NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3002, 23 February 1926, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF

It is said that no watches are now wholly made in England. A £1,000,000 electricity scheme is proposed for the A est Midlands. Fully half the people convicted of crimes in Britain are under Ihiitj years of age. The oyster probably provides more nourishment than any other food of the same size or weight. A new arrival at the London Zoo, a Cape jumping hare, has been known to leap a distance of thirty feet. Rheumatic diseases cost Britain

about £2,000,000 for sick benefit among the insured population every year. A nest of five mice was found in the pocket of a pair of riding breeches belonging to a Buckinghamshire man. In the schools of Great Britain there are estimated to be over 45,000 children who have organic heart disease. There are in the British elementary schools 570,000 children between five and six years of age, and 22,000 younger than five. An electrically-driven dishwasher shown at a recent exhibition is said to be capable of washing 10,000 pieces of crockery in an hour. The largest employer of labour in Great Britain is the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway. It has 270,000 persons on its pay roll. It is still the rule of Gout Is Bank, that its staff must wear frock-coats while on duty. They are also compelled to be clean-shaven. To translate the words of the English Hymnal into Braille would cost about £245 for the first edition. The music has already been done. A wire rope-making firm of Newcastle has just finished the making of a steel rope over seven miles long in one piece. It weighs 50 tons. No fewer than 3,000,000 "letters are redirected in the General Post Office in London each month, while 1,250,000 are returned to the senders. Modern fashions are responsible for the fact that much less sewing cotton is being sold, as both frocks and underwear call for much fewer stitches. Squirrels are the pets of the moment among children in- England; grown-ups prefer monkeys, of which animal dealers cannot get sufficient supplies. Animals which live in the London Zoo are not encouraged to hibernate or sleep through the whiter. Instead they are kept warm and c-osy —and awake. Many houseboats on the Thames and elsewhere were originally lifeboats, which were sold, when their active lives were over, for a more peaceful-purpose. Hair bracelets and hair rings, once so popular, are returning to favour in England now that women, after being shingled, have so much hair to spare, A retired shipmaster who has had 50 years’ experience, much of the time in the South Pacific, and is •now settled in Otago, gives it as his opinion, based' on meterologicaf study and personal observation, that the muggy weather which is making this summer so unpleasant is due not to solar eccentricity, but to the breaking up of the immense South Polar pack-ice, and he gives reasons that command the deepest respect. As showing the magnitude to which detached ice can attain he says that upon one voyage he sailed past a berg that was 75 miles long.

It has been revealed that a woman living in Torquay has been in the habit of providing food for the soul of a departed friend, who is buried in a vault in Paignton Cemetery. Recently the vault was sealed up, but the woman erected an awning to keep the food from the sight of the curious. She always provided a sumptuous meal, of game, joints, fancy cakes* and fruit, with flowers. AYliat happened to the food in the past can only be conjectured. The friends of the dead woman have now obtained the permission of the Home Office to remove the body elsewhere.