GENERAL NEWS.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 176, 11 March 1902, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS.

A- pout riven a, quart <jt milk daily, and lives ion yeai:r Espvm s trains pase at a velocity of ninety yards a second. Bronchitis kills more people in Scotland than, any other disease. Consumption conn '3 next, and pneumonia third. The 'world’s horses have doubled in number in the pavi hundred years. Of cattle there are 127 per cent, more, and of sheep 23'.) for every 100 in IBOU. A bat is able to lind its way without the use of its eyes. A blind bat has been known to avoid wires and other obstructions as easily as though it had perfect sight. So useful are toads in gardens that they' are sold in France by the dozen for stocking gardens, to free them from many injurious insects. In 17; 7 British ships landed thirty eight tU-.m-'und slaves in America. In 18G7-77 iirni.'h warships frood sixty thousand slaves. From microscopic observations, it has been comput'd that the skin is perforated with a thousand holes in a square iucJr. If iho vihole curiace of the human body be estimated at sixteen square feet, it must contain no fewer than 2,301,000 pores. Experiments have been made to investigate the effect of extreme cold on bacteria, and it has been ascertained that the temperature of liquid hydrogen, about r-MOdcg. C., has no effect upon these micro-organisms. There is at least one country in the world whore it costs nothing to die. In some of the cantons of Switzerland all the dead, rich as well ns poor, are buried at thfi public expense. The latest labour-saving contrivance is said to bo an electric collection box. No sidesmen are required, for as soon as the clergyman has touched a button in the pulpit the box runs along wires from new to pew, and the congregation do the Vest. The whole surplus wheat crep of North America, twenty-two million quarters, is Slot enough to feed the United Kingdom, which needs twenty-three and a quarter million quarters a year more than it grows. Hot Milk fob the Complexion.— If the face is bathed in hot milk every night it will greatly improve the skin, and will make the use of cold cream quite unnecessary even in winter. It is specially to be recommended for people with a tendency to superfluous hairs on the face. The dials of “ Big Ben " at Westminster are 22£ft. in diameter, or nearly 400 tquaro feet in area, and are formed of cast-iron framework giving the divisions and figares, the spaces being filled in with opalescent glass. The hour figures are 2ft. long, and the minute spaces Ift, square. The hour hands are made of gunmetal, but the minute hands are tubular and made of copper, and are lift. long. The apartments where the dials are fixed have the credit iff being “ the hottest places in London ” at night, for about a score of gas jm? burn fiercely in a *oom about 4ft. V* -