NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2152, 20 July 1920, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The Bible is now printed in 528 languages. The opal is more difficult to imitate than the diamond.

A whale is able to remain under water for an hour and a-half.

, The railways of the United Kingdom cost £1,334,000,000 to build.

More matches are used in Great Britain than in any other country.

The average life of si lion and a tiger is 40 and 25 years, respectively. „ India and China contain about one-half the total population of the world.

Soot weighing one ton may result from burning one hundred tons of coal.

The population of New York City at the beginning of 1920 was 5,021,151. 'lnfluenza victims in Paris last year numbered 10,281, of whom 3,098 were men. The enormous waste of potential coal products amounts to about £200.0091000,000.

Jn proportion to its weight, the wing of a bird is twenty times stronger than the arm of a man.

There are 500,000 in Great Britain, and between them they employ 1,100,000 labourers. According to estimates, the population of Canada has increasecfby 2,315,00 t) during the last 10 years.

In France noted criminals are made to speak and sing into a phonograph before their discharge from prison.

One hundred and twenty persons are employed on the private telephone exchange of one New York hotel.

Magistrates in England in the sixteenth century had certain powers with regard to fixing wages and hours of labour.

Of the 56 signers of the American Declaration of Independence, all except six were members of the Masonic fraternity.

In Mongolia the eldest son of each family must boa monk or lama, both (A: which are in the nature of public charges. Across Salt Lake, in LI ah, runs the longest trestle bridge in the world, measuring, with its approaches, 27 miles in length. The progress of glaciers, even under favouring circumstances, is not .more than 35ft. in a day, or about three miles in a year.

Civilisation shortens the life of a horse. In a wild state he lives to he 36 or 40 years old, while the domestic horse is old.at 25. The cat’s whiskers are absolutely necessary to it, according to the latest report of some naturalists. Ihe whiskers are as long a.s the cal’s head is wide, arid the head is as wide as the body, so wherever the whiskers go there may the cat go also. The tiny, delicate hairs grow from a gland, and.are nerved to the utmost sensibility. No matter how light the touch of the hair against an obstacle, it is instantly lelt by the cat.

The latest in rat traps is most imposing In appearance, and is equipped with a mirror in one of its compartments. This, however, is not intended to cater to the vanit\ of the rodents, but to lure them o desruetion. It is stationed just behind the bait, and the rat or mouse, seeing what it believes is a rival beating it to the food, rushes at the image, and thereby plunges into an interior apartment, from which there is no escape.

A striking table has been drawn up to show the difference between the capacities of the flying machine -of the future and the other means of transit., It relates to the comparative distances covered in a twenty-four hours day. Load lorry, .120 miles; cargo steamer, ‘240 miles; goods tram 360 tmles, mail steamer 360 miles; motor car, 4SJ miles; express train, 960 miles; Hying machine, 2,400 miles.