BREVITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 312, 11 February 1910, Page 5

BREVITIES.

India's net revenue from opium in ■IOOB-1909 was £4,015,900.

Sir R. S. Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts now number about 300,000.

About 420,000 lads reach the .age of 18 each year in the United Kingdom, In ten years the Exchequer has received £179,800,000 from death duties. About 400,000,000 bushels of wheat are annually produced within the British Empire. Exclusive of the Royal and Sovereign Duchies, our dukes own over 4,000,000 acres' of land.

Sleeping sickness has been known in West Africa for 100 years, and is said to be always fatal. The respective Governors of Australia and Canada each receive a salary of £IO,OOO.

Over twenty in every thousand of the population of the United Kingdom are permanent paupers.

The United Kingdom has 23,205 miles of railways, representing a paid-up capital of ',£1,310,333,000. In Great Britain last year the plough was stopped over 170.000 acres, while 138,000 acres were added to grass.

For the purpose of removing hostile submarine mines, the Admiralty has purchased a number of fishing trawlers.

Nearly one-fourth of the deaths occurring in England and Wales are caused by phthisis, pneumonia, and bronchitis'. Costing £3OO the Saiitos-Dumont monoplane—"Demoiselle—is the smallest and cheapest that has yet been practically tested.