HERE AND THERE.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 1910, 2 September 1921, Page 3

HERE AND THERE.

Many different colours are used in mourning. Palo brown is the mourning colour in Persia; white in China-, violet in Turkey, etc. In Brittany, widows’ caps among (lie yellow.' Captain Robert A. Bartlett, who made several Arctic expeditions with Admiral Peary, is trying lo raise money, to finance an expedition across the North Pole in an aeroplane. If the sum of £fio,o(k) is raised, the expedition will probably take place. A Mr Sam Badges has been buried at Topeka, Kansas, U.S.A., in a vault in which an electric light burns continually. He paid a IhLyear subscription for, a local- newspaper to bo delivered at the vault daily. It is possible that in the near future the Jews will possess their own mercantile marine. The first ship to fly the blue and white flag of Zion was the Hecolutz, which sailed from Jaffna recently. She is owned and manned by Jews.

•awing to tlio high cost of timber ih China, it lias been found economical to make railway sleepers and electric transmission line poles of rein-forced concrete. The sleepers are reinforced with old mine cable, and are cured under water before use.

.Frightened to death, a young woman dropped dead on the road at Matlock (Eng.). She was out for -a walk with her lover when the white forehead of a straying horse looming out of the dark gave her such a start that her heart was effected.

A French medical man, Dr. Jalifer, has grafted tendons taken from the leg of a calf or dog into the hands of men, and, though the'tendons had been kept on ice, for from six tolifty days before being implanted, in all of his five cases the result has been good, and in some the hand functions very well. Many fatalities duo to lightning arc reported from the Transvaal and Natal. A man was discovered tied in knots by the lightning. One of his legs was entwined with his arms, while the other was twisted round his neck. The man was partially paralysed for three days, but his limbs'have since straightened out. Ho is now suffering as from shellshock.

Tremendous /irrigation projects are planned in Alberta (Canada) as the result of the Provincial Government backing the bonds of the Lethbridge Northern District, and it is estimated that the total amoupt of outlay involved in all the proposed undertakings will amount to between £lO,000,000 and £12,000,000. Animals arc their own doctors and surgeons. Sick cats and dogs cat grass. Cattle seek certain herbs. Monkeys cover flieir wounds with leaves, and bears stop bleeding by keeping their paws over the cuts. Animals rarely die of snake bites—they know just what herbs to seek. Ants art experts in “first-aid,” and they doctor each other.

Professor Whitford, of the Yale School of Forestry, says that alcohol could be economically manufactured from the moist vegetation of tropical forests and jungles. “The evidence is conclusive,” he says, “that the tropical sun has the power to store up more energy in the form of cellulose in a given time than has the temperate sun. If this is in a utilisablc form, it remains for the ingenuity of man to overcome sie difficulties of profitably applying it.”