NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2548, 27 February 1923, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The capital of the Bank of England is £14,553,000. Earthworms, which are eyeless, can feel light through the skin. The sound of a bell carries much better through water than air. The bean in Manchuria is yielding fine salad and cooking oils. The population of England and Wales in 1921 was 37,885,242. The organ of sight is more developed in birds than in any animal. The bone frame of the average whale weighs about forty-five tons. The first flight in a power-driven aeroplane was made 19 years ago. Nearly 400 fishing vessels belonging to Lowestoft were sunk in the great war. One pound of pure saccharine has the sweetness of a quarter of a ton of. sugar. The chance of one finger-print being exactly like another is 1 in 64,000,000,000.

There are now 18,689 fewer children attending London elementary schools than in 1914.

Infantile mortality in Scotland is returned at 64 per 1,000 births — the lowest on record. Brides, bridegrooms, and all the guests at a double wedding at Rotherham were deaf and dumb. The largest and only inhabited island in Tristan da Cunha is an extinct volcano 8,500 feet high. In Great Britain the sovereign has not exercised his right of vetoing, or stopping a law since 1707. Aeroplanes flying in mountainous country have on more than one occasion been attacked by eagles. The total number of men recruited in Great Britain and 1 Ireland during the war was 4,970,902. Over 35,000 patents were applied for in Britain in, 1921. Of these applications 297 were from women. More than one thousand different varieties of wheat are known, and tlie number is constantly increasing. New York’s highest “skyscraper” the Woolworth Building, 792 ft. high cost £3,000,000 to erect. Service chevrons, wound stripes, and silver war badges are no longer to he worn on British naval uniforms. The floating leaves of the Victoria Regia, a giant' water-lily, sometimes measure up to 12ft. aeros'S. A. cat a< Long Sutton (Lines) is rearing her kitten in a nest which she leaves when the hen comes in to lay. London’s Fire Brigade had its •last horsed turn-out on November 24th, 1921. The brigade was formed in 1833. The largest perfect bell in the world is in a temple at Osaka, Japan; it. is tewenty-four feet high, and weighs 200 tonk. Government publications of the various countries are named “blue books,” “white books,” etc., from the colour of their covers. The Red Cross Society in 1918 had over 3,000 detachments, with a personnel of more than 90,000, of whom 66,000 were women. > Under the Safeguarding of Industries Act, passed in 1921, duty is payable upon 6,000 different articles if imported into Britain. Originally founded for white troops only, the Victoria Cross has been open to Indian soldiers since 1911, and to women since 1920. The rank of viscount in England dates back to 1446, the oldest English viscountcy still in existence being that of Hereford, created in 1550.

The veterinary science was not systematically studied until the eighteenth ..century, although it is said to have originated in 300 A.D., in Rome. Education in England cost £4 16s Od annually per child in 1913, but in 1922 this had risen to £l2 7s 6d.