NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3518, 31 July 1926, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF

There are 140 million head of cattle in India. The United States has the second greatest quantity ■with 65 millions, and the Argentine comes next with a total of 40 millions. .

A Canadian professor claims that earthquakes are only experienced because the world is still comparatively young, and when it gets finally adjusted and settled, there will be no more.

There have been nearly seven thousand cases of sleepy sickness in England and Wales in the last four years, more than three thousand of them fatal, and the number of cases is increasing.

A traveller through Serbia will often notice dolls hung up outside cottage windows. The dolls are put up as a sign to announce to wayfarers that a marriageable daughter dwells in the house.

The wind is, perhaps, the most active disseminator of plant life over the globe. A region devasted by fire will, in the course of a few months, be restocked with many different kinds of plants.

The man who discovered the process of making aluminium by electricity lias presented two million pounds’ worth of American Aluminium Company’s stock to the small college in Ohio where he learned chemistry. The total number of passengers carried during Whitsuntide by the railways, omnibuses, and tramways in the Underground group of companies in London, amounted to 16,745,750, of which the London Gen-

eral Omnibus Company carried 13,283,750 passengers over the three days. This latter figure breaks the previous Whitsuntide record.

It is a .curious fact that nearly all the pines and conifers generally are the' most perfect natural compasses, in that tho shoot at the top points toward the north. In the case of some trees this tendency may not be . very evident when the specimens are young, but as they grow older the long shoot leans right over to the northerly quarterof the sky. This fact, which has never been completely explained, has often proved of great service to those who have lost their bearings in the woods. Examine the growing shoots of the fir tree and these will always give indication of the diiection in which the north lies.