NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2936, 15 September 1925, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

“Don’t call us cousins,” said Bishop Oldham, of New York, speaking in London recently. “Americans dislike it; call us daughters or sisters, or just friends, but not ■cousins.”

London’s birth rate is higher in the poorer districts, Shoreditch and Bermondsey scoring over 24 per 1000, while not one western borough reached the average rate of 18.fi per 1000. The average man may know more and have more experience than a scholar of fourteen, but one scientist claims that his real thinking ability is on about the same level as that of the youngster. A workhouse half-crown lias been sold in England for £2l. In 1811, owing to the shortage of currency, the Birmingham overseers issued these tokens, on which was a view of the workhouse.

For serving seventy-two years on the same farm, although under two masters, a Norfolk farm hand received a prize recently. He started work on a shilling a week at the age of six, scaring crows.

Wedding rings of the iclheaper grades are being bought and worn in Britain by unmarried girls, who imagine either that the sight of the ring attracts men or that the wedding ring protects them in public. A woman patient in a London hospital, known as “Chatterbox” tor her talking propensities, was recently presented with a card inscribed : “The only tiling that can cheat some people out of the last word is an echo.”

A racing pigeon belonging to Mr. J. C. Warbutlon, of Selby, Yorkshire, lias returned home after an absence of over a year. The bird, a cock, vanished after having been sent to take part in a race from Rennes in 1924.

Receiving an offer of £29,000 to become a film actor, an Illinois football “star” preferred to stick to his summer-lime job of selling ice, as “it kept him fit for football.”