NEWS AND BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3579, 23 December 1926, Page 4

NEWS AND BRIEF

A single pair of elephants tusks will make sufficient keys for pianos for between 30 and -10 instruments. White ants are the most productive of all insects, having been known to lay eggs at the rate of 80,000 a day for a month. The highest mountain in the moon is calculated to be at least 35,000 ft. in height—tiOOOft. higher than Mount Everest. Tt has been estimated that about 20,000,000 tons of railway lines are lost throughout the world every year through the corrosion of rust. Every iinonth about 1000 undesirable aliens are being deported from the United States, as the result of the combing of prisons, insane asylums and poorhouses. Mr Lloyd George recently sent a marrow weighing 441 b., grown on his holding at C'burt, England, to the neighbouring Tlmrsley church for its harvest fesival. A fish called pelemys has been caught in the- Mediterranean Sea. If can travel at a'speed of fifty miles an hour, and is said to he. the fastest fish in the world. There’s a town in Texas whore

the judge has not fried a case for two years. Neither has their been an arrest of any kind. The name of the town is Park Place. All kinds of domestic utensils, from drinking mugs to washing tubs, which look like pottery but are unbreakable, are made from woodpulp in the Norfolk town of Tliefford. The age of a salmon can be ascertained by examining one of its scales through a microscope. It contains a number of tiny lines, which multiply at the rate of sixteen every year. It is claimed that Hackney (London), possesses what is probably the smallest consecrated church in the land. In it are seats for “ten poor ancient widows,” whole live in ten tiny almshouses. Running a big West End dancehall is a costly business, the maintenance costs often being as much as £IOOO a week. Of this £SOO goes in rent, £2OO in bands, and £SO in lighting. The world’s record in shaft sinking has been accomplished at the Witwatersrand Mines, South Africa, the total depth sunk being 332 ft. as against the previous highest record of 318 ft.