NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3786, 1 May 1928, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

There are tYventy-tYvo bones in the human skull. London buses leave the terminus in the forecourt of Victoria Station at a rate of 230 an hour during the rush hours. Nearly £IOO,OOO has been received by London hospitals from unknown people during the last five years. The bamboo holds the record among plants for quick groYvth. It has been knoYvn to groYV 2ft in tYventy-four hours. . An Atlantic liner Yvas recently fumigated at a cost of £llOO. Seven rats Yvere caught at a cost of about £l6O per rat. The London County Council received a cheque for £445,000 for motor licenses from the London General Omnibus Company. In a balloon Yvhich, Yvhen deflated he could pack on his back, Mr. A. L. Stevens recently made a 350mile over-night flight. So narrow were his quarters that he had to stand erect. Shipping freights are only 16 per cent, above the pre-war level, Yvhile raihvay rates are between 50 per cent, and 57 per cent, higher, says the report of the British Chamber of Shipping. Eighteen mothers, Yvho have 249 children hetYveen them, Yvere the first passengers in a charabanc Yvhich has been presented to the Salvation Army for use in their social Yvork in England. Lloyd’s Register of Yvreck returns for the quarter ended September 30, 1927, gives the gross reduction in the Mercantile Marine of Great Britain and Ireland from all causes as 62,537 tons. Men’s pockets are happy hunting grounds for influenza and other germs, according to one authority. He says the pockets should be turned inside out, brushed, and disinfected regularly. A Dutch agent has been negotiating Yvith SYvedish fishermen for the purchase of scales from small Baltic herrings for the manufacture of artificial pearls. The price offered for the scales is 9d a pound. With neither hands nor face, a clock at the Greemvich Observatory lias kept dead time for the best part of a year. It is what is known as a free pendulum clock, and has another clock which starts mechanism to sYving the pendulum.