NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9907, 24 August 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

An Atlantic steamer's screw coats about* £4000. ' ■

Harvard graduated 678 students this ear and Yale 575. "" *'.

Great Britain pays £100,000,000 a year for imported foods. The earliest form of the glove was a mere bag for the hand. * . No fewer „ than 600,000 children are insured in Great Britain every year, f ? lb is estimated that nearly £21,000,000 was spent in England alone in charity in 1894. Eton now has 1019 students. Among them are four earls and seven eldest sons of peers. A French-Canadian editor has had to pay a fine of £40 for calling a brother editor a Methodist.

It was a saying of the late Professor Huxley that the best equipment in life is a sound stomach.

A great auk's egg, slightly cracked, realised 165 guineas all an auction sale in London recently. A French physician warns ladies againsb kissing their lap dogs, the pets being one of the great agencies for spreading disease. The Esquimaux giro the doctor his fee as soon as he comes. If the patient recovers he keeps it; otherwise he returns it to the family. The cheeks become pale from fear because the mental emotion diminishes the action of the heart and lungs, and so impedes th* circulation.

A medical authority warns women against wearing their hair short. The cause of baldness in man, ho says, is the fact that ha cuts his hair.

A Chinese custom is the throwing into the ocean of thousands of pieces of paper when friends are about to sail. Each piece bears written on it a prayer. .< The value of the fish taken during the past year at the whole of the fishing ports of the Uuited Kingdom reached the unprecedented total of £7,200,000. During the twelve years the Brooklyn bridge has been opened to the public it has been crossed by about 360,000,000 people, or an avorage of 30,000,000 a year. An American has produced a machine with the inscription : " Put a penny in the slot and you will get a blessing from tha Pope, in the Pope's own voice, per phono* graph." . The University of Pennsylvania has just received two gifts of £100.. 000 each for the establishment of a new department of clinical surgery and the encouragement of liberal studies.

While removing a hedge at Witheridge, Devon, a labourer discovered three huge earthernware pitchers, containing a number of silver coins, the size of half-crowns, dating from 1600 to 1680. A Copenhagen gentleman has just celebrated his second silver wedding. His first wife dying soon after the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage, he married again and lived to repeat the festival of 27 years ago. Habitual arsenic eaters can often Cake a dose of two grains in weight with impunity, and ib is curious that arsenic does nob affect the mind in any way, like opium or other drugs, and never becomes a passion with its votaries.

A new list of herbaceous plants cultivated in the Royal Gardens, Kew, has jusb been issued. This list shows that the total number of flowering plants now in cultiva. tion at Kew is approximately 6000, including 1000 well-marked varieties. The Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean Railway Company has recently pub clocks on tht outside of its locomotives on the side towards the station platforms, for the benefit! of both passengers and station agents who wish to note the instant of arrival and departure, The underground electric railway from Shepherd's Bush to Liverpool-street, London, will be 6£ miles in length, and there will b» fourteen stations. The city station will be under the open, space in front of the Mansion House, and will eervo as a subway for pedestrians. The plans for the great bridge which is to connect New York city with thfl New Jersey shore _ have been finally approved. The river is a mile wide, and is to be crossed by a single span carrying six lines of railway. The work is estimated to cost £5,000,000, and to extend through nearly ten years. It is reported thab the Roman Catholic Church has received a sensation by the withdrawal of a lady, one of its warmest supporters, a widow and a member of an old English family. Her. Roman Catholic chaplain has also seceded, and rumour says chaplain and lady are about to be married. A magnetic pavilion for absolute determination of the magnetic elements is to be erected in Greenwich Park. Ib is proposed to place the pavilion in the immediate neighbourhood of the Observatory, and ab such a distance that there would be no suspicion of disturbance from the iron in the buildings. The croupiers of Monte Carlo have a school of gambling in which they learn the ins and outs of the games, the methods of defeating trickery, manual dexterity in clearing the boards and paying the stakes, readiness in reckoning, and in dealing and shuffling the cards, and so on. Most of them come from Alsace.

The midsummer morning meeting of the Early Rising Association was held on one of the heights in the north of London at 4a.m. the other morning, when the following resolution was carried :—" Early rising, being conducive to health, wealth, and long life, should bo practised by all desirous of obtaining long life, wealth, and health." , The sale of a church by public aucbioti deserves to be recorded. . In consequence of the union of the Wesb and South United Presbyterian congregations in Duns, the church of the former was no longer required by the congregation. Ib has jusb been pub up bo public competition, and knocked down at £170. It cost £2000 to erect seventyfour years ago.

A shower of black ants fell in the city ol Winnipeg the other day. The sidewalks, the roads, the roofs, and the insides of the houses were thickly covered with colonies of black ants crawling about, and they were found as plentiful in the outskirts of th« city as in the main streets. They were large, black-bodied specimens, about the size of a wasp, and had the strong nippora of their race.

Almost all of the modern machinery us<sd in the boob and shoe factories is machinery

of American invention. English, French, and German machinery is used by other nations for the manufacture of woollen, cotton, and silk goods, bub in the manufacture of boots and shoes the case has been entirely different, and the originating faculty has existed almost entirely on the other side of the Atlantic.

Among the latest inventions which Yankee genius has giv6n the world is a doorknob which renders a latch-key superfluous. By rotating the knob in the same manner as a safe lock until the proper combination is secured.the door can be opened. The lock is susceptible of 100,000 combinations, and he who knows nob or hai forgotten the proper one cannot obtain admittance through that door.

It is proclaimed that " miracles" are constantly being wrought by the Virgin at St* Winifride's Well, Holywell. The latest is that of a young girl who, after being dumb . for three years, occasioned by a fright, recovered her speech on entering the water. It is, however, pointed out, but nob by the priests, that the doctors had all along stated that the ailment which has been produced by a shock would be removed by a shook. Infant marriages among the Parsees ava still popular in.lndia. Of late many parents have gob their daughters married at an early age. Last year a girl, who was only Ave years of age, was married. Another entered into wedlock while she was only ten years old. Three others married ab the age "of eleven; four at twelve; six at thirteen ; five at fourteen.; twelve at fifteen; and eighteen girls at sixteen years of age' were married last year. ' ' > : Electricity is now employed largely by dentists engaged in extracting teeth. To the battery are attached three wires. Two of them have handles at the end, while the third is attached to the. forceps. The & patient grasps the handles, the electricity is turned -on suddenly, and' the dentist; simultaneously applies his forceps to the '? tooth. The instant the tooth is touched it, as well as the surrounding parts, become* insensible to pain. A jerk, and it is out.