NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2732, 13 May 1924, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF

Bats arc most curiously constructed, the heart’s action being aided by the rhythmic contractions of the veins of the wings. Some of the foxes reared on the fox farm on Prince Edward Island, in the Golf of Newfoundland, sell for as much as £7OOO a pair. * Great Britain’s smallest cathedral is situated on an island in the Firth of Clyde. It is able to accommodate only one hundred worshippers. Wallpaper can now be hung by 'machinery. The device consists of a rod on which a roll of paper is placed, and a paste reservoir with a feeder. A wireless concert picked up from* Pittsburgh, U.S.A., and rebroifdcasted from London was heard in South Africa, the music having travelled 8500 miles. The Leicestershire Colliery Company is sinking two new coalpits at Newbold and Lound, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and expects to find employment for 1500 men. Sheffield; has an order for more than 40,000 pieces of silver for the tables at tbe Trocaderft’ 1 Restaurant, London, the value of the contract being over £30,000. Mac Neils from all parts of North America, of whom there are 20,000, were represented at a meeting of the Clan Mae Neil Association of America recently in New York. Students of heredity assert that children born of very young fathers and mothers never attain so vigorous a growth of mind or body as those of older men and women.

Five shillings a day instead of 6s is to be the maximum gratuity to men of the Territorial Army to compensate for disability incurred in future in the performance of military duty.

The reason why opals are so often lost from their settings is that they expand with heat more than other precious stones, and, consequenty, force open the gold which holds them in place. A suggestion that cushions should he placed in the London County Council tramway-cars led to the statement at a recent meeting that experiments with spring seating will he made in new cars. The magnitude of the Escurial, the great Spanish palace, may be inferred from the fact that it would take four days to go through all the rooms and apartments, the length of the way being reckoned at 120 English miles. Posted on Leap Year Day. 1912, in the village of Boomer’s Ham, near Sittingbourne, Kent, a postcard has just reached the addressee in an adjoining parish having taken twelve years to deliver at a house three miles distant. The London County Council's General Purposes Committee is to report whether powers to eliminate horse traffic eventually from London streets should he applied for, a motion to that effect having been adopted without discussion.

The amount of the reserve and depreciation funds of the railway companies in Great Britain, as shown in the published balancesheets, was, in round figures, £121,000*000 at December 31, 1923. and £21,000,000 at the same date in 1913.

Lord Lonsdale lias sold the Derwent Hall fishery on the Derwent, in Cumberland, which lias been in the possession of his family for centuries, to the Derwent Fisheries Association. It extends for five miles oil both banks from the mouth of the river.

Four generations of one family are living in one house at Flicker, near Hull. The eldest member, of (he family is 'Mrs. Mary Harper, who has celebrated her 102nd birthday. Her son, will) whom she lives is 75. and his son and grandson live in the same house. Canada has says Reuter, granted her intermediate tariff to the Economic Union of Belgium and Luxembourg, and to the Motherlands, the Dutch East .Indies, Dutch Guiana, and the Dutch West Indies. In -return Canadian products get tuost-favoured-nation treatment. Swarms of bees swepi offshore by the wind in a recent storm, landed on the huge lamp of the SouthWest lighthouse, off Xew Haven (Conn.) U.S.A. The bees were so thick that they covered the lens area and obscured the light that guides mariners in Long Island Sound. Recently the Stonehouse Board of Guardians, Plymouth, were asked by an old pensioner if I bey could find him a wife. The Relieving Officer has received 42u applications from all parts of the Kingdom, the applicants ranging from girls in their teens to women of 80.

A Bath provision merchant, on unpacking half a hundredweight of American lard from Chicago, found a note inviting the tinders to write to them. They artlessly described themselves as “two good girls, and really pretty.” The billet doux was written on grease-proof paper. A snowfall over London, lasting two or three hours, brings down with it hundreds of tons of suspended impurities. Upon test, a gallon of melted snow yielded three and a half grains of sulphuric acid, one-tenth of a grain of ammonia, thirty grains of soot, and other impurities. In an arbitration case at A silly de-lu-Zouch the name of a barrister was Mr. Winning. He won.

, While in the detention barracks at Aldershot, a private of the Royal Fusiliers swallowed five steel boot studs.