NEWS AND BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3751, 7 February 1928, Page 4

NEWS AND BRIEF.

Thq eyes of a fly are as rigid as jewels in a watch. The building of St. Paul’s Cathedral occupied 35 years. An educated man has a vocabulary of about 10,000 words. Between Paddington and Ply-: mouth there are 587 railway signals. '

Diamonds in their natural state, are usually of a dull lead colour. ■Sugar is found in the sap of nearly two hundred plants and trees.

It is said that only about one oyster shell in a thousand contains a pearl. Chimpanzees. are about four times as strong as a man, weight for weight. The Greenwich Observatory was founded on August 10, 1675, by Charles 11. '

The London Metropolitan Police force was formed in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel.

Canada has suffered 15 million acres of forest fires in five years, costing her £14,000,000. Stainless steel is being tested by the American army ordnance department in rifle barrels. The English Christmas card custom dates only from about the middle of the last century.

A “bug bourse” has been established in Berlin where insects aro bought and sold for study. . The light from Sirius, the dog star, is equivalent to about forty times that given off by our sun. The first sheet of paper is said to have been made from the bark of a mulberry tree in 75 AD. Telephone operators in Egypt aro required to speak English, French, Italian, Greek and Arabic. There are now 2000 covered buses on the London streets, half the leading company’s whole fleet. The widow of a man who made clothes for;Abraham Lincoln, celebrated her hundredth birthday last year. Toads differ 1 from frogs in having no teeth in either jaw and usually the skin presents a warty appearance. Only about one-eighth of the passenger revenue of the British railway companies is derived from first-class fares.

An enterprising builder is putting up 2000 houses in Buckinghamshire all of which are being'fitted with wireless. The Paris police have forbidden the use of the word Boche in cinemas; the word German is always to be used. A robin last year laid five eggs in a nest built in the folds of a mackintosh hung in an apple tree in Cumberland. Christmas carol singing has been banned by the Leighton Buzzard magistrates until seven days prior to December 25. A Nottinghamshire man who started .work ninety-six years ago at a penny a day recently retired at 103 years of age. The largest part of the worlds supply of borax is obtained from California, where it was first found in the search for gold in 1856.