NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Times, Volume III, Issue 70, 12 June 1878, Page 3

NEWS IN BRIEF.

It costs the American people fire millions of dollars to Jteep their teeth m order. [Not over much/ considering the bad words which pass between them.]} The Persians believe that diamonds are entitled to especial veneration, not so much for their intrinsic or saleable value, as from their so-called divine origin, as they hold the theory that those stones fell from heaven at an early period of the world's creation. V The phonograph automatically stenographs a speech or a conversation, and stores the living words m a box, like preserves m a bottle. Most of the English and Scotch ballads are familiar m forms more or less similar m Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Spain, France, &c. Refrigeration is being adopted to the preservation and transit of fish, poultry, andfruit, as well as of meat. . Girtoh, the English college for women, is crowded with students, and greater accommodation loudly called for. The Pope is the youngest of four brothers, the oldest of whom is 86. The second has four sons, two of them Volunteers m the Italian Army. The Pope has also two married sisters. A scientific man, Mr Berry, says that all that is required to make a practicable flying machine is a steam-engine that will not weigh more than 201 b per horse-power. The ram which took the ohampion prize at the late Inverell show has just been shorn, and .the. fleece weighed 22ilbs j there was 15 months' growth of wool. The most recent discovery m telephonic science it that the .diaphragm or disc may b& of copper, wood, paper, or india-rubber;

The B:a ority of the English railway lines are adopting the vacuum brake, and until further evidence is adduced it must be regarded as the bi at, although it is closely run hy the nutt.-uialic. Tol-acco was named m honour of its discoverer, O. Cabot, a brother of Sebastian Caliot. They just spelled his name backward. In England the telephone wires cost £2 pci 1 mile and the instrumental portion of them 7s 6d. Thus it pays any man of business to adopt them.