NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2069, 18 December 1919, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

The number of parcels packed arid despatched by the Central Prisoners of War Committee to British prisoners in Germany during the war was 2,500,000. The Chinese bride-to-be lias to stand in a round, shallow basket while she dresses for the wedding 1 , in order to make her of a good temper and amiable disposition. Tiie queen bee will lay from 2,000 to 3,000 eggs daily in the season. She is the mother of all the other inmates in the hive, and can lay eggs to produce either drones or workers —as the fancy takes her. A company has been formed in Denmark for the manufacture of linen from the fibre of nettles. At a recent exhibition everyone was struck by the whiteness and suppleness of the tablecloths and napkins made of this nettle Jibre. The California walnut harvest this year is the largest in the history of the industry. It is estimated at 48,000,000 pounds, worth somewhere near £3,000,000, and this pi-o-duction will be taken from 75,000 acres of bearing groves. Curtailment in the amount of cloth used in the kilt worn by Scottish troops has saved £23,000 to the Government. The Scottish troops did not resent the innovation, and to all appearances their kilts are as full and as picturesque as ever. When an opal is exposed oven to the slight heat of an open lire, some feet away, it is likely to he destroyed. It is mainly composed of silica, and contains, as a rule, from live to thirteen per cent, water. Nearly all other stones are practically indestructible. '' The strongest animals exist entirely on vegetable food. It is the ferocity of the lion rather than his strength that makes him formidable. The animals with most speed and endurance —the horse, the reindeer, the antelope, and others —are also vegetarian. Ancient Hebrews were mostly fair-haired, but now they are darkhaired. Pair-haired people generally are becoming less numerous than in the olden days. Irish peo-x pie, for instance, two hundred years ago, never had many dark-haired individuals in their race. The trees which have the largest leaves are those belonging to the palm family. The double cocoa nut palm has leaves which arc often thirty feet long, and the Inaja palm, oh the banks of the Amazon, has leaves which sometimes reach fifty feet in length and twelve feet in bi’eadth. A single aeroplane has in one flight completely covered with photographs an area of forty square miles. The cameras used for this work are automatic, and, once started, will go on taking photographs of whatever is under them, without any attention, until the film is used up. A rope of 315 graduated pearls of the finest Orient recently fetched JAH.SOO in London, after an opening hid of £20,000, A four-row necklace of 192 pearls was sold for £lO,200; a brilliant tiara with large centre stones, £10,100; another ti-

afa, £9,200; and a necklace of 53 pearls, £9,000. Notwithstanding his unwieldly shape and short legs, the rhinoceros is one of the most agile of beasts. A horseman can scarcely manage to overtake him, and in strength he is perhaps unsurpassed by any animal in the forest. In single combat no animal but the elephant can stand up against him.

The meridian of the earth, the scientists will tell you, is an imaginary line running from north to south. It is not generally known, however, that near Greenwich Observatory the meridian line can be actually seen and walked upon. It is deeply graved in stone, and is laid in the footpath that leads round the Observatory.

Churches arc sometimes put to strange uses. The sixty-year-old Bedford Chapel, at Somers Town, London, is to be converted into a laundry. Previous to this it was a gas mask factory, and also manu-. factured artificial eyes. Probably some washtub may now mark the spot where Robert Browning once owned a pew, since the poet was at one time a constant worshipper at Bedford Church.

The nominal salary of the Speaker of the British House of Commons is one of £5,000 a year, together with the use of a magnificent residence in the Palace of Westminster. But, as a matter of fact, everything needed for the maintaining of his household is provided free by the Government. Light, heat, furniture, carriages, horses, and motor ears, all these are perquisites, while game is sent to him from Sandringham and 'Windsor, wine from the royal cellars, and yearly gifts from the ancient Guilds of the City of London. When he retires it is the established custom to give him a. peerage and a life pension of £4,000 a year. “SeOres and scores of Niagaras, as far as power is concerned, are going to waste in New Zealand,” declared Sir Joseph Ward, in advocating that the State should own and develop the hydro-electric power of the country. He held that the Government should order all the necessary machinery immediately, so that within three and a-half or four years at the most the great sources of power would be at the disposal of the people throughout New Zealand. Upon an estimate he had seen recently, power in New Zealand would cost the people.two and a-half times less l imn the power from Niagara cost the people drawing power from there. New Zealand could not be put upon the same plane industrially as America, but by failing to develop the sources of power lying at its doors the country was losing a great: opportunity. All the railways of the country ,he added, should be run within the next fifteen years by electric power.