NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4460, 3 June 1930, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Britain’s birth-rate- for lasi, year was the lowest ever recorded, and the lowest among the nations keeping statistics. 'The family name of the late Air. W. E, Gladstone was formerly “Gladstones.” The final “s” was dropped in 1835. Payments of Al.P.’s will amount to £225,000, and their expenses to an estimated £35,500, in the financial year. It is estimated that England’s net profit from the test cricket matches with South Africa last summer will amount to about. £BOOO.

It costs about £215,400 a vour to run Ihe British Museum; the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, costs less than half this.

Ships are growing bigger. In prewar days 1,500,000 tons of merchant shipping represented 500 ships now it represents about 350 ships. February was one of the driest Februaries on record in Britain. Only eight during the last sixtyfour years show a smaller rainfall. Public education in Scotland, including the upkeep of the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, costs well over £7,000,000 a year. Great Britain has 178,737 miles of roads. To cover these by ear would be equivalent to travelling more than six times round the world.

A good price for a couple of foxhounds in England is £IOO, but £I7OO was recently paid at a New York auction sale for two prize Welsh foxhounds.

Although the physical standard for British Army recruits has been lowered, there were only 28,131 recruits taken last year, compared with 30,155 in 1928. Ice-skating has been responsible for a great increase in casualties in London hospital, the injuries ranging front broken fingers to concussion and fractured limbs. Among the novelties in footwear in Britain, for this year are shoes made of skins of frogs and baby sharks. The latter leather is so costly that it is bought by the inch. After being lost to iis owner for twelve years, a malaeea cane bearing a presentation inscription was found in an English train last year and returned to its original owner. During the past sixty years in England, January has had seventytwo days with twenty or more degrees of frost; December fifty; February forty-six; March six; and November only two. In-1923 Germany issued a stamp with a face value of 50,000 million marks, the pre-war value of which would be £2,500,000,000. Unused copies of this stamp may be houghL for 2id. Fox-hunting is becoming almost as popular in the Eastern States of America as it. is in England. There are now eighty-eight recognised hunts in North America, three of Ihese in Canada.

Telephone users in the Greater London area, pay aL a rate of lfi/4 a month including sixty-six calls at Id each. In New York the average cost is 18/7 a month, the first sixty-six calls being free. Fish have been taught to recognise the bag containing their favourite food by means of letters at a Berlin University. It is claimed that they can even distinguish the letters “R” and “B.” Turkish baths, beauty parlours, a full-size tennis court, and two stages for theatrical and other performances are features of the new Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Britain, to he launched this mouth. Lipstick to the value of £350,000 was imported by Germany last year. Germany already makes lipsick for herself, so it is estimated that. German women spend about £500,000 annually in keeping their lips red. Greyhound racing scored an enormous success in 1929. Alore than 1G,(.)()0,OtH) people paid for admission during the last ten months at the various tracks in the country, and in London alone the weekly attendances approximated 200,000.

Prisoners sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour in Britain, will not in future have to face the fourteen days’ solitary confinement hitherto enforced, under the revised prison rules now being considered. Women are proving formidable rivals to men in Britain as windowdressers. After working for two years or so on a small salary as a learner, a woman window-dresser may make from fid to £lO a week.

There are statues' to twelve women in London; of those six arc queens, the other half-dozen being Mrs. Siddons, the actress, Florence Nigh I ingale, Grace Darling, Nurse Cavoll, Margaret MacDonald, the Prime Minister’s wife, and Airs. Panklmrst.