NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3022, 13 April 1926, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Human skulls are changing in shape, according to Miss V. George, a London scientist, who believes that our faces are growing longer and narrower. Fifteen thousand letters, written between 1833 and 1893 by Mine, Huliette Brouet to Victor Hugo, have been sold in Paris by auction for 18,000 francs. Flats, in a new block of buildings in Picadilly, London, are being sold at 'from £4250 upwards. The most expensive flat, priced at £25,000, is already sold. During 1925 over 200 launches of life-boats were made round the British coasts and 380 lives were rescued from ship-wreck, an average of over seven lives for each week of the year. Ten feet high but ljore than 1000 years old is the “Kaffir Bread” plant to be seen in the Royal Botanic Gardens, London. It is said to get all its nourishment from an internal source of its own. Stray mineral-water bottles and siphons collected in a radius of 100 miles round London are taken to a clearing house, where they are identified bv certain marks and returned to their original owners. An American firm is selling to hotels and similar institutions an “electric towel” in the form of a cabinet which when a foot lever is depressed, releases through a pipe a large volume of hot air for drying the hands and face. Mr. James Barnett, a Northallerton septuagenarian, has completed 60 years’ service as a bell-ringer 57 years at the Northallerton parish church. Mr. Barnett is still hale and hearty, and is the captain of the bell-ringers at Northallerton. Thirty years ago the Foryd Bridge on the Chester to Holyhead main road between Flintshire and Denbighshire was privately bought for £BOO. To-day it is reported that the present owners want £27,000 for the bridge, for the freeing of which a proposal is being made.