NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 68, 15 August 1874, Page 8

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Statues in Russia are so rare that those which have been erected, puszle the country-folk, who think them idols. A fino of £32 was inflicted on a milkman in Ireland for mixing water with Ids milk. This is the heaviest fine inflicted under the Adulteration of Food Act. j An oval masa of iron, weighing twenty-five tons, has been discovered in Western Greensland. Opiuions are divided as to the origin of the mass, which the discoverer does not hesitate to consider a large meteorite. The assertion that total darkness prevails during the Arctic midwinter, appears to be disproved by the observations of Dr Bressel during the Polaris expeaition. At the winter quarters of the party, there were no fewer than six hours of twilight on the 2lst of December. For selling sawdust under the pretence that it was fine " birdseye" tobacco, a Glasgow tobacconist has been sentenced to two months' imprisonment. The Waterloo was the first medal given to all ranks alike ; and ivi v was also provided that the ribbon should never be worn without the medal being attached. Passengers to the Pacific by the railroad across the American Continent, breakfast in «he Sierras with twenty feet of snow around them ; four hours later they find wheat five inches high ; and the next day they see peuch and pear trees in blossom. A curious light liub been thrown on the profits of the " butties," or middle-men in collieries, by a case lately heard before a Warwickshire bench, in the course of which, it was extracted from a " butty " under examination, that his profits for a year on the labor of 150 miners amounted to more thun £4000. In the seventeen years bet veen, 1854 and 1871 the military death rate in India was reduced from 09 per 1000, to 34. Penny postal cards have been employed between Switzerland and the United States. The building of St. Paul's occupied thirty-seven years. It was finished in the time of Queen Anne. In Sweaen, out of 385,000 children of school age only 9,131, or 3 per cent, aye uninstructed. Of the 7,500,000 voters in the United States, more than 1,000,000 cannot read the ballot cast. There are said to be 40,000 commercial travellers in the United States. In ISOB the importation cf p&lm oil into Great Britain did not exceed 200 tons a year ; at present it amounts to 50,000,000. Withiu the period of twenty-nine years — from 1844, to 1874—42 Atlantic steamships have been lost, being an average of 1 i per year. Five feet five inches is the present infantry standard in Great Britain. In no other army in Europe is it so high. The gross income of tne Duchy of Lancaster has, in a quarter of a century, increased from £29,000 to £59,000. The nett payments to Her Majesty have contemporaneously risen from £12,000 to £40,000. In .Europe the formal dominion of England is confined withiu very narrow limits. It includes Heligoland, with five sqnare miles of territory ; Gibraltar, with less than two ; and Malta, with 115. A curious mode of trying the title to land is practiced in Hindostan. Two holes are dug in the disputed land, in each of which the piaintiff and defendant's lawyers put one of their legs, and there r emuiu until oue of them is tired, in which case his client is defeated.