NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3801, 5 June 1928, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

• ♦ Of the nearly 1000 chemists in Britain, forty-two are women. Women and children do most of , the ruling among Eskimo tribes. There is enough railway tracks in Great Britain to go twice round the world. The lirst massacre of native .Christians in China by Boxers occurred 28 years ago to-day. Fish-bones are being turned into ornaments for women’s hats by a Grimsby linn. London has to pay £900,000 a .year owing to scarlet fever, diptheria, and other infectious diseases. , A German scientist estimates the , thickness of a soap bubble to be .'only l-150th million of an inch. - Male workers in Canadian factories, oflices, and farms outnumbered females by more than live to one.

Thunderstorms occur at the rate of 44,000 a day, or 10,000,000 a year, taking the whole world into consideration.

Farmers in Britain had a had year in 1927. There were 487 bankrupts among' them, an advance of 145 on the figure for 1920. In Zululand, the air is so clear that objects of fair size can he distinguished at a distance of seven or eight miles by starlight. An electricity-operated razor with a blade which oscillates sideways while the user draws the razor down his face has been invented.

Most of the hand embroidery sold in Britain to-day comes from Madeira. This trade used to be in the hands of the Irish peasants.

With a population of about 43,000,000, Great Britain has only 90,509 University students. 'Canada has over 00,000 to a population of 10,000,000. Early asparagus goes to Britain , from as far south as Algiers, although the South of France supplies a large proportion of this costly delicacy. Some rivers of Siberia flow over ice many years old, and almost as solid as rock. A tributary of the Lena has a bed of pure ice more than nine feet thick. Needlework done by Mary Queen of Scots, “Queen Elizabeth, and Margaret Beaufort,” mother of Henry VII, was recently exhibited in London in aid of a hospital. If a huge cistern, large enough to cover the whole area of Trafalgar Square, and as high as Nelson’s Column, were built as a watertank, London would empty it twice a day. Members of Parliament in Belgium are now to be eligible for a pension after ten years’ service. The rates is at £2 11s a y ear

for each year of servie.e, with a suggested limit of £BO.

On discovering recently that pos-tage-stamps, especially in the higher values, were cleaned with chemicals and illegally used again, the Ceylon postal authorities suddenly issued six of a new design and had all the old types destroyed.