NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2723, 22 April 1924, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The birth-rate for April, May, and June last year in England and Wales was the lowest on record for that particular quarter, except for the years of the war.

Eggs imported into England numbered 2,200,000,000 a year before the war; in 1922 only 1,700,000,000 were imported, owing to the increase of home production.

Cabbages were sold in St. Paul’-; Churchyard in London 300 years ago, when the cathedral clergy had the hawkers banished on account of the noise they made.

After being charged with begging and taken in hand by the London Police Court Mission, a lad was sent to Wales, where he ultimately became a prosperous farmer.

The rarest sbell in existence is one called the “Cone of the Holy Mary.” There is a specimen in the British Museum which, a few years ago, was valued at £IOOO.

There is by no means the same certainty to-day as a decade ago that the atoms of mi element contain hidden stores of energy. It looks as if we shall still want coal.

Crops arc being harvested somewhere in the world every month of the year. South Africa, and Peru harvest in November, and Bengal. Burma, and Australia in December. Boys who have been in a Borstal institution are discharged on license and must satisfy the directors of the Borstal Association that they are living an honest and industrious life.

Among the natives of South Africa there is a general belief in flic split soul One tribe * believes in three souls —one in tin* bead, another in the stomach, and a third in the big toe. Watercress is said by -miie doctors to contain all the three vilamitos necessary to tin 1 human body. Grown on land of little value for other crops, it would yield CIS to £2O an acre. When a camel is pressed beyond Its speed, and is spent, it kneels down, and nothing in the world will make it budge again. Die camel remains where it kneels, and where it kneels it dies. The claim of mi American astronomer to have discovered an additional moon revolving round (he earth brings the number up to tour, us a German scientist brought forward a theory of two moons twenty years ago, and a Canadian proles>or ndded a third a few years later. Among the sandwiclimen wlm advertised a recent charity tele at Folkestone, were two major-gener-als, eleven colonels, and a number of other officers. Crime in England in 1922 showed a decrease in such offences as housebreaking, shopbreaking, and larceny; but there were more murders than in 1921. Twenty prison wardresses in uniform formed a guard of honour at the wedding of Miss 11. Ucselton, a wardress at Strangewavs gaol, to Police-Constable Heysham, of the Manchester police. Warders, wardresses and policemen tilled the church, and among the spectators was an old woman recently released from Strangewavs, who had been under the supervision of the bride.

The old 40th Regiment (now known as the Ist Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment) holds the peculiar record of having once in its history been absent from England, on a lour of foreign service, for no less a period than 33 years at. one stretch.

Margareta Sosen, noted in Berlin as a writer of fairy stories, pleaded that she possessed two souls when tried in Berlin for swindling. Margareta told the judge that one soul was that of a mm and the other that of a criminal. The nuns sou! she said, dwelt in her left side, and the criminal’s in her right side. Both frequently struggled for mastery. “It is a curious fad,” she added that my right side is streaked with scars.” The Judge, however, refused to believe this “fairy story,” ami sentenced her to nine months’ imprisonment.