NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3631, 28 April 1927, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Tramcars in most American cities are heated in the winter months.

Eagles, larks and crows have been known to % at a height of 6,000 ft. In the making of a violin there are approximately 70 pieces of wood.

The gum on American postage stamps is stated to be “a real foodstuff.” On the main line between Paddington and Plymouth there are 587 signals. Finger-prints as a means of identification were used by the Chinese as early as 400 B.C.

Cold feet may be due to stockings that are too good a fit or shoes that are too tight.

There arc now 743 Lords Spiritual and Temporal on the roll of the House of Lords.

A woman dancer named Miss Tripit won a Charleston competition at an Islington dance.

Black clothes, which absorb any sunshine that strikes them, are the warmest for winter wear.

A microscope capable of magnifying an object 12,000,000 times is being used in the detection of disease germs.

A phonograph having records of brass has been invented, and the records may be heard 10,000 years from now.

If all the little air sacs in the lungs of an adult were spread out, they would cover-an area of 100 square yards. A christening cloak presented to St. Mark’s Church, Camberwell, may be borrowed by mothers for their babies. Among some Indian tribes it is regarded as improper for a mother-in-law to speak to her daughter's husband.

James Ellis, one of the 18 survivors of the Captain—wrecked in 1870, with a loss of 500 lives—has died at Portsmouth. / In the height of the season picture postcards are posted from Margate, the well-known English seaside resort.

Stout men are more likely to prove the best long-distance swimmers, because their extra fat wards off any risk of chill. Cormorants, which are a bane on the fishing in the West of England, eat as much as eight pounds of fish a day. *