NEWS IN BRIEF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 7 September 1907, Page 3

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Flour sprinkled ou burning oil will at once extinguish it. In 1774 Philadelphia was the hu'gest town in the American colonies. The Chinese begin dinner with dessert, and end with soup und fish. The first envelope ever made is'in the possession of the British' Museum. Rope is now being made from pineapple fibre. Of every 100 eases of cataract, 54 are males and 40 females. Alexandria possesses the largest artificial harbor in the world. The post olliee makes £4OOO a year by unclaimed money orders. A cigarette-smoker-sends into the air

about 4,000,000,000 particles of dust at every pull, according to investigations. The greatest height ever reached in a balloon was Si.luoft. Two of three ■i'.cronauls who made this assent were .-ulVocated. The University Press of Oxford has appliances for printing in 150 languages. The oldest known English picture is that of Chaucer, painted on panel in the year 1380. Opium cannot l>e cultivated in Bengal without a. license from the Indian Opium Department. Thirty thousand women spend their lives in driving and steering the canalboats in Southern and Midland England. The Scott monument at Edinburgh is 200 ft high, and was erected in 1844. It is designed to imitate Melrose Abbey.

• The finest opal known is that belonging to the Austrian Crown jewels. It is '/.in long, 2'/jin wide, and weighs 17 ozs.

There arc nearly one hundred quarries on the Isle of Portland, and about 70,0(10 tons of stone arc raised there annually. j _ Although 340,590 marriages took place in Japan last year, it is stated that not one bride was over twenty-two years old.

The people of the United Kingdom expend about £100,000,000 sterling yearly upon intoxicating liquors. The drink expenditure in 1903 was £174,445,372. Louise Stopper, on whom an inquest was held at Battersea, was stated to have died of a broken heart. There was a tear half-an-ineh long in the heart wall.

''Acute financial worry might in itself cause a condition of the heart from which recovery would be impossible," said Dr. Freyberger at an inquest at Islington. Germany has a new rifle able to pump out fifty-eight cartridges without refilling, but it is found to be too neavy. ' ~ . It is estimated that there arc two And fi-half million dogs in Great Britain, andthat 35,000 go astray in the course of the year. The banyan, or sacred fig tree, with its aerial roots, sometimes covers from five to seven acres. A young plant is 75 per cent water and the remainder carbon, which it has taken from the air. The original of Gilbert White's "Natural History" has been sold in London for_ £750. The latest 'novelty in parasols is a square one fringed at the edge wi;h silk or with little silver balls.

! At Liverpool it was stated that a prisoner scratched his linger and thumb tips with a iien to evade detection by the finger-print system. On the arrival of a train at Newport (Wales) a man found underneath one of On- conches stntcd that he was a sailor, mil had ridden from Swansea, sixty miles lying balanced on the pneumatic cylinder. r:

The American cents of 1787 *bre the motto "Mind your own business." Although South Africa has about twice the size of the United States, it has only half the population. There is 5 per cent of water in sugar, 13 per cent in rice, and no less than 91 per cent in cabbage.

There are made daily in England about 55,000.000 pins, ' two-thirds ot which arc manufactured in Birmingham.

A complete set of British birds' eggs is worth about £2OO.

Within the past hundred years whalebone lias risen in price from £3O a ton to £3OOO.

King Edward Budden is the name of a baby which has just been christened at Boston Corner, New York.

The population of Egypt proper is denser than than that of Belgium, Tt is 750 to the square mile, against 599 in Belgium. The condor .is the only bird which keeps its young in its nest for a year, is they cannot fly for twelve months ifler being hatched. Avith the direct generation of electric ■iirrent, the world (says Mr Edison) will hive ten times more energy than now. It is computed that there are enough paupers in Great Britain to form; four •ibreast, a procession over 100 miles in length. Cigar-smoking is still on the decline. This year the consumption of imported cigars' in England is expected to fall lower than for twenty years past. American women have within a few years captured 23 titled Englishmen, ?.f> tilled Germans, 11 titled Frenchmen, 17 titled Italians, and G titled Russians. In Abyssinia it is the law that the, murderer be turned over to the relatives of the dead person, and if they please they may put him to death in the same manner in which the murdered person was killed.

Fully 75 per cent of the lioots ami shoes made in England arc made by the aid of machinery. In France 4,000,000 tons of potatoes are annually used in the manufacture of starch and alcohol.

Russians nearly always have sound teeth, an excellence which they impute to the regular eating of sunllower seeds. The proportion of female to male teachers is increasing in England.

No fewer than 000,000 children are insured in Great Britain every year.

The lungs of the average man contain about live quarts of air.

About one-third of the houses in Great Britain are lighted by gas. ' A gold coin depreciates 5 per cent in value in sixteen years of constant use. The occupants of a balloon a mile high command a radius of ninety-six miles.

The hardest known wood is said to bo cocus wood,

The first census in England was taken ,n March 10th, 1801. Recruits for the Chinese Army are not accepted unless they can jump a ditch lift wide.

More than 00,000 stamps are found every year in the letter-boxes of the United Kingdom. New Scotland Yard is the largest police ofliec in the world. In one of the rooms 3000 men can be assembled.

The purest water in Britain is that. of hake Katrine, which has but of soil suspended in 1000 gallons.

The making of Inciter matches is a State monopoly in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Roumauia and Scrvia.

[u selecting bananas it is well to remember that the fruit which is the largest, the deepest yellow, and the least angular is, as a rule, the best. The feminine element is very much in excess in Germany, the women exceeding the men by more than 1,000,000, according to recent statistics. The food of working people in Holland is mainly potatoes, beans and peas. With the exception of horseflesh, fresh meat is a rarity. It may not be generally known that whenever the Court goes into mourning, King's counsel are under a distinct obligation to obey his Majesty's command.

Edison says there is more money made out of little discoveries than big ones, and that it is better to keep the secret of an invention than to have it patented.

Among elephants both sexes of the African species have ivory tusks, while in Asia these are generally restricted lo the male.

The average number of horses killed in .Spanish bullfights every year exceeds 500, whilst from 1000 to 1200 bulls are sacrificed.

\'ou cannot look for patriotism from men who want food and wages (says a writer in the lieferee). Increased employment is essential if England is to hold her own at Armageddon. The oldest university in the world i at Pekin. It is called the "School for the Sons of the Umpire." Its antiquity is very great, and a grand register, con sisting of stone columns, 320 in number contains the names of 00,000 graduates China's great wall was recently mea sured by an engineer, the height being given as 18ft. For 1300 miles the -wall «oes over plains and mountains, every foot of the foundation being of granite, I Tid the rest of tile structure Bolid masonrv. Rome of the London theatre manager* nip innning free motor ornnilnTOs: from the suburbs to bring • people ,to thejr