NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3552, 19 October 1926, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

It costs ivory hunters £O4 for a license to shoot elephants. Although blind since birth, Alec Templeton, aged 16, of St. Pagan’s near Cardiff, is an accomplished pianist and composer. He recently played a Bach fugue'faultlessly after hearing it once on a gramaphone. London policemen recently exchanged their old “bull’s eyes” for new electric lamps. In the old days the first thing a crook did was to dive for the light; the new lamps have two lenses and are made in a special shape that affords no grip for criminals. A caterpillar eats twice its weight of leaves every day, and a potato bettle devours every day at least five times its weight of foliage. The most destructive of all insects, however, is the grasshopper, which consumes in a day ten times its own weight of vegetation. The Korean Railway is contemplating running an entertainment train. The train will be manned by Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Russian magicians, jugglers and dancers, and so on, and will stop at each station and give performances in the train for the benefit of lonely railway employees and their families.

Every time a person breathes or moves or talks, there is a creak! This is proved by a wonderful new electrical stethoscope which magnifies sound one hundred billion times. At a recent demonstration, 300 people heard the creaking and rumbling made by a mail’s muscles as they slid over one another when he clenched or openedi his list.