NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1989, 12 June 1919, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

■ he Biltish Army, which had in !i ranee more than 499,000 horses, luis handed over to France 250,000 horses for agricultural use in devastated areas.

At Dusseldorif, the second largest gun factory in Germany, the Arhardt Rhineland Works have started, like Krupps at Essen, to make locomotives.

In many parts of England there is a superstition that boys horn on Christmas Day should lie brought up to enter the church, and girls should become nurses.

To help refurnishing in Northern France, 30,000 chairs and 10,000 tables are being made by more than 100,000 schoolboys in manual training shops in the United Stales. French and Belgian women have sent “a Hood of letters” to the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, asking him for the characters of demobilised soldiers who have ottered them marriage. The Government at Munich has dismissed Lieutenant Hermann, in charge at. Rosenheim, for letting King Ludwig pass the frontier into Austria as “Commercial traveller, Ludwig Whiles.”

Japanese exports for 1018 totalled more than £196,270,000, an increase of £35,909,000 as compared with the figures for 1917. Imports were more than £100,813,000, an increase of £03,232,700.

A syndicate which has been given authority to search for petroleum in the United Kingdom has started Scottish prospecting work in \\ est Lothian. Boring is proceeding in the neighbourhood of extensive shale mines.

In the English village of Wesibore, Kent, bread and cheese and beer is provided free to every person who sleeps in the parish for the three nights previous to the first -miurday before Midsummer day. According to advices received from Flava, Bolivia, lour original paintings by Rubens have been discovered in the Metropolitan Church there. It is staled that art experts are positive of the authenticity of 1 he pictures.

Arrangements were recently made for the erection of Marconi Wireless Stations in remote parts of China —one on the frontiers of Cashmere, and (lie other on the Chinese side of Siberia. As there is neither road or rail available in these regions, the Marconi Company arranged for the transport of the plant by a large Haudley-Fage aeroplane. An experiment with sulphur gas has been made near Reading hy the new Rat branch of the Board of Agriculture. Two machines pumped sulphur dioxide inlo the rat runs, and about 5011). of Silieian rock sulphur was used, at a cost of about £2. Over .190 rats managed to leave their, hole-' and died, and many hundreds must have been killed underground. One of the most remarkable in--lances of begging is the Millionaire Beggar. A man named John Station emigrated to California in 1849, ’.'.hen gold was very plentiful there, lie felt too weak to dig, and decided beg for a fortune. He bad no competition, and everybody was h'ppy gelling riel), and so they wilijno'ly gave him gold-dust, for it

vas cheaper Gu 1 feud. 'Nobody nought (-1: rubbing a pour beggar, end vhhh Uim v«-v he •; ;i miiii-

A novel mor.”mon( has been er- • ” ted by the Anmeis of Dund.as i\.uu.nnario, in the form of a . o,lc m.crk ;iie site wuere i.tcw u famous apple free. A century ago a .-eltier named Mclntosh ■ clearing (he lend for his home, found ii wild apple tree which bore superior fruit. He cultivated it, .ml named it “Mclntosh Red,” and from it has spread the famous fruit of that name. The tree was damaged hy fire in 1890, but it bore fruit afterwards, dying at last at the end of a fruitful career of 115 vears.