NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2406, 18 March 1922, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

There was a plague of red spiders in West Cornwall recently.

Falconry, the art of hunting with trained..birds, was known in Cliinfi about 2000 B.C. ( The German literary mill ground out 32,345 books in 1020, an increase of 0,151 over 1019.' Scarlet faver and diphtheria castes in London hospitals numbered 8,305 a few weeks ago. National Savings Certificates numbering 841,110 were sold in England is a recent week. Over 6,000 stamps of the former German South-West African colonies are to be sold by tender. Foreign-born whites from 31 different ieountries to the total nuinbei; of 1,991,547 reside in New York city.

'The* fingernails are affected by certain-bodily diseases, thus forming an-indication to the general health. Romford Urban 'Council received over £I,OOO in the London market for celery grown on the sewage farm. . Nearly:four times as many houses .were completed and ready for occupation iu September as in January last. . Machines are being exported from America which will clean a man’s suit hrlO minutes at a cost Of Is 9d.-

A meerschaum pipe which would ha ve cost 15s before I he war, could not be purchased to-day for less than £4.

Radium, if taken as medicine, would have remarkable effects on our health, says a doctor who has tested his theory. /\ “Please close the door,”, in fourteen different languages, appears on a notice in the Enemy Debts Clearing Office, London.

The total number of motor cars in the world is estimated at nearly 11,000,000, of which S 3 per cent, are in the United States. Gas masks for the armed guards in American banks are suggested, since malefactors show signs of adopting gas bombs. London Bridge has a rent-roll of £150,000 a year, derived from property left in the past for the special upkeep of the bridge.

Folding wings and a special engine have been fixed to a motor car, with the intention of making it usable on the ground and in the air;. “Little Ben,” an ox recently shown at Norwich, weighed, 28cwt., and was too heavy to be taken to the railway station in any of the usual vehicles.

Collecting - “kiss-prints” is the latest whim of Parisiennes. The lips are rubbed with rouge and a kiss is impressed on the smooth page of an album and signed. ''Watches hidden in cakes of soap or carried in body-belts, have been detected by the customs officers at Dover, where _ fines for smuggling reached £2,000 in rt short time. When an income-tax collector called recently on Tetrazzini, the famous operatic singer, he received £1,500 in payment and a slice of plum-pudding which Tetrazzini herself had made.

There are now 55,000,000 Americans in the United Slates who can IrfijCe their origin to the United Kingdom. Oyer 1,000,000 of the 2,500,000 immigrants who' entered Canada during the last ten years have left that country.

A Soviet decree levying a duty of 300 roubles on every match-box containing 75 matches has been issued in Moscow. The Russian Government is about to dismiss 800,000 civil servants, according to a report of the Exchange news agency. A water melon presented to President Harding by a Californian grower was 30in. long and 32in. round, and,weighed 701 b. Canadian potatoes exported to the United States amounted to 116,240 bushels in September, and 100,536 bushels in October.

Germans numbering 3,610 applied for admis.sipn to Britain in the first nine months of 1921. All but 118 were permitted to enter. A greyhound, sold and sent by train from Boorowe to Muswelltown, in New South Wales, has tramped home the whole 400 miles. The more ’ prosperous regions of France have given a sum equivalent to about £500,000 to aid the people of the war-devastated districts.

Out of the world’s crude oil production' of 694,854,000 barrels, in 1920, the United States produced 6.3.8 per cent., and Mexico 23.5 per cent.

It is reported that both Spain and France are agreed on the practicality of a tunnel under the Straits of Gibraltar, ‘to join Europe to A frica.

In all probability the proposed £600,000 highway, through 'the Island of Montreal, to extend from the bridge terminal at Bout de I’He, to St. Anne de Bellevue, will soon be started, and work on this throughfare is expected to begin early this year. It is to be built in sections and will be 150 feel wide.

A‘ man got damages at Edmonton because a dog tore the seat out of hi* trousers, “for no reason at all.” It was explained that he was on friendly terms with another dog — an enemy of the one that, bit him. Consequently he was put down by y the first dog as “another of the same sort.”