NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2292, 21 June 1921, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

.Seventy-live per cent, of British cigar-makers are stated to be unemployed. Japan lias just ofiicially adopted the metric system of weights and measures. Ration food cards have been sent for preservation lo the British War Museum.

- The oldest tree in the world is believed to be in Ceylon, and now is in its 22nd century.

The loss of. population in France, due to the war, has been estimated at 4,000,000.

The Manx Government is to assume responsibility for £250,000 q£ the Imperial war debt. During the next few years all the telephone lines in England will be placed underground.

In Loudon alone the loss from petty thefts on the railways amounts to £3*soo,ooo'a year.

According to an English vicar, the shortage of clergy in the Church of England is over 2,000.

Hydraulic brakes on both front and rear wheels are among the recent developments for motor vehicles. ■

The corrected figures of the population of Paris are 2,856,000, which is an increase of 16,000 since 1911. Of 11,678 shopkeepers canvassed by the London City Council, 11,420 were in favour of compulsory early closing.

At one time during the war 94 per cent, of all the foodstuffs consumed in the United Kingdom were controlled.

The census taken in India last

March shows the population to be 319,000,000, as compared with 415,000,000 in 1911.

Four churches at. least in the City of London occupy sites which have been valued at more than £500,000 each. Platinum, of which there is a world shortage, has just been discovered at Mnnnbi, in Ecuador, in South America.

Two butterflies, caught in Penn and described as the “rarest of all Morphos,” were recently sold in London for £27.

“Smith” is the family name of three English peers, six baronets, 37 knights, and 200 Companions of various Orders.

Papier-mache tyres are to lie titled to the wheels of the Underground Railway trains in Paris, to make (hem noiseless. For the first time within memory wolves have appeared in various parts of the Bouehes-du-Rhone Department of Franc#. A by-election in the Department of Cotes-du-Nord, France, lias been declared, void, as only 5,000 out oi. 102,000 electors voted.

German imports into England before the war were 40 per cent, of her total exports. They are now bet ween 50 and 00 per cent. .Whisky, gin, and wine to tint quantity of 00,000 gallons were poured down a sewer recently by the Cary (Indiana, U.S.A.) police. Breathing through the mouth in>lead of the nose —a source of disease —is a fault with about 80 per cent, of the population of England.

If a man’s voice had the same carrying power in proportion to his weight as that of a canary, his lightest word could bo heard 800 miles' a wav.

Havana cigars imported into Britain during the last six months of 1920 were 2,000,000, compared with 40,000,000 in the corresponding period of .1919. According to the census’ of December last, the population of the Netherlands is provisionally given as (5,841,155,- as compared with 5,847.949 in 1909.

Drifting ice from the Arctic regions carries with il thousands of

seals, fn three hours, 4,000 seals were caught off St. Johns, Newfoundland, recently.