NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9943, 5 October 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Ten patents for pneumatic shoos haw been taken out. Remarkable activity is now being displayed in the search for new diamond mines in South Africa. A flagstone, 2ft square, was raised from its bed in Liverpool-street, London, by mushrooms recently. In France there are now living, according to a recent census, 213 centenarians 147 women and 66 men. A couple in Ireland, aged 96 and 98, have lately been celebrating the 75th anniversary of their marriage. : A cook left rather than clean out a bedroom, and a London magistrate said aba was entitled to a month's wages. A carrier pigeon let loose in London the other day returned t£ its cot, covering a distance of 600 miles in a little over 10£ hours. The pulling down of some old houses in Drury Lane has exposed to view the graveyard described by Dickens in "Bleak House." Twenty Deal boatmen, all over 60 years old, rowed a race the other day, their united ages amounting to 1446 years. The coxswain of the winning crow was 85. Persons fined for kleptomania or shoplifting in Paris during a recent six months included the daughter of a reigning prince, a princess, a countess, and a duchess. A shower of whitebait is reported from Bosnia. After a torrential ran. *"he fields and roads were covered with little wriggling fish, and some were swimming in the pools. The French Geographical Congress, at its recent meeting, passed a resolution in favour of adopting measures for stimulating the birth-rate, the population of France being on the decline. The finest private museum in the world is the property of the Hon. Walter Rothschild, the eldest son of Lord Rothschild. It is at Tring, in Hertfordshire. The owner has given up half his life to it. A murderer was hanged in America, recently, and on being taken down showed signs of life. He eventually fully recovered, but is quite dumb. He is now a free man as far as the law is concerned. Seven hundred and eleven female missionarias are at work in India. During the lash two years these visited 40,513 heathen families and instructed 62,414 heathen girls in the different mission schools. To assist Cleopatra's Needle in resisting the effects of the London atmosphere, it received a washing down at the hands of firemen recently, who afterwards covered it with a coating of material calculated to preserve it. The flying mouse is a recent discovey in the Cameroon country of Africa. It is a link between the bat and the true mouse, has a tail like a mouse and heavy, grey fur, while its wings are not so well developed as those of the bat. The longest unbroken stretch of telegraphic cable in the world is one which connects the Red Sea with India. The weight of iron employed in its construction was nob less than 61,126,7141b, while the copper weighed 547,4041b ; 3590 knobs was the total length of cable used. A Bombay lady made a pilgrimage to Mecca recently, like the devout Mohammedan that she was. After landing ab Jedda she was forcibly compelled to marry a Turkish soldier she had never seen before, and within a day or two of the marriage ho decamped with her valuables. Russia is so anxious to colonise quickly the Amur district with Cossacks, in order to watch the Chinese frontier, that she offers each male settler 80 acres of land, free, a substantial loan without interest for 33 years, and exemption from taxes for three years, and from military service for five. An eccentric gentleman of large means, residing at Bath, in one year proposed to no fewer .than eight ladies, and mada as many wills, leaving all his possessions to each lady. He died recently after being placed under restraint, and a I court has just set aside the wills, declaring Stmt he died intestate. The majority of the most dangerous parts of the coast of the United Kingdom are now supplied with telegraph wires and telephone*, connecting the coastguard stations and postal telegraph offices, which are always available day and night for calling out the lifeboat. During 1894 no less than 790 lives were rescued by lifeboats called out by telephone and telegraph. A London cook who left her situation the other day without notice, rather than prepare the meals for the other servants, who were on board wages, failed to recover a month's wages. The cook, a woman of colour, was paid £1 a week, and received an additional 10s in lieu of food. The judge said it was the duty of the cook to look after the meals of the whole household. There has just been placed on exhibition in the third Egyptian Room, British Museum, an unrolled specimen of the embalmed sacred crocodile. The mummy measures over 18fb in length, and is beautifully preserved. The eyes, as with human mummies, appear to have teen removed previous to embalming, bub the teeth, of which four are plainly visible, are still intact. For months men have been working deep down beneath the bed of the Thames, in the very heart of London, in the construction of the electric railway from the city to Waterloo. The only opening is in the middle of the river, and through this the excavated earth is removed. The workmen have now passed beyond the river bed on either side, and are making their way under the city. A balloon, containing two Russian officers and a meteorologist, landed near Jaroslaw, in Galicia, on August 20. The occupants, who were at once arrested, said their involuntary presence in Austrian territory was caused by unfavourable winds, but as a number of maps of the district and a photographic camera were found in theu possession they are detained in custodj pending inquiry. Spectro-photographic investigation bj Professor Keeler makes it certain that th< rings of Saturn are not solid, bub are composed Of innumerable small bodies ol meteorites. His observation proves that the motion of the internal parts of the rings is more rapid than that of the external, which can only be the case when the rings ar« composed of free moving bodies independent of one another. Some interesting figures are given in one of the Paris papers with reference to the bicycling tax and what it brings into the State Exchequer. It realises close on £80,000 per annum, while the number of bicycles " declared" is just under 200,000, of which 38,000 are to be found in the Department of the Seine alone. Ab the other end of the list comes Corsica, which ab present only possesses 41. Rapidly the work of extermination ia going on among the wild beasts of France. The official returns just issued show that wolves are no longer to be found in 55 out of 87 departments. In the course of the last twelve months 384 wolves were killed in France, for which the State and local authorities paid an aggregate of £1000 in premiums. They nearly all came from tha central or the eastern departments. A novel cycle trip has been undertaken by four riders, three men and a woman, at Virginia City, Nevada. They started aft the mouth of the Sutro tunnel and rode through the tunriel to the shaft station on the 1750-foot level of the Consolidated California and Virginia mine, a distance underground of four and a-half miles. The party rode on two tandems. They claim the record for the distance ridden underground. The Times-Herald, of Chicago, has been the first newspapor to use telautograph in furnishing Press despatches. Thai paper recently published photographic Sac-smiles of a number of messages in the identical handwriting of the author, sent to it the previous night from prominent men who were in attendance ab the League Convention in Cleveland. The instrument worked successfully over a circuit 430 miles long. During the first five months of this year no fewer than 110 travellers have lost then lives in the desolate tracks along the banks of the Colorado River, in Arizona, by missiug the track, and consequently not being able to find water. To prevent these fatalities in the future, the Government of the State has decided to erect high poles of gas-piping, having at the top largo squares of sheeb iron painted red, in order to point out* the brail and guide the wanderer bo the spviogs And wells.