wilbur Wright, Berber and Santos Dumont type, and Ihe airplanes Jlown by Guynemcr, the French ace of aces, Fonek and Bureau will he put on exhibit. No people think more of (heir horses than do (he Japanese. Afle'j the Chino-Japanese Avar they erected in Tokio a costly memorial to the horses that had fallen in the conflict, and after the Russian war they held a funeral sendee to commemorate the horses kilted in that war. It is said that the dram was introduced by the Moors into Europe from the East aider the Crusades, but under various forms i( was certainly known to the Greeks and Romans, for the tympanum is frequently alluded to in the classics which probably included the (umbourine and kettledrum.