NEWS IN BRIEF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 21 September 1907, Page 3

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Wages are rising in Japan; but even skilled hands rarely get more than two shillings a clay. Twenty years ago the average was sixpence a day. Ireland sends nearly eight million fowls every year to English markets.

In Russia there are no fewer than 80 general holidays in the year. Leather cannon were used at the Battle of Leipzig on Sept. 7, 1031. Raindrops vary in size from one-sixth to one-seventeenth of an inch in diameter. Woolwich ferry carries million passengers yearly, and half a million vehicles. Nearly 30,000 emigrants leave Italy every month, or nearly a thousand a day. There are sixty-eight tunnels on the canals of Great Britain. A herring lays* 30,000 eggs, a sole 1,000,000, *r sturgeon 3,000,000. The Turkish Bath was introduced into England about 50 years ago. All South American theatres have galleries, to which ladies only arc admitted. Shetland ponies live to a great age, and retain their good looks in a wonderful way. It is estimated that every dentist in the country pulls on an average fortyfive teeth yearly. The yews of Fountain Abbey were growing when the Abbey was founded, 700 years ago. The buildings of the Seraglio at Constantinople can accommodate 20,000 people with ease. The number of horses in Europe available for military purposes is reckoned at about thirty-nine millions. Romney March, in Kent, comprises 45,000 acres, nearly all being land reclaimed from the sea. The 'feme is said to hold more different varieties of fish than any other in- • land British river.

An average man who lives to seventy years will have eaten in his lifetime about twenty tons of solid food. The bodyguards of all European Sovereigns consist of men chosen for their fine physique and great strength. There are on an average 14 deaths yearly in the British Isles from lightning, 30 from sunstroke, and 131 from exposure to cold. The rhinoceros is the thickest-skinned quadruped, its hide being tough enough to resist the daws of a lion or tiger, the blows of a sword, or the balls of an

old-fashioned musket. One of the prettiest pleasure-gardens on a small scale is that on the flat roof of a house owned by a Kentish lady. Tall hollyhocks and foxgloves, roses of hardy kinds, and lots more lowly blossoms make the place a paradise through-

out the summer. A man in China who killed his father was executed, and along with him his schoolmaster for not having taught him better. The Japanese have three different forms of salutation. One is for saluting an inferior, one for saluting an equal, and another for saluting a superior. The insect known as the Mantis so closely resembles an orchid that it ae-

quires .a living from insects that alight on it by mistake. Most of the numerous temples throughout China are painted red; everything lucky and pleasant among the Chinese is of vermillion color. Housebreaking and burglary are not the same thing. Breaking into a house with a view to robbery in daylight is housebreaking; at night it is burglary. The way people cross their feet is

often indicative of character. Neal people usually put the right foot ovei

the left, while disorderly people generally put the left over the right. It is estimated that the national sport of bull-fighting ui Madrid costs every man, .woman, and child in the capital of Spain at least ten shillings each per annum.

Every able-bodied man in Norway lias to serve in the army. The first year ho serves 54 days, the second 24, and the third year 24. He gets only his board. There are no undertakers in Japan. When a person dies, it is the custom for his nearest relatives to put him into a coffin and bury him; and the mourning does not begin until after his burial. In the forty years between 1702 and 1832 there were outstanding, supposed to have been lost or destroyed, Bank of England notes to the*value of £1,320,000. This sum was clear profit to the Bank.

Rangiora borough borrowed £BOOO for municipal gasworks. These are now in operation. The exact cost is now found to be £BOOI