NEWS IN BRIEF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 258, 24 October 1908, Page 3

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Canada lias nourly 8,000,000 acres under wheat cultivation. The largest warships have 200 watertight- compartments. Einger-prints are taken ou ordinal v wlTite paper with printer's ink. No other couutry of the si/e has such resourced of coal and iron as Great Jiritain. Steel ships are more easily penetrated by rams, rocks, etc., than, the old wooden bottoms. Gas-eugine» are rapidly replacing the steam-engine in smaller factories. They give twice as much power for the same quantity of fuel. At Home, four centuries ago, it took 40 capstans, worked by 75 horses and !Kio men, to raise an obelisk. With hydraulic jacks four men raised Cleopatra's Needle. Factories in England use more than onc-liflh of the coal produced there. Warships require 1,000 to 1,450 feet clear space to swing round in tidal harbours. The best steam-engines require 21b. of coal to produce one horse-power. Any of the large London daily papers consumes yearly ten acres of forest in the form of papw. Stains of human blood can now be distinguished from animal blood, a great aid in murder trials. One thousand eight hundred pounds in prizes awaits the inventor of a new fuel cheaper than petrol. Two thousand million dead microbes are sometimes injected into a person's blood to cure some disease. The lighthouse of Heligoland has a, light of 30,000.000 candle-power. At, Nuremberg a lamp ten twines as powerful has been made. A watch-spring burns with the greatest brilliancy in oxygen gas. Four out of live loaves of bread made in England arc of foreign wheat. A chain-making machine at Bradford makes two miles of chain a minute. Half the people in the world die before the age of sixteen. Only one in a hundred lives to sixty-live. The cinematograph may be used for recording every step in surgical operations, and for showing the whole process to a large class of students. In underground railways a ton of iron and steel from rails, wheels, and brakes is ground into dust every year for each mile. Carborundum, a wonderful product of the electric furnace, goes in as sand, coke, sawdust, and salt, and comes out, in clusters of beautiful crystals. Ground! into powder, these will polish and aharpen every kind of steel tool, and even polish diamonds. If Germany were to make war against another European nation, an expenditure of \fci;i()o,tmiUUit) a year, while itlasted, would have to be faced. 1 Only 00,000 full-blooded Ked Indians j are to be found to-day in the United I states.

The average number of deaths through railway accidents* in Holland is one a year. Printing from movable* type whs known in Komi over a century before the invention of the art in Europe, To cleanse the streets of the City of London nearly SO,UOO ; OUO gallons o'! water are annually required. Including llavti, San Domingo, Panama, and Liberia, there are now twenty, four Republics in tlie world. Although the sand in the Sahara only average* 30ft. in depth. il has been found 200 ft.. below the surface. The Turkish day begins exactly ut; sunset, and at that time the Turk sets liis clocks and watches exactly at the hour of twelve. In a single minute a machine which cuU up wood to make matches will tu;n out 40.0011 - splints." as they are called. Coffee was jW'st imported into England about HjoO.

8110,1)11(1,000 eggs are consumed every year in 1/union.

Electricity is now used for lighting purposes in the Royal Palace in Pckin. About H ,000.000 bunches of bananas arr» now annually exported from Jamaica.

About 5.000 miles of nets are set nightly in the North Sea during the

herring season. 200.000 men form the Abyssinian army, the equipment of which includes fifty modern guns.

Of any Jish, a herring lives the shortest time out of water; carp and eels tie greatest length. At 1.000 fathoms below the surf a of the. ocean there is a uniform tern, perature just above freezing-point. The gipsies of Europe number, rough ly. about S-WIOO. While (here are onh 3.000 in Em/hmd. Austro-1 Innsnvv el aim 30U.000, and Spain and Portugal '2ol>,ouo.