NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2350, 3 November 1921, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The population of Belgium is now 7,610,752. An elephant rarely sleeps for more than five hours a day.

In 14 months, 2,000,000 people visited the Crystal Palaee. ' 111-health causes Britain a loss of £140,000,000 annually. Mexico employs more than 50,000 people in the vanilla industry. The Persians have a different name for each day in the month. The present crop of silk cocoons in Italy is estimated at 30,000 tons. A public speaker will, on an average, speak 7,500 words in an hour. Dog-fancying is now so expensive a hobby that only the wealthy

enjoy it. Brazil has taken measures to repress the traffic in opium and other

narcotic poisons,

Planters in Ceylon are proposing to grow sunflowers on a large scale for oil and cattle feed. Over five thousand miles of nets are set nightly during (he herring season in the English Channel. In less than two years the telephone lines in Czecho-Slovakia have been increased by 6,250 miles. Japanese have obtained a concession of 35,000,000 acres in Borneo for growing coffee, rubber, cocoanuts and rice. Eive thousand unemployed took part in the production of the film, “Pharaoh’s Wife,” recently produced in Berlin. Alcohol was first distilled by the Arabians, and when we talk about coffee and alcohol we are using Arabic words.

According to the recent census, the number of foreigners in Paris has increased from 158,000 in 1011 to 160,527. Millions of dead grasshoppers have been covering the entire bread th of the St. Lawrence River, East Canada, near Quebec. The height of the atmosphere is

computed at 100 miles, find its density decreases as its distance from the earth increases.

Salt beds covering an area of forty square miles exist in Nova Scotia. One bed alone is said to be

900 ft. wide and 80ft. dee]),

California received the first ostriches sent from Africa to America in ISB2, and Arizona has since become famous as a nursery of these giant birds. A total of 5,000,0001 b. of binder twine will be required this year for the crop of the Canadian prairie

provinces, as compared with 28,000,0001 b. used in 1920. The (low of the River Thames at Teddington Lock had decreased from 1,210,000,000 gallons daily in July, 1920, to 25,000,000 gallons daily in July of this year.

Since the armistice over 530 warships have been scrapped by the British Admiralty. The obsoletes include 38 battleships, 87 cruisers, 300 destroyers, and 106 submarines. A veterinary surgeon in New York is opening a dental clinic for pets, where dogs and cats can have their teeth attended to, and, if necessary, be fitted with false teeth. Dead white butterflies to the number of 6,626 were on view at Compton (near Guildford) Flower Show. They had been slaughtered by ten school children, one girl accounting for 2,004. The steamer Seapool struck an iceberb in mid-Atlantic while on a voyage from Montreal with grain. The swelling of the grain in the forehold stopped up the hole, and prevented her from sinking. Battleships are owned by the great Powers of the world as follows: —United States, thirty-six Great, Britain, twenty-nine; Russia and Italy, thirteen each; Japan, twelve; and France, eleven. Buffaloes, which are said to be dying out in America, are increasing so rapidly in Yellowstone Park, the great national “playground,” that feeding them has become a problem. The trawler Blucher landed at

Folkestone an aeroplane engine and other parts picked picked up in a trawl off Dover when fishing. The plate on the engine bore the inscription :“WD, engine, N 0.24333;.24333; SD, No. 6659, for W.D. By Siddeley Deasy Company.”