NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2046, 25 October 1919, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The largest yield of bone from a single whale was taken in 1883, It amounted to 3,1101 b., which was at that time worth £3,125. One hundred thousand Japanese are now living in the United States; all but five thousand of them in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast districts.

As a means of preventing small boys from “hanging on” automo'biles, an inventor has lifted up a contrivance which gives an electric shock to any delinquent, Mr .John Hobden, of Marbleton Priory, Sussex, recently captained a team consisting of himself, nine sons, and a son-in-law, in a match against the local cricket club. Mr Lloyd George signed the Peace Treaty with a pen nuulp of gold, bearing an inscription in Welsh. The pen was the gift of Mr R. Morris, M.P. for North Battersea.

On the North-western Railway alone more than 17,000 signals are lit every night, and a driver working from London to Crewe and back is controlled by nearly 000 signals. Of . the 5,700,000,000 packets which pass annually through the post offices of the United Kingdom, 33,000,000 cannot be delivered because they arc insufficiently or incorrectly addressed.

Upwards of 050 ions of soot fall annually on each square mile of the City of London; that is to say, during one year 70,050 tons fall on the 117 square miles which form the administrative countv.

The earliest suiinKffinc boat chronicled was thaT construclcd in 1020 by the Dutch natural philosopher, Cornelius van Drehbel. They wove wooden, and were rendered watertight by greased leather stretched over the hull. In one of them James I. of England made a lengthy trip. Thirteen thousand guineas has been.paid for a pair of Persian carpets left ß to tile Marchioness of Graham by her fa liter. The carpet s, measuring 13ft. by sft. Din., arc woven of silk, wool, and camel's hair, in exquisite coloured arabesque designs, with pink and purple panels on a ground of gold and silver thread.

It is not generally known that the Canadian Government is the owner of the world’s greatest buffalo herd. It totals 3,112 head, and they are congregated in Buffalo National Park, an immense reservation, 105 square miles in area, at Waimvright, iu the prairie province of Alberta. This vast park is entirely enclosed with a strong wire fence. ,

A lady' in America cherishes an old Bible, which an ancestress baked in a loaf of bread when a house-to-house search was going to be made for stray copies of the Scriptures. The soldiers came lo search the house, hut it is not a mailer of wonder that they failed lo find the bunk, which now, looking pretty old, is the American lady's chief treasure. Men who toil in lampblack works are —owing, it is said, to the large amount of carbon they inhale — immune from the white plague, and many sufferers iu Hie early stages of pthisis make considerable sacrifices to obtain, employment of this kind. These grimy workers further resemble colliers in that "they are rcmarkphly free from diseases of the nervous system.

Few people know Unit the British have a sunken fleet nearly half as large again ns the German lleet that lies beneath the waves at Scarpa Blow. In .1(593 an English merchant fleet of 400 sail was being convoyed to the Mediterranean by 23 English and Dutch men-of-war, when they attacked by 71. French ships. No less than 90 of our vessels went down, but Admiral Uooke, by brilliant manoeuvring, brought the others away in safety. The ' “Florentine,” or “Grand Duke,” a diamond of* 139 carats, valued at £160,000, was picked up by the roadside after the battle of Gran.son in 1476. Its tinder, thinking it was a worthless piece of glass, promptly Hung it away; but on second thoughts picked it up again, and was glad to part with it for a franc to a priest, who, in turn, was delighted to dispose of it at a profit of a hundred per cent,, one two-millionth part of its value. The Bible was originally one continuous piece into lines to suit the sense was done by Tuthalius, of Alexandria, in the lasi half of the Fifth Century. Its division into chapters is ascribed to two archbishops, Lanfraue in the Eleventh Century, and Langton in the Thirteenth, and a cardinal, Hugo de Caneto Caro, about 1250. Rabbi Nathan began the division of the Bible into sections about 1445, and another Hebrew, Athras, completed the work in 1661. An English printer, Robert Stephens, iutroduccd'the present division into verses in 1551.

That one should find sweet blossoms in the ice-bound, dreary wastes, of the North Pole, seems incredible. It is, nevertheless, a fact that there the explorer has found many thousands of acres of buttercups, heather, bluebells, dandelions, and rhododendrons. A botanist lias collected 125 species of plants and flowers on the roof of the world. Even large, delicious mushrooms are there, while orange-coloured lichens are in abundance. And, strange to say, all, with but a single exception, are perfectly odourless. Thousands and’ thousands of acres of /lowers, and yet no perfume.