NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2267, 23 April 1921, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The by-laws proposed by the Seine Departmental Council, of France, for tramears and omnibuses working in the district, will compel men to give up their seats to elderly women or mothers with children. An American has been buried at Topeka, Kansas, U.S.A., in a vault in which an electric light burns continually. He paid a 20-year subscription for a local newspaper to lie delivered at (be vault daily. A live-ton crane which was being used to place granite blocks in position on the Dover Patrol memorial obelisk, was overturned by a violent gust of wind, although if was em-

bedded in four tons of concrete. In consequence of the increase in crime in the United States,, the burglary insurance companies which lost over £575,000 in 191!), and still more last year, are proposing to make changes in the form of their policies. Since the north end of Halifax (Nova Scotia) was destroyed by the big munitions explosion in December, 1917, 1,000 houses, accommodating 0,000 people, have been erected, and the work of reconstruction is nearly completed.

Paris University Library is to have a collection of gramophone records reproducing the voices of great men of modern France. The three marshals of France will be asked to read the most famous orders which they issued during I lie

The English language contains between 400,000 and 500,000 words. The average Englishman uses about 1,500 words, while a highly-educat-ed man may use as many as 5,000. There arc not many Englishmen, however, who use more than 4,00(1 different words.

The rate tit which people read varies considerably. Home people read so fast that they do not “take in” all they read. Silent reading—tliot is. retuliufr oneself —tins been put at 900 words per minute by one statistician, but a test would reveal considerable variations. The British War Ollier stales that 202,052 of the commemorative plaques and 850,000 of the scrolls that arc being presented to the next-of-kin of officers and soldiers who lost their lives during the war have now been distributed. The distribution of scrolls is now, therefore, practically complete. , The taking of the census in some countries entails considerable difficulties, In Zululnud, for instance, the natives make their record on a stick of wood. Notches are cut dividing the stick into as many parts as there arc lints in a kraal, and then smaller notches arc cut in each division, representing the people in each hut. The sticks arc threaded on strings, and arc then collected by the British police.