NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2348, 29 October 1921, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Rats are found in every part of the world except in the Polar regions. Over 62,000 private wells were damaged or destroyed in France during the war. One engineering works in Midlands is managed and staffed soley by women. The word “father” appears in the Bible nearly five times as often as “mother.” The Bible is on an average, translated into about ten new languages every year. The first aerial time-table, consisting of nearly 100 pages, has appeared in Germany. Smoking compartments for women are to be provided on the Canadian Pacific Railway. A fire-alarm bell which is set ringing by smoke alone is the latest fire-fighting appliance. , In some French rural districts eighty per cent of the inhabitants own their own houses.

“Surplus” women in Great Britain are estimated at 1,700,000, of whom 185,565 are in Scotland. A letter posted in Berlin at 7.30 a. m., and sent by air, may reach London by 5. 30. the same day. Half the students in the Medical Department of the University of Warsaw this year are women.

Asylums for the mentally afflicted are inspected once a year in England and twice in Scotland. , The Red Cross Society is organising the construction of 900 miles of roads in North China.

From a population of 50,000 only two entries have been received for a beauty competition at Hounslow. Liverpool is stated to be the sootiest place in England, Hull and Newcastle-upon-Tyne being second and third.

Men are encroaching on women’s work to such an extent that unemployment among the latter is increasing seriously. While canditatcs for the Holy Orders in Britain before the war averaged 680 per annum, the number in 1920 was only 158.

The silver mining methods of Peru are much the same as practised when Pizafro conquered the country four centuries ago. A new form of phonetic writing in Chinese is being adopted, so complicated is the present system of writing that language.

English sports are becoming increasingly popular in Siam, and there is a great demand for cricket bats and tennis racquets.

Lawn-tennis in parks and public grounds under the London County Council brought in £0,500 in the first ten weeks of this season.

Thirty-five electric motors control the movements of the giant telescope recently installed in Calafornia for astronomical observation.

The census of Scotland shows that the. total increase compared with 1911 was 2.5 per cent., being the smallest increase on record. A chair factory at Wycombe uses odd scrap, such as waste wood, sawdust, and refuse, as fuel to obtain all its power and its own light.

Southwark Cathedral is to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its re-opening by cleaning its windows, for the first time in twenty years. Cultivation of rubber was first attempted in 1876. About 80 per cent, of the 70,000 tons of rubber annually produced is now cultivated.

Auctioneering and estate management, chiropody, and, dental surgery, are three professions in which prospects are . said to exist for women.

The American millionaire, J. D. Rockefeller, has transferred nearly all his fortune to his family,- to obviate paying death duties on his demise.