NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2561, 29 March 1923, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Wine is used to christen ships in Britain. Flowers are used in the United States, and in Japan a pasteboard cage from which live birds are liberated.

A spider’s thread is really comprised of four smaller t breads, each of which consists of 100 separate tiny threads, so that the thread we see is spun of 4,000 films. Postmen and telegraph boys in England will in future have to make their clothes last longer, tunics having to be worn nine months instead of six months as at present. The extraordinary precocity of the children of India is shown in the fact that many of them are skilled workmen at an age when children are usually learning the alphabet. Goldfish were used during the war to test the water in which gas-hel-mets were washed. With their help it was possible to discover whether all poisonous gases had been removed.

A wireless “lighthouse” has been set up on the Island of Inchkeith, in the Firth of Forth. Wireless waves are concentrated by reflectors into a beam which can be sent 100 miles giving ships their position in a fog. A new invention is the pocket umbrella—an article -which folds up into a length of 13in., and can be carried in the pocket. The width of the cover is 40in.—the usual size—and it can be procured in different shades and grades. Customers at the most up-to-date grocery shops in America help themselves to the ready-made-up packets and pay what is due to a cashier as they leave the place. There are in Sweden 64 telephones per 1,000 people; in Switzerland 30; and in Germany 29. For England the figure is 19. France, however, is- a long way behind. She can only boast nine telephones per 1,000 persons; while Italy has only three.