NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2066, 11 December 1919, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Persians shave themselves as a sign of mourning. Photographs of women are very rarely taken in China. France is confronted with a shortage of -11,000,000 tons of coal. The largest ourang-onlang ever shot measured four feet ten inches. The largest oak in England is one in Lord Bagot’s park in Staffordshire. There are more muscles in the human body than hones. They number 527. There are fewer daily newspapers in Spain than in any other country in Europe, Every fifth doctor of those who have just completed their training in England is a woman. In some cantons of Switzerland all the dead, rich as well as poor, are buried at the public expense. The gold production of the British Empire in 1910 was 1-1,229,844 oz., or (34 per cent, of the world’s total. Lobsters are said to have a great dread of thunder, and when peals are very loud will swim to deeper water. The increase in the cost of living in Great Britain since 1914 is Kit) per cent., and in France 292 per cent. The fleeces of ten goals are required to make a cashmere shawl, which takes three men six months to complete. Wasps are influenced by colours and smells. They favour yellow, black, red, blue and white, in the above order.

The greatest tea-drinkers in the world are the Australians, who consume about 81b. per head of the population every year. The giraffe is said to pass over the ground at the rate of about 50tt. a second, while the kangaroo covers .1 Oft. to lift, a second.

The highest price over paid for beef-steak was paid at Circle City, Alaska. During the Klondike rush a steak brought £lO a pound. Even pianos have been made from paper, and one specially manufactured for the late Sultan of Morocco cost over £I,OOO to put together. It is estimated that one seed of cotton, given the application of all possible care and skill, would produce 40,000,000,000 seeds ip six years. In the Argentine Republic, if a man engaged to marry hesitates beyond a reasonable time in leading his fiancee to the altar, he is heavily fined. Italy's wheat crop is estimated at 4,000,000 tons, 800,000 tons less than the average crop. This will necessitate the importation of 2,000,000 tons. The real estate mortgage is the oldest investment known. The Babylonian banking house of Egibi records a land mortgage on. a brick made in 000 B.C.

Census figures show that £43,000,000 worth of cigars and cigarettes, and £35,000,000 worth of chewing tobacco, is consumed every year in the United Slates. Altogether 80,000 pigeons were used by the British Army, Navy, and R.A.F. during the war, and no aircraft went to sea without carrying one as an official passenger. Yachting came to us from Holland, and our first yachtsman was the Merry Monarch, though Queen Bess is believed to have had some kind of pleasure-boat built for her at Cowes.

In Brazil there is a variety of magnolia'which, for a few weeks in the year, opens and closes at the same hour every day, regardless of both light and temperature. Certain of the natives, who know neither clocks nor watches, invariably gauge the time by this ilower.