BREVITIES.

Evening Star, Issue 12699, 27 June 1907, Page 8

BREVITIES.

The annual degree day celebration Jook place in Otntcroury College Hall The degrees were conferred by the Hon. .L. G. Boweu, vioe-ci mcellor of tho New Zealand University. ™ln order to facilitate the - working of copiers, yachts, inotor-boato, and .fishing sraft, the ■ Auckland Harbor 3oard are to aect beacons off-the north end of Mofc-ihi, the west end of Tamaki Keef, and tho'south mi of Bastion Reef. ■_ • ■-

Two ~--i6oDers, John Delaney and. Ralph Sibbuns, convicted of burglary at Westpoit, escaped at Hokitika on Monday.'-Thirty-one years to-day since E.-Trickett won trie sculling c. mpionship for Australia by defeating J. H. Sadler on the Thames.

Agricultural capital represents one-third of all the wealth of nations.

On an average, 100 acres of pasture will carry 200 sheep or 33 horned beasts. Cape Colony has 20.000 acres of vineyards, containing 60 millions of vines. The fastest lifts run at a speed of l',sOoft a minute, or just over 17 miles an hour. ' The . human voice will carry" three miles through a twenty-foot speaking-trumpet." The usual so-called temperance" drink' averages at least 3 per cent, of alcohol. The ravages of that peat the phylloxera have cost France 1,900,000 acres of vineyards. '_ *'--'" Over one million pawn tickets for sums under ten shillings are issued weekly in London.

The Madrid Council opened, banking accounts for twenty poor children born in Spain on the day the heir to..the Spanish throne was born, and provided 1 marriage portions for girls in homes, and food lor 5,000 poor people. The first man dressmikcr was Rhomberg, s Bavarian, who lived in Paris in 1730. He adopted for his crest an open pair of scissors.

Of the 364 million tons of goods carried yearly on British canals, only 8i millions *re carried on canals belonging to railway i o-rtpanies. inuring a terrific storm at Vryheid, Na- :.■•'. hailstones described as " varying in •i'.e from a cricket ball to a man's fist"' icii for several minutes.

A witness at the Greenwich County Court recently defined the X-rays as a kind of electric light used to look'through people's limbs and see what was there. The Black Sea has less life in it than any other great body of water. - The lower depths are saturated with poisonous gas, so that no fish can live in them.

The first stenographer was Tiro, a slave, who became Cicero's secretary. He took the reports of Catiline's trial (b.c. 63) in t shotthand of his own invention.

The largest vineyard in the world is two niles from San Gabriel, in California. The icreage of grapes is as large as Hyde Park ind the Green Park put together. ':• takes four years to tram a lion for exhibition work, and only one animal in four .6 fit for training. A well-trained lion is werrth five times the price of one untrained.