NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9635, 6 October 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Halp-a-million clerks sir© employed in London.

Horses succumb to cold quicker than any other animal.

Warders in prisons are on duty from 70 to 90 hours per week. Experiments in weaving by electricity are being tried in Germany. In some London hotels the waiters re« ceive as much as £500 a year in tips. Burmese children of both sexes begin to smoke almost as soon as they can speak. Newfoundland is without reptiles. No snake, frog, toad, nor lizard has ever been seen there.

Flavouring butter with the odour of fresh flowers is one of the arts of French peasantry. The volcano Cotopaxi, in Ecuador, is active, and the inhabitants of Quito are terror stricken.

The silver wreath sent by Russia for M. Carnob's tomb was deposited in the vault by the widow. A German doctor has discovered that) water injected under the skin renders the flesh at that point insensible to pain. In one auction-room in London during a recenb single season over 500,000 birdskins from the West Indies and Brazil were sold.

The substitution of camels as working animals for horses and oxen has been going on rapidly in many parts of Russia re cently. A well-known sculptor is at work preparing the tomb for the Pope. It is to be of black marble, surmounted by the figure of a lion.

Several of the Chinese temples have a bell at the entrance, so thab each devotee as he passes in may announce his arrival to the Deity. In East Anglia wasps, which were so numerous last year, are now scarce, bub earwigs are invading the houses, and actually storming the beds. In France 148,808 families have claimed exemption from certain taxes recently voted by the Government, on account of having seven or more children. The Turkish authorities have ordered the repair, at a cost of £80,000, of the old aquo. ducts of Solomon ab Jerusalem, which were in working order in the time of Christ.

A South American millionairess recently appeared ab a ball in London wearing a pair of shoes embroidered with rubies, emeralds, and turquoises, the heels being thickly seb with diamonds. The Pope has decided that priests may use bicycles where the needs of their work require it. A cardinal, conveying this decision, adds that- tho inventor of the bicycle was in reality Abbe Pianton. After an interval of eleven years the Ministerial whitebait dinner was held ab The Ship, Greenwich, on August 15. Fortyfour members of the Government were present, and Lord Tweedmouth occupied the chair.

An infant was suffocated by its veil in London while being carried by its mother. The coroner warned mothers against placing veils over infanta' faces. Their breath makes the article web, and they are in danger of suffocation.

A stage coach filled with passengers was recently swept away by a cloudburst near Trinidad, State of Denver. The water poured down in torrents, and the mountain roads were converted into creeks. None of the passengers were saved. A French shoeblack, who went abroad and made a fortune, recently died and leftj £6000 to a single woman in Paris, to be paid on her wedding-day. She eoughb to recover the money, bub the courts decided that she must either geb married or lose the bequest. A statistician has estimabed thab a man fifty years old has worked 6500 days, has slepb 6000, has amused himself 4000, has walked 12,000 miles, has been ill 500 days, has partaken of 36,000 meals, eaten 16,0001b of meat and 40001b of fish, eggs, and vegetables, and drunk 7000 gallons of fluid. The only Victoria Cross awarded in connection with the Balaclava charge has just been sold by auction in London, with o&her war relics, and realised £155. The Cross was awarded to a lieutenant, who is still living, for saving the life of an officer by cutting down three Russians who wore in close pursuit. The painting of the Forth Bridge, which is certainly no light undertaking, is again in progress. So vast is the structure that) it takes somewhere about 50 tons of paint to give it one coat, the area thab has to be dealt with being something like 120 acres. It is said that about 200 trains pass over the bridge every 24 hours. It is said that when the little Queen Wilhelmina of Holland was travelling in Switzerland the other day, the communication cord was pulled, causing the train to stop ; When the guard proceeded to the carriage to see what was amiss, the little queen put her head out of bhe window, and in no little alarm stammered out, "It wasn't me, please." Valued at £100 an ounce is a certain book in the British Museum. Ib is a parfect copy of the original edition of Shakespere's sonnet®, published in 1609. There are only two copies in existence, and the second one is valued at £1000. As the book is only ten ounces in weight, ib is worth a good deal more than its weighb in gold. Five highwaymen, masked like brigands, stopped the carriage of Signor Giorni the other day, as his family were returning to their country house at Genzano, and forced the occupants to give up everything they had upon them. They then imposed secrecy, and leb them go on. This bold robbery close to Rome has made a great impression. A curious incident is reported from Bunzlau, in Germany. A pigeon flew, in the early morning, against the dial of the church clock, and was caught by one leg and one wing on the ornamentations of the minute hand, which is over 3fb long. At a quarter-past three the two hands met, and the pigeon was squeezed to death. Then the clock stopped. The present executioner in Germany, Herr Reindel, performed his 100 th execution a short time back, and numerous telegrams of congratulations were sent to him from various parts of the kingdom. An hour before the execution he received as a token of felicitation and good wishes from an admirer a superb basket of Marechal Kiel roses. The sender was a lady ! The Island of St. Helena, which has lived for the best part of a century on the. memory of Napoleon, is to become the resort of less august criminals. The Government of Cape Colony has decided tc utilise bhe island as a place ot transports tion for certain classes of criminals. And, curiously enough, the inhabitants of St. Helena raise no objection to the scheme. In the Antwerp Zoological Gardens, which are veritable gardens very beautifully kept, there is a heliotrope grown from a cutting struck in 1849. The plant is remarkable for its size. Ib is about six and a-half feeb high, and its stem is nearly eight inches round. The top is bushy, and when covered with flowers the perfume fills the air for some distance around the plant.

I The highesb recorded speed on the Atlantic as an average for the whole passage is 21 9 knobs per hours, performed by the Cunard line steamer Lucania. This has now been nearly equalled by her sister ship, the Campania, which has just made the passage from New York bo Queenatown in five days, 13 hours, 8 minutes over a total distance of 2905 knots, her average speed having been 21 '82 knots per hour. Burial at sea will, for some people, lose half its terrors if, as recent investigations tend to show, it is true that at certain depths decay is practically arrested, and all the corpses which have been committed bo the deep in blue waters, with weights attached, are now standing on the bottom with their lineaments and features as perfect as they were on the day whereon their comrades cast them over the ship's side. One of the oldest churches in Washington has a " steeple" formed of a tree. The church was built under the shade of a tall poplar tree, and an ingenious member of the congregation suggested that the tree should become the " steeple" of the building. Accordingly, the tree waa deprived of its head, and on the mutilated stump a bell was bung. This is, perhaps, the only instance on record of a church, spire having been made from a fcree.