NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2524, 30 December 1922, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The Mohammedan year is shorter than ours by nearly eleven days. A parcel of Consols recently changed hands for tin* first time since 1760. The wealth of Nbr.way lies almost entirely in her forest.-, and fisheries. Scotland Yard still has 3(1 women police left out of the original 111 Few natives of India eat more than twice a day and thousands only once. A fatal case of sleeping sickness is recorded-at Griffithstown, Monmouthshire. Twiiis have arrived for the fifth time at a Welsh.household; there are 17 children in all. Evaporation daily raises 104 cubic inches of water from the sea and oceans of the world. An English railway company, on an average, occupies twelve acres of land for every mile of' railway. A plague of wood pigeons lias caused extensive damage to crops in Shropshire. Four hundred were shot in one week by one man. Having called to attend a patient Dr. John Norman, who was deputising for Dr. Inman, of Ammanford was hurrying from the house when .lie fell downstairs and broke his neck.

Having made all preparations for their wedding, an Epping couple, niton arrival by car at the Registry Office, found they had gone a week too soon. They had to return unmarried.

“Cock and hull” stories originated in the Buckinghamshire village of Stony Stratford. There were, and still are, two hostelries in the long main street, called respectively the “Cock” and the “Bull.” Stories told by patrons of the former were so invariably capped by tlio-e of the latter that no one could believe either .and so they became known as “Cock and Bull stories.”

The appointment has been recommended to Mr Walter Moon, clerk and solicitor to the Metropolitan Water Board, as town clerk of Liverpool at a salary of £3,300. On September 18 there were 1.307,200 wholly unemployed in Great Britain —11,271 fewer than in the preceding week and 510,533 fewer than the beginning of January. Among strange occupations registered in London were maggot breeding, rat-ebarming, and spnirming, which is believed to lie connected with electric lamp making. A smoking room for girls who wish to indulge is among the new attractions at the Restaurant for Women Workers in Kmgsway. London. Not many exercise the privilege.

The. latest stamp issued by Austria bears the effigies of the following famous Austrian composers: Haydon, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Johann Strauss.

Property in Stepney, London, has increased greatly in value of late years; one estate, with a rent roll of £1,874 a century ago. i- now worth £74,656 a year.

Almost impossible to value is the property in Germany claimed by the ex-Kaiser; it includes 53 palaces, mansions and estates in the neighbourhood of Berlin.

When a golden sovereign was offered in mistake for a halfpenny to a London has conductor recently. In* refused to accept it, as he thought it must be a foreign coin. Rents in Berlin were, until recently, limited to 125 per cent, more than the pre-war figure: they have now gone up to 350 per cent, of that amount. Rents of houses built for £BOO each by rural district councils in Bedfordshire are being reduced to 5- a week, owing to the drop in labourers’ wages. A postcard posted in Oldham on June 11, 1011, has been delivered in Burnley, England. It has been sent to America and tile receiver was Surcharged IdRainy summer weather, although unpleasant for holiday-makers, is very healthy, as it helps to destroy the germs of hot weather ailments. Big efforts are being made in Britain this year to restore razed forests, and oi.e Carlisle firm has booked orders for more than 0,000,000 young trees. Among the students at a Welsh school of mining is a nun from an Ayrshire convent; she speaks English, French, German and Spanish fluently. The oldest boat in the world is being dug out of a hog on the Slcsvig coast; it is believed to date back,to the beginning of the second century. German ex-Roynlists arc applying for pensions according to their military ranks. The ex-Crown Prince of Bavaria claims a general s pension. “Love stamps,” to he affixed to love letters, and so expedite their delivery is a proposition put forward to the postal authorities in Ameri-