NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3746, 26 January 1928, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

A new pedestrian and vehicular bridge is to be built over the river at Hull, between the old milling quarter of the port and the central thoroughfares of tEie city. It will take three years to build and will cost £IOO,OOO, toward which the Ministry of Transport has sanctioned a grant of £50,000. Dr. Vannevar Bush, professor of electric power transmission in the Massachusetts Institution of Technology, has invented an electric machine which solves equations and makes abstruse calculations. It is claimed that the machine will do in minutes work which would occupy a human being for a year. Taking a firm stand against importation of luxuries and consequent expenditure of money outside Russia, Soviet officials havo raised customs duties so high that Russians must pay £2O retail for a bottle of imported eau de Cologne, £lO for soz. of ordinary perfume, £2 each for lipsticks, and £5 for a box of face powder. Mr. F. T. Grundy, of Burnley, who was 78 on October 10 last, lias retired after, being for nearly 70 years a weaver at Spafield Mil]* belonging to Messrs John Kay and .Sons. He began work at 2/fi a week on October 8, 1857, two days before he was eight years of age, and has been there ever since chiefly as a six-loom weaver. Among the new by-laws lor mo-tor-omnibuses in Lanarkshire, is one which specifies that a person is ' forbidden to enter an omnibus if: the condition of his clothing is such that it may reasonably be expected to soil or injure the finings or cushions of the vehicle, or the clothing of other passengers. At the annual judging of puppies of the Puekeridge Fox Hounds at Brent Pelham, Hertfordshire, it was announced that the master, Mr. Edward Barclay, was taking over from Spain the pack of hounds originally formed by the Duke of Wellington 'behind the fines at Torres Cedras in the Peninsular War. The British Board of Trade has issued figures showing that during 1924 British firms produced umbrellas valued at £2,219,000, as compared with a return of £1,314,000 in 1907. The late wet “summer” is expected to send umbrellas up with a jerk sharp enough to make 1927 the record year. The pistol came into use about 1500. It was used by the German cavalry who were known as pistoleers. It has been made in various styles and patterns, doublebarrelled pistols sometimes having the two barrels side by side and sometimes one above the other. The

weapon derived its name from Pistoja, near Florence, where it is supposed to have been originally made. Of 6600 species of cultivated flowers in Europe 3880 are stated to have an offensive odour, 2300 have no perceptible smell, and only 420 emit a pleasing fragrance. The most numerous of the perfumed kinds are those which have white or cream-coloured flowers. They are followed in order by those with yellow, red, bine, and violet bloomjj. A quaint tradition of the Stuart times was revivedat Rawdon, near Guiseley, Yorkshire, when the Free Churches in the district united in an open-air service at the shrine of secret pilgrimages during the reign of Charles 11, and James 11. The service was held under the shadow of the Buckstone Rock, a huge boulder overlooking the Aire Valley. A harvest festival held at the White Swan public-house, Netherton, Dudley, has resulted in £l3B being''sent to local hospitals. The bar and smoke-room were crowded with gifts in kind sent by customers who assembled in the smokeroom, sang harvest hymns, and listened to a short address by a local minister. The gifts were subsequently sold by auction.