NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2088, 10 February 1920, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Serbia has fewer than 100 doctors left. Brazil supplies half Hie eotVeo of the world. Bluo-hlack comes from the charcoal of the vine-stalk. South Africa produces over 170,000,0001 b. of wool annually. There were only four autoiiiobiles in the United States in 1896. The planet Mars is nearer to the earth than 30,000,000 miles. There are from 150 to 200 firemen on Hie hugest trans-Atlantic liners. There are 28 pounds of blood in the body of an average grown-up person. , The United States produces more petroleum than ail other countries combined. ' Wood has been made stronger than steel, and is used especially on airplanes. ‘When a fish has lost any of its scales, by a wound or abrasion, they are never renewed. Only 300 Japanese soldiers were killed during the war, although 800,000 were mobilised. With the exception of the diamond, carborundum is the hardest :>f ail known substances. Eighty-five per cent, of all the automobiles in the world are in the United Slates. _ The tallest and shortest people in Europe, the Norwegians and Hie ..Lapps, live side by side. The words, “For he’s a jolly good fellow,’’ are said to he sung to the oldest tune in Hie world. ■Medical authorities declare that butter is Hie most nutritious article of diet, and that bacon comes next. The postmen in Portugal save themselves much walking on Sundays by delivering letters at church. On a snail’s tongue, which resembles a long narrow ribbon, as many as 30,000 teeth are sometimes distributed. Tiie.nut-trees of the world, it: is calculated, could provide food all Hie year round for the population of the globe. More than 10,000 Japanese pilgrims evdtry year climb Fujiyama, (he sacred mountain of Japan, which is 12,363 feet high. The pipe line which extends from the Oklahoma oil fields to New York harbour, is the longest line of its kind in the world. . The exquisite colour, Prussian. Blue, is made, by fusing horses’ hoofs and other animaProfuse with impure potassium carbonate. There are over sixty known varieties of the banana, with as great, or greater variation in character as in Hie different, kinds of apples. Brazil exported no beef before Hie. war. Now she is shipping out 75.009 lons annually, and building packing plants to increase Hie output. Captain T. G. Clay, of the London and North-Western Railway Irish Steam thicket Service, who has just died, crossed Hie Irish Sea no fewer Ilian 20.000 times. Tiie greatest ocean depth so far recorded is in the Pacific, off Mindanao, namely 32,089 feet. The mean depth of Hie ocean bed is reckoned at about 12,000. feet. Seventy-live years ago it was not unusual for a formal English breakfast to last for two hours, while a dinner might start at eight-thirty and be protracted till midnight. Ami Hie courses were as many and ■substantial as the meals wore lengthy. A wonderful substitute for coal, made of a compound of straw, has been discovered by a Spanish engineer. 'The composition is said to develop suHicient steam for a locomotive in thirty minutes, and Hie ashes it loaves has been found to make an excellent fertiliser.