NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3580, 28 December 1926, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF

The snail’s speed limit is about half a mile a week.

The area of Brazil approximately equals that of England. Pepper stored in London to-day is round about 16,000,000 lb. The Straits of Dover vary in dep-.-th from. 36ft. to 174 ft-

Five-sixths of Britain’s fish harvest is gathered on the East Coast. A tablet has been discovered in Spain containing an alphabet 8000 vears old.

The Aquitania burns 33,000 barrels of oil a day on her transatlantic voyages.

The flesh of the salmon is red because it contains the pigment of a colour also found in sea plants. liough Neagh, in the province of Ulster, Ireland, is the largest lake in the British Isles. It is 18 miles long and 11 miles wide. Members of the British Automobile Association now number 314,000; it is now the largest individual association in the world.

iCloves, used so much in flavouring food, are the dried flower buds of an evergreen tree which grows in tropical countries.

Nigeria, a lioness presented to the Dublin Zoo by King Edward 7. in 1905, has died. She reared 26 cubs during the past 20 years.

Dust is now being blamed as the carrier of the germs of infection of various diseases and ailments, including asthma, diphtheria, and tonsilitis.

Bishops and archdeacons are found on the average to have lived to the age of 73 years. Scientists die at the average age of 74, and musicians at 59.

A Russian electrical expert is said to have invented a battery which can be earned in the pocket, yet contains enough energy to drive a motor-car for ten days.

Mr. and Mrs. J. Edmonds, of Hounslow, who celebrated their diamond wedding recently, have twen-ty-three grandchildren and fourteen g re a t -gr a nd - children. Wlhen a man walks a mile he takes on an average 2263 steps, but when he rides a bicycle with an average gear he covers a mile with an equivalent of only 627 steps. Four men, whom the judge at Dover, Ohio, pronounced to be habitual drunkards, were sentenced to consume each a gallon of water a day for ten days consecutively. A letter posted in 1911 to Mr. Fred Pile, of Uffculme, Devon, while he was a soldier at Plymouth, has just been delivered to him, after having been fifteen years in transit “Garblers,” who work in a warehouse in the London docks, are employed in sorting out nutmegs and other aromatic imports into sound partly sound, and damaged categories.

A Roman relic found at Carthage recently is a lamp bearing the earliest recorded advertisement. Translated, it says: “Please buy our lamps, only one cent ; they are •the best.”

Toasted bread formed a favourite addition to English drinks in the 16th and 17th centuries; hence the custom of drinking “toasts.” Fish which will live contentedly on one meal every five years are sometimes found in subterranean caverns. In thoir natural state they are pale in colour, but turn black if kept in the light.