NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2414, 6 April 1922, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Purbeek marble is really fresh water limestone. Liverpool Street Station, London, has 1,264 trains a day. Railway coal waggons in America hold as much as fifty tons. The population of Finland at the end of 1921 was 3,367,542. The wettest area in the world is on the Khasi Hills, in Assam. Ravens pair for life, and use the same nest year after year. There are 40 racecourses licensed by the Jockey Club in England. Storks, gulls and other longlegged birds sleep standing on one leg. Eight packs of hounds, including harriers, “hunt” in Greater London. The collarbone is broken more often than any other bone in the human body. A plague of red ants is reported from the Department of the Var, in Southern France. Despite ihe shape of the outer shell, the yolks of all normal eggs are exactly spherical. From the infant school to the University, there are 900,000 scholars in London. /

Frogs and snails now figure on the menu of one of London’s smartest restaurants.

Mobilisation and maintenance of the Swiss Army during the war cost; £48,000,000.

Eighteen pounder shells to the number of' 37,000,000 were used by tlie British Army during the war.

In the London area under the Metropolitan Police there are thirtythree local educational authorities.

A ballroom with a specially designed floor for 250 dancers is beingmade in the Canard liner Berengaria.

Playing twelve hours a day, a bandsman in one of London’s street bands is lucky if he makes 35s a week. . American Army aviators are mapping the Aft. Washington region from an altitude of from 8,000 to 10,000 ft. The herring spawns altogether some 30,000 eggs on an average, but barely one in 2,000 of these live to any size. Newcastle contains three parishes, of 22,000, 17,000 and 7,000 inhabitants respectively, all worked by four clergymen. English tests showed that factory hands gained from 5 to 15 per cent, in efficiency after the factory windows had been cleaned.

I During last year 361 steamers, | with a total tonnage of 176,662, entjered the port of Zeebrugge. Of | these, 269 were British.

| The organ of Worchester Cathedral is silent for want of repairs, ,which would cost £6,500. The origanist meanwhile uses a piano. ; Americans favour the old English dogs, such as sheepdogs, collies, and fmastiffs, rather than the foreign types so popular in England. Carving on an overage forty saddles of mutton a day for six days in the week is the record of a carver at a famous London restaurant.

Obsolete naval vessels are beijig sold by the French naval authorities at Cherbourg at very low prices. A torpedo boat was sold for £2OO. The Germans have at last returned the ancient astronomical instruments stolen from Pekin in 1901, among them the earliest known example of equatorial mounting, made about 1279.

■Sixteen freehold cottages have been sold at. a public auction at Monmouth for £IOO, or about £6 per cottage. Five of the cottages are occupied. Austria’s collection of Gobelin tapestries, numbering 900, and valued at £80,000,000, has been “pawned” to an American syndicate for £3,000,000.

Horse-riding, as a circus performance, is stated to have lost its popularity. Audiences used to dodging motor cars, call for sometiling more exciting.

A member of the Russian Commercial Delegation in Sweden stated that Sweden will receive a big order for turbines for the Russian power stations which are now being constructed.