NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2091, 17 February 1920, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Lake Superior and Ireland are about the same size" The yellow sap of a tree of Siam produces gamboge. China lias more suicides than any other country in the world. Pepper cost £Uj an ounce-in England in Henry Vll.’s reign. The Chinese used linger-prints for legal purposes 1(1 centuries ago. tl is likely that the origin of ink. goes hack niore than -1,000 years. In Persia ladies decorate their faces with paintings of small animals. Most spiders have poisonous fangs,'hut few are dangerous to human beings. Every day 350 persons arrive in New York to make the city (heir permanent home. A single oak of good size is said to lift 123 tons of water during the months it is in leaf. Henry the Seeoud of France was the lirsl man to replace cloth hose with silk stockings. Elephants are very scarce and very dear; a ha by elephant' fetched £4OO at a recent sale. More than £40,000,000 is invested in the ice cream manufacturing industry in the United Stales. There are nearly 300 active volcanoes in the world, many'of> them, however, being quite small. Constantinople boasts of more dogs than any other city. The dogs are Hie common property of the city. It requires 28,000,000 tyres to equip the passenger automobiles and motor trucks used in the United States. -g, Although eggs of different species of birds greatly differ in shape, the yolks' of all are invariably spherical. Ten years ago there were 50,000 houses empty in the County of London. Now there is virtually none vacant.

. Stockings first came into use in the eleventh century. Before that time cloth bandages were worn about the feet. There is a lighthouse to every 11 miles of coast in England, to every 34 miles in Ireland, and to every 39 miles in Scotland. f Deer can all swim well. There are cases of caribou having swum across lakes ten miles wide when escaping from forest fires. Alabama raised enough peanuts last-year to supply two quart bags to every man, woman and child in the United States. On higher ground people are usually shorter, so I hat the Swiss and Central Europeans generally are stocky rather than (ail. ■ Much of the family washing in Japan is done by getting into a moving boat and letting the sheets, shirts, etc., trail astern on a long rope. . , , Brine from springs in Eastern Al-. berta reveals 81 per cent, salt, establishing Alberta as one of the richest salt-producing areas in the world. * ■ In the Middle Ages pepper was a. very costly condiment. So much

was il valued. Ilia! a small packet was considered a suitable present for a u'dted person.' Official estimates put the number of British, French, and Germanhorn wives brought home by soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force at. 18,000. . . • Kesleu, Utah, claims to-have the most conglomerate population of any American town. It is said there are no more than seven people of any one nationality. Two • hundred and fifty miles of British war medal ribbon are to be issued to, the men and women entitled to these decorations through recent edicts of the King.