NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2986, 14 January 1926, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

When a bishop is appointed to a see, in Britain, he has to pay something like £2OO in fees, mostly for stamp duty, for the documents concerned. Extensive tests are stated to have proved that short sight, or myopia, is neither caused nor increased by reading or any other form of near work.

Two Chinese secret societies have been carrying on a feud in New York. As a result 450 Chinese were arrested in an all-night “raid” organised by the authorities. Pictures “painted” entirely with the juices of flowers were recently exhibited in London. The colours are obtained by rubbing the flower petals across the paper.

Of the tobacco consumed by the smokers of Great Britain on}y onesixth is produced by the British Empire, although Empire tobacco is growing in popularity.

Luxury can be bought in some American gaols —at a price. Two prisoners in Illinois prison claim that they paid £4OO a month in bribes to secure extra comforts.

In the first Pharmacopoeia, published in 1618, the preparations included crabs’ eyes, pearls, snails, vipers, thigh bones of a hanged man, and many equally-surprising remedies.

The largest single shipment of Canadian store cattle to reach a British port was landed during a recent week-end when 1098 head disembarked at Glasgow.

A large tortoise at Belle Vue Gardens, Manchester, has laid eleven eggs. This is not only an unusual number, but it is also exceptional for tortoises in captivity to lay eggs.

Two hundred years ago John Wesley preached his first sermon in the little Oxfordshire village of Southleigh. The second centenary has just been celebrated in the village church. Mr. Thomas Hardy, who has a wireless set installed at Max Gate, his Dorchester residence, heard the confession scene in “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” the stage version of his novel, when it was performed at Barnes.

A new idea adopted by an American railway, is proving useful on lines where trains do not run frequently. A train, on approaching a station, presses down an automatic switch placed near the rails, which lights up the station lamps. A similar switch some distance the other side of the station turns the lights off when the train passes. The origin of the smoking habit is lost in the dimness of the distant past. Tobacco was smoked in the new Stone Age by the mound-build-ers of the Upper Ohio in connection with funeral rites. Herodotus states that the Scythians purified themselves after funerals by inhaling the fumes of burning hemp. Tobacco smoking grew rapidly after its introduction into Europe from America by the Spaniards.