NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2982, 5 January 1926, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Compulsory anti-rabies vaccination has been decreed for all dogs in Lisbon, where lately there have been several mad-dog scares. Head-dresses, recently designed for evening wear, have plumes and feathers spreading out till they are a yard in width, A suggestion that commission on fares taken should be paid to tram conductors is to be considered by the London County Council.

Out of the 1920 local sanitary authorities in England and Wales, only 350 have medical officers of health employed full time. Hearing is so bad in the House of Lords th^f it has been suggested that microphones and head-phones should be installed.

Gilded wigs, surmounting faces powdered gold to match, are being seen in Paris.

During the season, which lasts from October to April, about 90,000 snails are eaten in London. The price of the prepared article varies from 2/3 to Is a dozen. Accused of stealing letters, a fourteen-year-old Jersey girl was found guilty. As her parents were French, the whole family have been banished from the island for five years. Human brains are capable, if properly trained, of retaining any number of different vocabularies, although some persons have a greater facility for acquiring, foreign languages than others.

In Kashmir, where the temperature is often as low as 20 degrees below zero the poorer people keep themselves warm by carrying a bowl full of hot embers under their one and only garment. Captain F. L. Barnard recently flew a big air express from Paris to London above the clouds without once seeing the, ground, being guided the whole way by wireless telephone from Croydon aerodrome. The largest air express in the world is to be fitted as the first air restaurant car, and will be put into service between London and the Continent, The saloon has luxurious armchair seats for fifty passengers. A woman, Miss Enid RussellSmith, has the honour of being the first of her sex to pass the British Civil Service examination which permits her to hold the higher posts, such as Under-Secretary, at a salary of £3OOO a year. The commissariat of education has been considering a proposal to eliminate capital letters from the Russian script. In favour of the proposition it is argued that the Oriental nations are not accustomed to employ capital letters. A photograph recently shown in London depicted the Isle of W ight as seen from the air. The size of this photograph can be judged from the fact that it covered an area of 150 square miles at a scale of three inches to the mile.

The currents flowing in an ordinary radio receiving aerial are exceedingly small and may be expressed in terms of “fly-power”—one fly-power being the energy expended by a fly in crawling up a window pane one inch in one second. The Christchurch Star’s Dunedin correspondent writes: Curiosity is no doubt the reason for the largo crowd that is always to be found before a certain side show in the amusement belt at the Exhibition, when most of the other shows have closed down for an hour through lack of business. Two young women are cosily wrapped up in two comfortable beds, and those in the crowd with a shilling to spare are invited to “up them out. One young fellow, obviously from the bush, told the showman the other day that he would give him “ten bob” for the pleasure. “She’s sure a bit cheap at a bob,” lie said, to the immense delight of the others in the crowd, as he put his leg over the -.•ail. Had he not been stopped there is no doubt that the young women’s slumbers would have very soon come to an abrupt termination; but he was stopped. He did not know the rules of the game. To tip the sleeping ones out, one must have a straight eye and a very, very steady arm. The method employed involves the use of several balls, one of which must connect with a disc in a target-like arrangement on the wall if the young women are to go out. When they are tipped, out, as it 'sometimes happens, the crowds, becoming acquainted of the fact from the riotous laughter which succeeds the event, come rushing from every direction, and the men are always to the fore.