NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2034, 27 September 1919, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Chinese wag their clenched lists instead of shaking hands.

Five is considered a sacred number among the Chinese. Nearly* 70,000,000 wild animals are killed yearly for their fur. The first pillar-box in Loaded was placed in Fleet Street in 1855.

When two Arabians meet.one another they rub fiieir cheeks together.

Pigeons have been known to fly 000 miles in continuous flight in ten hours.

11l 1885 the Swedish inventor, Lundstrom, patented the first “safety match,’’

Cochineal insects provide us with the finest colours of carmine, crimson, and scarlet. Between the years 1890 and dll there were 7,000,000 deaths from bubonic plague in India. Eighty-two C-boals, it is slated, went down, in the North Sea, and 72 in the English Channel. The skill of an elephant when tanned Is very expensive, the .tanning taking about six months. Ninety per cent, of (he armour plates fitted to British battleships and cruisers wore made in Sheffield. London’s telephone and telegraph wires extend 73,500 miles- overhead, and 921,000 miles beneath the ground.

Last year (5,000,000 pairs of stockings were made in the tailed States from silk manufactured from wood pulp. The Danube (lows through countries in which 52 languages and dialects are spoken. It is 2,000 miles in length. The Crown of Portugal is valued at about £1,750,000. Of course, this diadem is not now in ii-e, Portugal being a republic. A geological computation, based on measured rock strata, shows that first forms of life on earth appeared -15,140,000-years ago.

The aggregate age of fourteen residents of Tunbridge Wells who have died reeoully was 1,100 years, or an average of just over 85.

A curious butterfly exists in India. The male has the left wing yellow and the right wing red; the female has these colours reversed. The best rubies come from Burmah. Big rubies are rarer than big diamonds, and fetch great prices when they arc. of a perfect pigeonblood colour.

Silkworms come from the eggs of the silk moth. .Each moth lays about 200 to 500. eggs, about the size of a pin’s head. It takes -140,000 eggs to weigh a pound! Two rare pearl ear-rings, lownecked blouses, oblong collars of gold set with jewels, and false red hair, were some of the things Queen Elizabeth wore in her 07th year. There are about 600,000 persons in the Stale of New York who cannot read, write, or speak English, and about 250,000 of these are unable to read or write any language at all.

Bread is used by Swedish brides to avert misfortune. She fills her pockets with pieces of bread* which, oh her way to church, she disposes to everyone she meets to prevent, as she thinks, ill-luck in her future.

In China every member of a family is responsible for order in that family. If a younger son. should commit a crime the older sonlikely, to. be taken into custody and made to pay the penalty for the offence.'

Because the lion is brave and daring many African tribes eat its llesh, and think by this means to •prove as courageous as it ; and, just for the same reason, certain of the hill tribes in India cat tigers flesh. Probably the most remarkable linguist in the world is Alfredo Trombetti,,'a schoolmaster in the Italian town of Cuneo. Though entirely self-taught, he is intimately acquainted with no fewer than 58 languages and dialects.