GENERAL NEWS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 101, 18 April 1908, Page 6

GENERAL NEWS.

A short length of plaited, redili-ii brown hair, enclosed in a round en .■ravd hra.-s box—such is the supposed .xcl-oii relic which lui- come ;'J -in"ularlv to light in the little Scot, village of liirkpatrick, I 10.-churn, Dum(licshire. Ihe dox has apparently lam forgotten for many years at the bacx of a pre- in a horse-dealer's cottage at Kirkpatrick. and narrowly escaped be inn thrown away as rubbish with ollici odds and cllds when turned out recent h during ,onic renovations, it l- an ,iich deep and rather over two lmhc. broad, the plait of hair, which tits il exactly, being about six inches long The biix is in-ci'ibed: —"Conqueror al Ahoukir, 1. Aug. 170 S. Copenhagen, : April ISOI. irafalgar, 21 Oct. ISO> I where he gloriously tell. The bclict i entertained that the hair in the box i' that o£ the great Admiral, and inquiries have certainly tended to explain the oc currence of the lind in such a locality. "Two people ill every thousand ari buried alive." This startling estimate furnished to the Legislature ol Massich u-ett;. inspired a iiill which that boib discussed recently, providing that loca (wards of health" shall in future appl; ten tests to the bodies of person- re ported tu be deceased for the purpo* of ascertaining if death has actual!; taken place. One of the -upporters o the liill. Or. Uixwell, of Harvard I'm versity, who stated that be nanosvl; cscajied being buried alive iu the seven ties, said that iu the hurry and bustl of modern life the heart and brain ai pics-eil iulo abnonnal activity, wit! the restill that new ili;case- lending 1 |.indii. e catal.qitic condition- arc col -tanth coiifronting |.h>-ician-. Doctor however, generally deprecate public dii it-sion of the subject, declaring that I ui:l only produce morbid reflections, an that Ihe Mas-achusetts Bill is an aspc sion on doctors and undertakers.

The practice of retailing milk in buttles iu Die United States gives occasion l'or a huge industry in the glass ami allied trades. A single company uses live million bottles ft your, and its ict|uivemeiits keep eight factories busy, nio*t of them all the year through. Each milk bottle is tilled on an average onee iu four days, and each time it is tilled requires a new paper cap, which is made by machinery, one machine turning out from 400,0UU to 000,0UO caps a day. Sixty per cent, of the bottles used are furnished with a metal cap or clamp in addition 10 the at HI paper cap, and tho making of the*! means another branch of industry which employs a great number of meu.

The New York .lounial, which pub-li-died th e iirst news of the engagement of Mi.-s toady's Vanderbilt to Count Szcchonyi. gives prominence to a report that Mrs. Cornelius VanderbiH, mother (»f the Countess S/.echenyi, is about to marry the Hungarian Count Hudik. l!u----mourn to this (.licet have been circulating in New Vork for several months, and the Vanderbilt'family have ,«o far neither denied nor confirmed them. Il -«aid that Count Szechenyi introduced lladik, who i- not yet forty-live, to Mrs. Vanderbilt. lU* was in her company iu Paris, and was a gucr-i. at the recent wedding of Mi-s CJladys. Mi>. Vanderbilt has been a widow since 18!'!). Ail her children are married, and she N practically left alone. Her fortune is estimated at considerably over £2,OUU.nun.

Nut many people know how lUiifab Hill ''ame bv tin* name familiar to tin wind,, world. When the titrailway \va< being laid across America says ;i wri!<-r in the IVnuy Magazine the track wa.-j continually broken b\ herd- uf InUlaloes, ; uid eventually Coi onel Cody w.i- otVered UliJO a 'iimiill to keep all the men supplied with bulla hj» meat. Accompanied only by a Scot •

man on a wiry pony lie would set out, round up tho buli'aloes, and turn tliom in the direction of the railway. Tlion when tlicy were near enough he would pick them oil', while travelling at full speed, with bullets, so that not only did he provide me meat, but he actually delivered it at thy door, so to speak, lie kept an army of men in food for eighteen months like this, and kille-l upwards of live thousand tmfl'uloc*. .Never a day out of seven would pass bui what lie would dqiosit nine or ten carcases at that particular point where they wore required, Courtesy is a virtue which has by no been over-cultivated by employees in th 0 public services, says an American exchange. The Chicago Fullman Car Company has distributed the. sum <if CUfMHiO among its conductors 1 and porters who have been reported on showing proper courtesy to the company's customers during the past year. A sum equivalent to a month's pay lias lieen ?>oiit to each man.

One of the strangest hotel stall's i> Iha I at Whilo Plains, in New Vtrk State. The hotel is run by dwarfs. The pp'prielor is Admiral Dot, a well-known ehnraeler in the States. He is thirtytwo years old and 2'/ofl. hi.n'h. His wit,, is reputed to be |he prettied dwari in the world, and actively a?sisl« him in the business. ft!u« is Illiu. high. The dining-room head waiter i* short of his mistress's height by one inch. They ail speak English and German. .Messrs. liass & Co., Ltd., the bre wen, have recently placed what is probably the largest contract that the world has known for labels. The order is for the supply of the well-known rcd-triaugie label, which is supplied by Messrs. Has?* to the bottlers who handle their l'aic Ale. The order works out at rather more than one million labels a day for each working day of the year. It handled by ft stall of some eighty workpeople, who devote their whol ( . time to this one contract. Surely the mystery of life was greater than the mystery of death in the case of a tive-months-ohl child which has just been the subject of an impu'H at Rattersea (says the Pall Mull (Jazette). It, had what the doctor calls "drumslick ;j lingers and toes, its heart was on the right side instead of the left, the position of the lungs was reversed, the amla curved down the right sidy instead of the left, there was no spleen, Hie liver was on the wrong side, and there was no division between the two chamber* of the heart, while tTic artery which should have supplied the lungs with blood was closed, the. blood passing through a communication between the aorta and the remaining portion of the pulmonary artery. Willi all this jumbled ' anatomy the child lived, and the medical » evidence proved that its death was not 1 directly due to Hie disarranged organs ' but to ail attack of bronchitis. Still

death came mercifully, for the medical view was that if the little one had lived until it could -timd it woald have died of heart-disease, That it breathed at all proves the tenacity of life, amHonns a comment on the vast sacrifice of heallhilv constituted children which die of heart disease. An astonishing instance of how maniiiacluring co-Is can sometimes be reduced as an illslu-lry develop- i- lUi'-ni-lied bv the Coventrv cycle and motor trade. 'Mr. (1. I!. Carlisle in the Kcononiie lvcvicw " attributes the pre--cut depression ill Coventry's staple industry to overproduction, or, what amounts to much the same thing, an arrested consumption. Speaking of the plant and building extensions which ),ave recently lieiui ellected. he says that 1 work can all Ihi done in a lew months instead of being spread over the whole vcar, while labour-saving machinery has -o reduced the demand for workmen that "in one room where 3VI men were once employed HI years ago the same amount of work is now done by live." Cost of production has naturally fallen, sometime- to a rcnnirkable extent; a pair of pedals costing 311s not long ago can now be bought for Is (id. ami chains, which used to cost 3s a foot, are now made for 3d." line depressing in(luenc3 which may not occur again for some time, was'the mid, wet summer of last vear, when muddy roads offered few attractions tu tlie cyclist and motorist. With a warm, dry season, the cycle trade should revive, and Mr. Carlisle believes that the motor trade is still ill its infancy. He looks forward, perhaps too confidently, to a boom "when_ a cheap and handy type of motor is invented."