NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2952, 22 October 1925, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Eight tons of gunpowder were used in a blast at Bonawe Granite Quarries, Argyllshire, the other day, over 80,000 tons of granite being dislodged at once.

Fifty years ago in Britain there were 10,000 people in penal servitude. To-day there are only about 1600, apart, from 1100 young persons in Borsal instutions.

Lord Kitchener, brother of the late Lord Kitchener, who is 80 years of age, gave a party recently, at Peter Pan’s Pool, Southend Village, to 200 poor children of Pimlico.

Telegrams will be transmitted through public telephone boxes n Britain if an experiment now being tested proves successful. The cost will be the usual telegraphic fee, plus the cost of the telephone call.

In the will of a London barrister was this legacy: Ten pounds to the poor man for many years standing daily at the south-west gate near the Middle Temple. The poor man is a matehseller, and is totally blind.

Seventy millon telegrams and 3500 million letters passed through the British post office in 1024. There were 1000 million telephone calls last year in Great Britain. One extra call a day by each subscriber would increase the post office revenue by £2,000,000. Nine thousand tons of concrete and ten thousand miles of wire have been used in the construction of the new wireless station at Rugby.

Two French airmen have easily beaten all previous records for a non-stop flight by remninng in the air for over 45 hours. They covered 2750 miles.

Frauds are becoming so common in connection with platinum that reputable dealers in this costly metal are asking for a hall-mark to be authorised for it.

Credited with knowing the coat and hat of every member of the Constitutional Club, London, the cloak-room, attendant there will handle 500 hats without a mistake. In some British Government offices a letter will pass through 16 hands before it is.answered. This is largely owing to the over-elaborate system of registering correspondence.

“Nine-tenths of the people of America eat too much,” says an American “steel king,” who has been dieting himself successfully on fruit, plainly cooked vegetables, and a little mea*.

One beautiful butterfly found in (he Fen district in England is equipped with a scent gland in its head. From this the insect can eject a spray of perfume so powerful that insects hostile to it are driven off.

About 160 square miles of excellent corn-growing land in Yorkshire have been washed into the sea since the days of William the Conqueror. But although this little bit of England has been lost, England is now recovering a big slice of land from the sea farther south, the waves being gradually pushed back from the W|ash by a great reclamation schemes.

The Rev. E. L. Macassey, vicar of East Grinstead, defending the modern girl, lately said: “Obviously you cannot expect your niece to dress in the same fashions as those affected by your early Victorian grandmother. Nor do you expect a girl who has lived through an air raid to faint when she sees a mouse, or to have a chaperone when she answers the telephone.

A honeymoon on an Atlantic liner, which sailed from Liverpool lately, is the result of a romantic engagement between a Canadian farmer and a Lancashire girl. Mr. Robert Erskine, of Alberta, became engaged to Miss Annie Tipp, of Brierfield, as the result of an introduction by letter by a mutual friend. Until the bridegroom’s arrival at Brierfield, for the wedding, the pair had not met. Mr. Erskine is a native of Aberdeen.