News Items

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43370, 10 September 1908, Page 1

News Items

The song of the bird was originally a cry of alarm. The Belgians eat more pota«J toes ahnually than do the Irish.

The salmon, for a short distance, can travel at a rate of 25 miles an hour.

The picture-postcard craze, which is declining in England, is growing in America. The total tonnage of ships now being built in the United Kingdom is the lowest since 1896.

While in 1866 there were 18 species of humming-bird in Trinidad, there are now only about five.

Fifty ships were sold out of the British Navy in 1906-7 for £240,565, having cost originally £4,075,918.

A wasp’s jaws are so powerful that one of these insects has been known to cut its way through a seashell.

About 30,000 earthquakes occur every year, but of these not more than 60 are violent *; enough to do any serious damage. The kilt is the national dress of the Albanians, the Massalian shepherds, and the mountaineers of Thibet and Assam, as well i & of the Scots. The finest human hair is golden, and red is the co&rsesh The thickness of human hair varies from the 250th to the 600th part of an inch. A loving heart and a pleasant countenance are commodities which a man should never fail„ to take home with him. They will best season his food and soften his pillow. It were a great thing for a man that his wife and children could trulv say of him — “He never brougl fc a frown or unhappiness across his theshold. ” The newest boat of the Pacific Steamer Navigation has been named the Orcoma, and at the receut annual meeting of the shareholders, held ill Liverpool, one of their numb* r . expressed a desire for inform ition as to the origiu of the up pollution.

Because of the lichens which, grow abundantly on the stone'* paved s'reets in M idcira, making them slippery, it is possible to use sleighs all the year rouud.