NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10085, 21 March 1896, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Germany haa a war footing of 2,700,000 men. Hollow steel epheres are in usa in Sweden for billiard-balls. Liverpool has tho largest total debt of any town in England. One million eggs are brought into London daily from Italy alone. Ninety-seven of every hundred Arctifl explorors have returnod alive. London has 75,000 streot lamps, Pai£ 50,000, and Now York 28,000. Twenty-five per cent, of the population England have their lives insured. A boy of fourteen, who appeared in a London police court, stood 6fb 3in iq height. In London 861 streets are named after th( Queen, besides which there are 167 Qneea» streets.

Little alligators are admired as drawing* room pets in some of the fashionable house! of Paris.

American ebony is one of the heaviest woods known, weighing S3'lßlb to the cubic foot.

Water pipes made of paper will keep the water from freezing much longer than a metal or earthen pipe. Great Britain pays the Continent upwards of £14,000,000 a year for sugar, and grows nob an ounce. The oldest porfumea were those recovered from Egyptian tombs, dating 1500 to 2000 years bofore the Christian era. A master in Ireland is accused of giving his domestic a fatal blow because she did not make the porridge to his liking. The British Isles comprise no fewer than 1000 separate islands and islets, without counting mere jutting rocks or isolated pinnacles. The smallest salary paid to a head of a civilised Government is £3 a year, to the President of the Republic of Andorra, in the Pyrenees. A London coroner, referring to the many dead bodies of infanta found in East London, said they revealed a diabolical system of wholesale crime.

A French scientist of note maintains that] a large number of the nervous maladies from which girls suffer aro to be attributed to playing the piano. A London confectioner says he often receives orders for v. ilding-cakes weighing 1001b each, ami puddings of a size sufficient for fifty hearty appetites. A curious old law still prevails with regard to the pictures in the Louvre, Paris. No painting is permitted to adorn its walla until the artist sHII have been dead ten years. An omnibus for smokers and non-smokers has been plying for some days in Berlin. There are no outside seats, but the inside is divided into two compartments by a glasi partition. We wear away two inches of ehoo-leathei in a year. A pair of boots that" would last a lifetime" would, consequently, have to be fitted with soles from ten to eleven feet thick.

Football, tennis, golf, quoits, bowls, horse-racing, and, in fact, nearly every pastime with any claim to antiquity ab all, Ins been prohibited by law in England aft some time or other.

Canterbury Cathedral is the largest) one in England; its extreme length is 545 ft, and that of St. Paul's, London, 512 ft. Salisbury is the highest spire in England, its altitude being 404 ft. Out of a family of nine at Newcastle eight are still living. Tho oldest is 91, and the youngest 76, the average age of the family being 82. A couple, each aged 96, have just celebrated their diamond wedding at) Carlisle.

An experiment is to be tried this winter in the streets of Paris in providing warmth and shelter for the poor. In all bub the richer quarters there are to be awnings, under which enormous braziers will be kept constantly burning. Copying-ink is prepared by adding a little sugar to ordinary black ink. Writing executed with this ink ' may be copied within the space of five or six hours by passing it through a press in contact with thin, unsized paper. A London kitchenmaid, aged 16, who placed poison in the milk with the intention of killing her master's infant, has been sentenced to four months' bard labour. She was very fond of tho child, bub did nob like having to carry its food to the nursery. A couple celebrated their golden wedding in Goorgia, surrounded by their 10 children and 21 grandchildren. There had not been a death in the family for 50 years. The combined ages of 16 persons at a birthday party in Indiana amounted to 1424 years. A mother was fined for allowing her boy, under eleven, to be in public-houses in East London offering goods for sale. She was told that when over eleven years old the boy might be about the street? till nine at nighb, but must not be allowed in public-houses. A Birmingham man five years ago swallowed a sixpence. He had been in pain ever since, and had undergone half-a-dozen unsuccessful operations. Recently while tossing his child in the air, the sixpence came up his throat, the pain ab once disappearing. The largest permanent store of coined money in the world is in the Imperial War Treasury of Germany, a portion saved for emergencies from the £200,000,000 paid by France after the Franco-Prussian War, and locked up in the Julius Towor of tho fortress of Spandau, Ib amount! to tho value of £6,000,000.

There is a volcano not far from Salvador that some years ago discharged lava over a forest. The wood all caught fire, of course, but the lava, being light and easily cooled, hardened into long arcades, through which ib is possible to walk. Even now the imprint of the trunks and branches of the trees can be seen.

A steam yacht was once constructed with propellers on the principle of the swan's foot. The progress of the boat was quite satisfactory, and the propellers would have been a success were it not for the fact that, the experiment being made in the Thames, they were continually interfered with by weeds and floating wood.

Two London lovers quarrelled. Tho young man summoned his late sweetheart for the recovery of a gold ring which he had given her. She had a counter claim for 10s which she had lent him. The magistrate said he could not got back the ring, because it was a wedding gift: bub he would have

to return the 10s, which was a debt. The Court of Appeal refused tho appli. cation of a father to have his two daughters, aged 15 and 11, who were wards of Court, transferred from a Protestant to a Roman Catholic school. It was shown that the mother, who died eight years ago, was a momber of the Church of England, and that) the father had acquiesced in the children being brought up in their mother's faith.

The Bradford magistrates have decided that chemists who sell seidlitz-powders which do not conform to the proscription given in the British Pharmacopoeia render themselves liable to a fine. In a case which was brought before the court recently much evidence was given to the effocfc that powders of greater strength than that of the official formula were constantly sold, and were harmful to the purchaser. The defendant in the case was let off with 8 nominal fine of five shillings, with per

mission to appeal. A living skull has bean photographed by means of the new rays discovered by the German professor. An editor, eager to observe the process, offered to have his skull taken, but is said to have been bo shocked ac the resulb that ho has not slept since lie saw his own " death's head." Somo of tho Rontgon experiments are of a practical character. Photographs showed the internal injuries caused by a revolver shot in a man's hand and the position of tho projectile. In the case of a girl, tho nature of the malformation of her foob was aacer-

tained. According to a now Parliamentary return, England has 52 battleships, either ready or approaching completion; France has 34} Germany, 26; Russia, 17; Italy, 15; the United States, 8 (building); Austria, 8; Spain, 2. As regards defence ships other than battleships, England has 328, France has 127, and all the other countries mentioned have leas than 100 each. The aggregate tonnage of our mercantile marine is shown to be over 13,000,000, while Germany has only 1,880,000, Franca 1,094,000, and all the others bare less than 11,000,000 each.