GENERAL NEWS.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 179, 18 March 1902, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS.

A goat gives a quart of milk daily, and lives ten years'

Express trains pass at a velocity of ninety yards n second.

Bronchitis kills more people in Scotland than any other disease. Consump. tion comes next, and pneumonia third.

The world’s horses have doubled in number in the past hundred years. Of cattle there are 127 per cent, more, and of sheep 239 for every 100 in 1800,

A bat is able to find 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 1787 British ships landed thirty eight thousand slaves in America. Ip 1807-77 British warships freed sixty thousand slaves.

From microscopic observations, it has been computed that the skin is perforated with a thousand holes in a square inch. If the whole surface of the human body be estimated at sixteen square feet, it must contain no fewer than 2,304,000 pores.

Exporiments have been made to investigate the effect of extreme cold op bacteria, and it has been ascertained that the temperature of liquid hydrogen, about 250 deg. C., has no effect upon these micro-organisms.

There is at least one country in the world where it costs nothing to die. Ip. some of the cantons of Switzerland all the dead, rich as well as poor, are buried at the public expense.

The latest labour-saving contrivance is said to be 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 pew to pew, and the congregation do the test-

The whole surplus wheat crep of North America, twenty-two million quarters, is uot enough to feed the United Kingdom; which needs twenty-three and a quarter million quarters a year more than ifi grows.

Hot Milk foe the Complexion.— If the face is bathed in hot milk every night it will greatly improve the skin, hud will make the use of cold cream quite unnecessary even in winter. It specially to be recommended for people with a tendency to superfluous hairs on the face. '

'fhe dials of “ Big Ben " at Westminster are 221tfc. in diameter, or nearly 400 square feet in area', and are formed of cast-iron framework giving thfi divisions and figures, the spaces being filled ip with opalescent glass. The hour figures are 2ft. long, and the minute spaces Ift. square. The boor 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 of being “ the hottest places in London ” at night, for about a score of gas jets bum fiercely in a coom about ' ' ' ■