NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2850, 24 February 1925, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

An American firm recently save an order for 10,000 British-made overcoats. Japan has now adopted (lie metric system op calculating weights and measures. Eskimos are very fond of lea, to get which they wil travel hundreds of miles. Billiard halls are usually made from ivory, which costs £l5B a hundredweight. German law prohibits the broadcasting of sermons or religious addresses by wireless. Street artists in England and Wales numbered 982 in 1921; of these 105 were women. Much of the vitamine value of fruit and vegetables is said to be destroyed in cooking. Southend, Essex, railway station is used by about 7,000,000 passengers in the course of a year. Goldfish if left alone in a pond, would soon revert to their natural colour, which is a dingy brownishsilver. In a London Law Court recently a witness gave as his name Vrbka Zeknko. He was a Czecho-Slovaki-an. Lord Birkenhead stated in a recent speech that he had read every one of Scott’s novel at least nine times.

Listeners-in in London have lately heard the band of the Leviathan wiien that vessel was 650 miles from Cherbourg. The Postmaster-General has agreed to issue commemorative stamps of Id and Id denominations in connection with the Dunedin Exhibition.

It was said at the fruitgrowers’ field-day at Hastings on Saturday week that fruitgrowers in Hawke’s Bay spent at least. £IO,OOO a year on one single kind of spraying material.

Annexation of the municipality of South Vancouver to the city, which is in prospect as the result of the citizens voting favourably thereon, will add 40,000 to the city’s population of 125,000, making a total of 165,000 within the city limits.

Canada’s total potato yield for last year is 2,572,000 cwt. in excess of that for 1923, according to an estimate made by the Department of Agriculture. The yield esiimated for 1924 is 58,069,000 cwt. 'as compared with 55,497,000 cwt. for last year. A new kind of breakwater is being experimented with in California. Tl is simply a jierforatod pipe laid a short distance under ‘la- water. Compressed air is pumped into the pipe, and the bubbles that result are said to break up the waves effectually. A canary breeder at Bromhaven, in Germany, is Irving to leach canaries to sing like nightingales. From the time they are hajehed lie keeps a gramophone record o( a. nightingale running near them, and when they are older places them near real nightingales. Twelve-inch phonograph records Ihaf. play for 100 minutes and reproduce entire operas by aid of radio loud speakers wil bout the noise of needle scratching, have been produced by an inventor of Berlin, German v.

Seven hours’ solitary confinement at the liollom of a dry well, some 25 feet deep, was (lie unenviable experience (lie oilier day of Wallace Smeaton, aged 10. youngest son of Mrs E. Sm-ealon, of the Wailii Plains. When hauled up he was somewhat exhausted though liille worse for his lonely vigil (stales the. Auckland Star). A liille while ago someone in New York bought a Bible for 50,009 dollars, or, roughly, £IO,OOO. The same day the American Bible Society announced that it has just received an order for 1.500,000 copies to be sold at one cent apicee. The Bible is still easily the best seller. v ■ Up to the end of last October more than 1000 libraries were in circulation in Saskatchewan, Canada, as compared with about 800 at Ihe same dale last year. The average number reading each book in the library is 17 families, or in I lie neighbourhood of 30 persons. More Ilian 500,000 boks were circulated during Ihe year. The quantity of Christmas trees shipped from Nova Scotia last year exceeds all previous records. Fifty carloads, containing 23,750 bundles of trees, were shipped from Queens County to New York. This is an increase of 20 carloads over last year. From the Canadian Atlantic territory about 22 carloads were shipped, and from the entire province approximately 150. carloads.

The longest bridge in the world is probably the Tuy Bridge in Scotland, which is two miles 73yds. long. The Hell Gate Bridge in the United States of America is said to be three miles 7(s3yds. long, but this includes the approaches, which are not really the bridge. The longest span is that of Quebec Bridge in Canada, 1800 ft. The total length of tilts bridge is 1080yds. When it is built, Sydney Bridge will have the longest span. Whether chance or fate controls one's destiny is a moot point, but it is interesting to recall just now that when the cure of St. Michael’s Christchurch, became vacant in 1804, the then vestry offered the position to the vicar, of a large parish church in North London (remarks the Christchurch Press). That gentleman replied by cable as follows: “Regret unable to accept; just received preferment; strongly recomimend my senior curate.” The vestry adopted the advice, and the senior curate (Rev. A. A. Averill)

will, on 20th April next, become Archbishop and Primale of Now Zealand. It, is claimed in America that the laurels for Sunday school attendance go to Mrs Margaret Allison, of East St. Louis. Born in Scotland, she began to attend Sunday School at the age of five, and for 90 years she has not missed one Sunday. Mrs Alison is remarkably active for a person of her great age and she always walks to Sunday School. A young girl died at Berne in terrible agony and when an autopsy was performed a live viper was found in her stomach. It is thought that in drinking from a stream she swallowed a young viper or a viper’s egg. A copy of Pickwick Papers, in the original parts, was sold at So-theby-s rooms in London for £7OO. An originol copy of Ainsworth’s “Jack Sheppard,” in the original wrappers, fetched £52. They came from the library of the late Mr E. H. Cox, of Stourbridge.