NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9734, 2 February 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The Singalese, after extracting the honey from the bee, eat the insect itself. A harbour for torpedoes is planned on the canal between the North Sea and the Baltic. ■ There have been aboub 500 executions of really remarkable criminals in England since 1800. . As many as 18 London infants were, the other week, suffocated while in bed with their parents. Labrador has 900 species of flowering plants, 59 ferns, and over 250 species of mosses and lichens. Wellingtonia gigantia, the largesb tree in the world, reaches a height of 450 feet, and a breadth of 150 feet. v In the military schools of Germany, French is being dropped from the course of instruction and English substituted. A well-known scientist says that nob a single case of a woman suffering from colour blindness has been discovered. The carrier pigeon has just been turned to a curious use in Russia. It is to convey negatives of photographs taken in a balloon. " A camel" and " beauty" are synonymous in Arabic. An Arab widow generally I mourns her husband with the cry of *' O mj I camel !','

Advertising in France has taken the form 'i : of delivering counterfeit telegrams containing puffs of the article that is being *' pushed." - ■*:-£ A miner's wife, while drawing water from a well near Kilmarnock in Scotland during a severe storm, was blown into the well by the wind and drowned. "** '' The Sultan's horse? in Egypt are fed on half a pound of dried currants, in lieu of oats, and this is claimed to be the secret of the animal's great endurance. ■ , The Queen has as a "footstool a life-size - model of a tiger's head, fashioned in solid silver, richly gilt. The tongue is of pure gold, and the teeth of rock crystal. Another big whaleback steamer for ocean traffic is soon to be built in Washington State, where the largest vessel of the kind afloat was launched a tew weeks ago. The Board of Education at Mount Vernon, Illinois, has decided that cigarette-smoking boys may not attend public schools. They must give up smoking or be expelled. The front pages of all the Russian journals still appear with mourning borders. They will continue to do so for twelve months from the date of the late Czar's death. A German statistician has computed that Greece stands in the firsb rank among European countries in the number of centenarians. He attributes this to its climate. The fine pier which is being constructed by the Government at Ardnamurchan, under the scheme for developing the Highlands and Islands, is expected to be finished in January. The Chinese believe that the water obtained from melting hailstones is poison- . ous, and that rain water which falls on certain feast days will cure ague and malarial fever. Brickmakers are now proposing to make brick of all colours by mixing many • materials. Clay, with a small percentage of iron, will make a beautiful mottled brick. The departure will exert quite an influence on architecture. Black is nob the colour of the negro when first born. It is a remarkable fact that the negro infant comes into the world white, only with a yellowish tinge, and that it becomes progressively darker until the tenth day, when ib is perfectly black. The revised French navy estimates provide for the construction of an ironclad, two first-class, one second-class, and two thirdclass cruisers, twelve torpedo-boats, and a despatch-boat. The outlay this year on construction will be £3,440,000. Since the Society for the Prevention of 4 Cruelty to Children was established no fewer than 7000 fathers and mothers have, it is stated, been convicted of cruelties to ! their own children, and have been sent to gaol for a period of 1300 years for the same. '

A Russian physician has been making some curious experiments to find out how far animals can count. - Be declares that; the crow can oounb up to 10, and is thereby superior in arithmetic to certain Polynesian tribes of men, who cannot get beyond five or six. v A single shot from the big gun of a modern ironclad would have sent any one of Nelson's ships to the bottom of the sea. The weight of metal contained in one projectile of a modern 110 gun is double that of all the shot discharged by the] fifty-gun broadside of Nelson's flagship the Victory. Sportsmen who have. never seen a moose will be interested in the dimensions of one recently killed near the Ebeem lakes in Northern Maine. The animal measured 7fb high at the shoulders, and his body was 9ft) long. The measurement from his nose to his bind feet was 15fb. The spread of his horns was 4ft 4in. Th«re is now at La Rochelle, France, an .. old man, Jules Zostot, who possesses a marvellous memory. He knows by heart all the verses in the Bible. You can ask him at random any of these verses, no matter if it begins a sentence or is a continuation of the preceding verse, and he will recite the lines. The gold seekers in South Africa are not without spiritual guidance. A Protestanb religious service was held in Buluwayo the other Sunday. Light was got from whisky bottles with candles stuck in their necks. There were four ladies and about a hundred men, and there was not a white shirt or collar among the lot. The oldest secret trade process now in existence is, in all probability, either that method of inlaying the hardest steel with gold and silver, which seems to have been practised at Damascus ages ago, and is still known only to the Syrian smiths and their pupils, or else the manufacture of Chinese red or vermilion. , ; The Directors of the Crystal Palace have just concluded arrangements for the outdoor section of the South African Exhibition of 1895. In addition to a troupe of over sixty African natives— women, and childrenabout one hundred and forty wild animals will be transported from Africa to the Crystal Palace. The mercantile marine of France continues to dwindle, in spite of the large bounties ib enjoys. It fell from 9,704,191 tons in 1891 to 8,382,311 tons in 1893, a loss of 13*6 per cent., bub if from this be deducted the tonnage of the subsidised lines, whose ships are obliged to come and go without regard to cargo, the diminution is 16*5 per cent. By actual measurement of fifty skeletons, the right arm and left leg have been found to be longer in twenty-three, the left arm and right leg in six, the limbs on the right side longer than those on the lefb in four, and in the remainder the inequality of the limbs was varied. Only seven out of seventy skeletons measured, or 10 pel cent., had limbs of equal length. French footpads have adopted a new weapon with which to assault travellers at night. It is a hollow guttapercha cudgel, and has the advantage over the old-time . sand-bag or loaded stick of inflicting fully as stunning a blow without producing any visible wound. Ib is with difficulty * that the belated wanderer who has been robbed in some bye-street of Paris can per- ")\ suade the authorities that his tale is a true one, being able to show no evidence of having been struck. The American rifle of 1894, which will soon be distributed to the United States troops and militia, carries a small ball, covered with a nickel-plated steel jacket, and projects it at a tremendous speed. Its design is to kill instantly, or to wound without causing great suffering from blood poisoning and other complications. The •" theory Is a good one, a? well as humane. One wounded man, it is said, means the loss of three soldiers, the other two being compelled to carry him from the field. ;%: The wood mines of Tonquin appear to constitute a curious source of wealth. The wood in these mines was originally a pine forest, which the earth -swallowed in some cataclysm. Some of the trees are said to - be a yard in diameter. They lie in a slanting direction, and in sandy sods which cover them to a depth of about eight yaids. As the top branches are well ?rved, it a thought the geological convulsion which buried them cannot be of great annuity. The wood furnished by these t.mber mines is imperishable, and the Chinese gladly buy ib for the manufacture of coffins.