BREVITIES.

Evening Star, Issue 14999, 5 October 1912, Page 12

BREVITIES.

Lord Tennyson died October 6, 1892. Horace Walpole was born on October 5, 1717. Maungafcapu murderers executed at Nelson on October 5, 1866. Bulgarian Independence proclaimed October 5, 1908. The number of lepers in New Zealand has decreased from five to two, and these patients are two Europeans, who are still confined at Quail Island. Plymouth breakwater was built from over three and a-half million tons of granite; the cost of construction was £1,500,000. Plutano, the survivor of the two " Wild Men of Borneo,-" made famous by P. T. Barnum in his circus, has just died in Boston, U.S.A. A flash of lightning which struck a Toronto tug tore the captain's clothes to shreds and burnt the hair off his head. He is recovering. Theatres in Spain have no programme. A bill in the lobby sometimes gives the cast, but most of the actors remain unknown by name. Connected with first-class cricket, the three highest individual scores in England are 424 bv A. C. Maclaren, 357 by Abel, and 344 by W. G. Grace. By partaking of cocoa, an extract from a South American plant of that name, men can endure hard labor without food for a period of six or seven days. The accidental throwing of a ball through a second-story window by boys playing in a New York street' saved the life of a man asleep in the room with a leaking gas jet. The most powerful electrical generating machine in the world has recently been installed in New York. Its power is equal to that of a line of horses six abreast and 10 miles long. The total amount collected so far at Christchurch for the Y.W.C.A. building hind is £4,610 12s 9d. A street collection was to have been made- today. The Sleeping Sickness Bureau will, from July 1, be known as the Tropical Diseases Bureau, and will move to new quarters at the Imperial Institute, London, where it will deal with all exotic diseases prevalent in tropical and sub-tropical regions. The Southland Education Board have, resolved to instruct the architect to prepare plans for a new brick school to accommodate 600 pupils, to be erected on a site secured some time ago, and to replace'the Waihopai and Park Schools, which will bo abolished'. The Park School was recently partially destroyed by fire, and both schools are old and in an unsatisfactory state of preservation. The Eeefton Chamber, of - Commerce passed a very strong resolution protesting against, the stoppage- of -the works on the E eefton-Inangab.ua Railway, "in view of the -increased;.settlement along the line, where now there are more than twice "as many settlers as there were previously. - ;:;.'•-. The president of the Southland Acclimatisation Society has received three petitions from fanners'"in'the "western districts of Southland, bearing 100 signatures, stating that opossums. are harmless from a settler's point of view, and that, considering the value of opossums as fur-bearing animals, some restriction should be placed on their destruction. These petitions, along with others coming in later, will bo forwarded to the Government.