NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2427, 11 May 1922, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Queen Victoria belonged to the family of Guelph, and Prince Albert to that of Wettin. *

The annual flow of the Mississippi carries out to sea about 400,000,000 tons of solid matter.

Well-trained sporting dogs will carry a bird so gently as not even to displace its feathers. Theft from a person, with violence may be punished by penal servitude for life in. England.

Rooks lay five or six eggs at a time, and the male oftens takes a share in sitting on them. Stealing enamelled lettering off shop windows is the latest form of petty theft in London.

“Peter’s Pence” was a tax formerly levied on England and other countries by the Pope. At a London wedding a lady recently appeared as “best man” in support of the bridegroom. On strike for thirty-four years a railwayman of lowa, U.S.A., has drawn over £4,000 in .strike pay. A boat used by-Oxford in the first University Boat Race at Henley in 1820 is still preserved. Many cheap forms of champagne are made from an effervescing beverage obtained from rhubarb.

So many baby passenger are now crossing the Atlantic that one line of steamships is providing children’s cots.

Country life is more conducive to long life than town life, according to statistics collected by a well-known doctor.

Gardeners and others numbering 1,331 are-engaged'in'laying out the resting-places- of British soldiers who fell in Prance. Pearls to the number- of 540 as well as 146 coloured jewels and eleven brilliants, adorn the State tiara worn by the Pope.

The Soviet Government estimated that i there are still £20,000,000

worth of- gold roubles . in private bands in Russia. The buzzing sound made by flies is produced by the rapid vibration of the wings, which may amount to 600 beats a second. Two football teams entirely composed of clergymen, and each captained by a rural dean, recently played a match in North London. . A squirt which throws cayenne and drug fumes is the latest American protection against thieves who try to “hold up” banks. Twenty pictures, supposed to have beln painted by Millet, are reported to have been discovered in an attic iu Cherbourg Town Hall. Women cannot stand physical strain as well as men, according to a London specialist, who lays the blame on weaker nerve centres. Bodmin Gaol was used as a storehouse for priceless national document's during the war. Among the things placed there was “Domesday Book.”