NEWS TIT-BITS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 143, 16 June 1917, Page 19

NEWS TIT-BITS.

Ahorse has been known to live seven ■m days without eating or drinking. Scarcely any articles of ammunition 'remade complete and entire in any one Kublishment. i watch requires 170 separate parts. sere than 2400 operations being necesary in its manufacture. Gatta percha is produced from the cap iiferest tree which grows in the Malay Peninsula and adjacent islands. Seventy tons of coal a day will carry a ordinary battleship along at the crabing speed of ten to twelve knots; Mt to drive her at twenty or over five imes that amount mutt be used. The Amice wae a long cloak worn by prieste and pilgrims in olden days, and & preserved in the strips of embroid-'-7 irorn over the shoulders of Catholic JMsts, and in the white bands of Proietant clergy. Between the leiari of Madagascar and tie coast of India there are 16,000 slands, only Sno of which are inhabited, to most of these islands a man can live «ad support his family in luxury without sorking more than twenty-five days in year, or at all, as Nature provides lie iood, and no clothes are required. The culture of rice is alluded to in the Talmud* and there is evidence that it *25 grown in the valley of the Euphrates and in Syria before 400 B.C. k wa,s tak.-n into Persia from India, 2 ad later into Spain by the Arabs. Hence its culture was introduced into 1% aboui 1468 A.D. The Spaniards pc also responsible for its introduction at o Peru and other sect ions of Spanish during the early colonial period. Tie Alaska walrus are enormou3. The « v erage one i.s as bia as an ox. and it often weigh? more than a ton. A walrus *&= recently killed by some whalers near ioiat Barrow whose bead weijrhed pounds and skin, including flipI*ra, 500 pounds. That animal had a wh of fourteen feet, and its weight »as over 2000 pounds. The skin was ™ia one-half an inch to three inches in 'aicknese. and the blubber weighed 500 pounds. Sonic years aL"> the Prussian Treasury 'sommended local authorities to tax cats 15 an e asy source of new revenue. It is "™ announced that the one attempt to a tax on cats during the war in 'provincial town has proved a complete Imposition of the tux resulted 111 such a wholesale massacre of feline P* that the community was soon sufferj 1 ; from a mouse and rat plague. The 111 was then aboli>lied. Platinum, the d-arth of w-hicb Ger~"y a is now deploring, derives its name , r °m the Rio Plata, near which it was "W discovered, an additional reason the -Paniards had for thus naming it being j™ cl o=e resemblance in appearance to ' er - It was aft. nvanls found in vari- ( .™ Parts of South America, notably "'ottbia. when... liumbol.lt brought the =t specimen cccii in Prussia, a huge 1,085 grains. At preis chKli.v found in the Ural M.oun-

Alabaster is a eoft, white, serni-j transparent stone, used for perfumes, ornaments, and (heated to puwJer),] plaster of Paris. Best aiabacl r 0.-mes from Tuscany. TIMES CHA_NGE '•Remember," eaid the preacher, "St. Bi-inard said: 'Notning can damage mc but myself.'" "Yes," replied the man on crutches, "but St. Bernard never had to dodge an automobile."