News Items

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4360, 14 January 1909, Page 1

News Items

The right hand, although, more sensitive to touch than the left, is less sensitive to, thjSt effect of heat and cold, /Wv

The population of AustriaHungary is nearly 50,000,000. More than half of thi£ number are Austrians. The slug has the means of spinning a gelitine thread hjr which it can' let itself down from dangerous heights.

Electric wires are ,used in some parts of India as a safeguard against the poisonous-* - snakes who may feel disposed to enter the dwelling-houses.

• Few tillers of the soil live a harder life than the Scottish crofter, and only his dogged pertinacity enables him to extract a living from his little holding. # It has been noticed that', when building nests, birds, almost without exception, avoid all coloured materials, which might lead to the discovery of their abode by an enemy.

Bees like to work in the dark, as the effect of sunlight; upon honey is to cause the sugar to granulate, and, therefore to solidify, the whole mass, in which state it .is of nq use to the bees. The Yienna Provincial Court has ordered the confiscation of the issue of Punch for one month, on account of the draw*, ing entitled u Keeping in with the hare/’ whioh is regarded as an insult to the Emperor. Extreme cold has a remarkable effect on certain mineral Colors. Four hundred degrees below zero, for instance will reduce the brilliant scarlet of vermilion and mercuric iodide to a pale orange* When the temperature rises,' the original colours gradually return. Before 1880 most English railway carriages had only four wheels, and weighed 10 tons. From 1880 to 1890 fhoy had six wheels, and weighed 15 or 16 tons; from 1890 to 1900 they had eight wheels, and weighed 24 tous; and since 1900 the fy/hon is 12 wheels for dining and sleeping car*, - and the weight d 5 to 42 lons.

Sixty policemen who Trent to evict a family from a cottage qf

Kilraurrv found (he h'•

barricaded ami g ;cnled by disguised men After had learru- ’ that an old worn in of ninety was lying ill in the cottage the eviction was aban* doned.

The referee at a Rugby- football match at Paignton was chased off 'the field and savagely assaulted by an excited crowd. He had ordered a player to stop playing, and was at once attacked by a number of spectators.