NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7258, 21 February 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF .

Qotli, pens are again becoming fashtonablft? f Russia ie said to be on the ere of a great resolution. Twenty-two Italian cities now hare orema* tory farnacoe. The first newspaper advertisement ap« peared in 1652. The Bank of England now coven three seres of ground. Percussion arms were used in the United States army in 1836. England paid £5,000,000 last year to foreigners for oheeie. Germans make the most delicate watch wheels of paper pnlp. The coal-fields of Arkansas have an area of 12,000 square miles. Divers in the vicinity of Gibraltar have 80 far found 102 large guns. Under British rule there live about 285,000,000 human beings. The amount contributed to thu Gar field Monument Fund is £26,800. The highest-priced pew in Grace Church, New York, is £600 per year. The number of men employed on the Panama Canal works is 19,000. The estimated loss for 1384 from hog cholera in Nebraska is £400,000. Paris has 62,827 dogs, and the yearly licenses amount to over £20,000. American apples sell on the street stands In London at from 4d to 6d apiece. Russia will soon build an 11,000-ton ironclad war ship, at the coat of £65,000. The Emperor of China sends a magnificent exhibit to the New Orleans Exposition. Maine sent 30,000 evergreen trees to Bos* ton and 70,000 to New York for Christmas. It costs £60 a night to light the Grand Opera House in Paris and £1400 a year to sweep and dust it. In London 140 tons of chloride of lime are daily used for the deodorizing of the sewer outlets. A Venezuela gold mine has yielded, under American management, £400,000 in six months. It takes two men over an hour to wind up the clock of Trinity Church, New York, it is so heavy. Twenty years ago the Danes imported nearly all their sugar. Now they raise it from beets. Lynn, Mass., shipped 296,933 and Haver* hill 194,761 cases of shoes during the year just closed. The Spanish nobility have petitioned the Prime Minister for a renewal of the law of primogeniture. The proposed expedition of Professor Nor* denekjold to the South Pole has been post* poned until 18S7. A crane capable of lifting 147 tons is being constructed at Hamburg. It will be the largest in Europe. The Italian funds have lately been quoted at nearly the same figures as the English. In 1566 they stood at 36. In the English-speaking countries of the world there are 11,000,000 Roman Catholioa and 88,000,000 Protestants. Four citizens of Hamburg have offered Prince Bismarck £3000 towards the creation of an Assistant Chancellorship. The Town Council of Vienna haa ordered an inquiry into the reason why the bakers buy wheat cheap and sell bread dear. Jews own and work more than 1,250,000 acres of land in Russia, and rent from the Crown nearly 1,550,000 acres more. The cholera item has disappeared from the bills of mortality, and Paris has again a lower death-rate than is usual at this time of the year. It is proposed by Italians resident in New York to buy Garibaldi's old residence at Staten Island and make it into a Garibaldi Park. tS. Bartholdi says that with the money already spent at Bedloe's Island he could have built a pedestal in Paris for the Liberty statue. In , Lima, Peru, the impressario of an Italian opera company has been fined 12s for not raising the curtain promptly at eight o'clock. Germany is working for the control of the railroads to be constructed in China, for which it offers the engineers, material, and money required. It is understood that the profits of the New York Herald for 1833 wore £190,000. For the same twelve months the profits of the Times were £30,000. , Dr. Schweniger, of Munich, is the author of the new system of reducing flesh by not eating and drinking at the same time, but by letting two hours intervene. An old attache" of the Washington Capitol says that in former days professional speechwriters used to get from £20 to £70 from Congressmen for a good oration. The German people, who were only 25,000,000 in 1815, are now 45,000,000, and their present rate of increase is greater than that of any other European race. The Rothschilds have bought their old house in Frankfort, and will rebuild it a meter back to conform with the new street line, and then replace in it the family relics. In 1816 there were in Prussia 123,938 Jews, in 1843, 206.527; in 1861, 262,000, and in 1880, 363,790. Seventeen per cent, of all Jews in the kingdom reside in Berlin. The Mayor of London has requested the use of the Guild Hall for a meeting at which Henry George has been announced to deliver an address on the subject of trade depression. Every visitor to the World's Exposition in New Orleans is required to deposit a silver half-dollar in a glass box in charge of the doorkeepers, no admission tickets being sold. The second prize for batter at the Calcutta exhibition was awarded for a fiae sample of American oleomargarine. Someone spoiled a good joke, and the judges reconsidered their award. The chief reliance of the Mormon Church • for accessions from without is Great Britain. Out of 27,000 persons who have recently become Mormons, 20,000 have come from that country. The Constitution of Portugal is to be so modified that the Chamber of Peers shall ooneist of 100 life peers to be appointed by the King and fifty peers to be elected by an indirect process. It is suggested that it would be a good, idea for the United States to have a national mausoleum, like Westminster Abbey, in which the Presidents could be buried and statues of them erected. The Panama Canal Company is advertising in Jamaica for 40,000 labourers. M. Deuillot, a cousin of M. de Lessens, is new in Mexico trying to hire 15,000 Mexican Indian* to come to the isthmus. The ratio of inhabitants to the square mile in Canada is 1*33; in the United State* 13 92, and in Belgium 481*71. The ratio in Canada is smallest of any country in the world, and in Belgium the largest. The Hammond Electric Light Company has signed a contract to light a square mile of London city, with the Royal Exchange as a centre,, at a price now paid for gas; also tp. light the Mansion House for £1000, A mathematical sporting person reckons that the gambling " bank" at Monaco has one chance in thirty-six in its favour, and that hence its profits of £700,000 a year re? present the betting of about £24,500,000. The Paris fortifications are likely to make room for working men's houses. There are now 70,000 families in the city unable to get proper accommodations, and the Government has promised to soon attack the fortifications. The Earl of Northbrook in the Lords, and Sir Thomas Brassey in the Commons, recently showed that the British navy was largely euperior to the French in every way, but that for immediate expenditure something like £5,000,000 were needed. The area of wheat this year in England ie 2,475,185 acres, and the estimated yield 29£ bushels per acre. After deducting 2£ bueheU for seed this will leave 9,308,910 quartern, or nearly 75,000,000 bushels, for a population of 36,500,000 who require for the year's oonsumption about 194,000,000 bushel*. A Portsmouth correspondent states that in connection with the proposed increase of the navy, orders have been received at Portsmouth to concentrate as muoh labour aa possible on the armoured ships in hand* and to facilitate their completion the mea from next week are to work one-eighth extra time daily. It appears, from' an account of Viennese society now publishing in Paris, that there are no less than seventy Archdukes and Archduchesses belonging to the house of Hapsburg, who all marry into the royal oaste, form a clan among themselves, and do not associate on intimate terms even with the highest nobility. Warehouses for the storage of cold air are now in operation in New York, and from these cold air will be served through pipes to any part of the city. In the new Wiuhington market a network of pipes is fixed run* ning through' the building, and cold air will be served to any of the stalls famished wife perishable articles,