NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10127, 9 May 1896, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

A complete set of British birth' eggs is worth about £200.

It hasbeenfinally decided to hold the Paris Exhibition in 1900.

When terrified the ostrich travels at the rate of 25 miles an hour.

Swallows have been met with ab sea mora than 1000 miles from any land. The 350 th anniversary of Luther's death has been commemorated in Germany. The coal production in the United King, dom in twelve months exceeded 188 million tons. The cost of the recent visit of Princo Nasrullah Khan to England wa9 approximately £20,000. The best corks come from Algeria. There are 2,500,000 aores of cork forests in that country. Opals, when first taken from the mines, are so soft that they can be picked to pieces by the finger-nail. A curious epidemic is affecting Paris. Hundreds of people awake in the morning with inflamed eye?. Of preserved meat, 13,556 boxes, weigh, ing in all 1,264,5391b, were exported from ( Argentina last year. Omaha ranks as the third stockyard in the United States. It receives about 2,000,000 swine annually. Three pounds is the average weight of an ostrich egg, and its contents are equal to those of about 24 bens' eggs. Jewellers declare that the regularity of the running of a watch depends upon the magnetism of the man who carries it. Circles around the moon are sometimes large and sometimes small, because they are formed at different heights in Jhe air. Dublin is to be illuminated by incandescent lamps. One street has already been lighted with them by way of experiment. The defences of Georgetown, British Guiana, especially at the month of the Demarara River, are now reported complete. The pure white population in Venezuela is less than 3 per cent. The vast majority oi the people are negroes, Indians, mulattoes, and zambos.

A Parliamentary return of death duties shows that the property assessed in the United Kingdom last year amounted to £208,946,000.

Three more women lawyers have been added to the number of those already admitted to the New York bar. Two of them are married.

In Russian Poland all trains must atop at every station until the chief of police ci gendarmerie of the place gives permission for their departure. The Government have decided to pur. chase the historic property of Croft-an-Rigb, which adjoins the royal palace of Holyrood, Edinburgh. The first company for fire insurance was started in 1696 as the Amicable Contribution, but soon afterward became the Hand-in-Hand, a name which still survives. Two brothers named Parry married twn sisters named Hall on February 21,1846, in a New Jersey village. The two couples celebrated their golden wedding recently. In future the War Office will in most cases correspond direct with the lieutenantgenerals of the four commands on matters connected with the British farces serving in India.

The quantity of hay imported into the United Kingdom in the first eight weeks ol the present year was 19,578 tons, or mors than double the total of 9591 tons in the equivalent period of 1895. Travelling churches are to be established on the Trans-Siberian railway which passes through desert tracks. Cars fitted up for religious services will be attached to the trains for the benefit of the officials.

The English Post Office authorities, by means of the rays, detected coins concealed in newspapers, contrary to regulations when sent through the post. The rays have also bean applied to tell true from false diamonds.

A canvasser having sued some working people for not keeping up their payments for a two-guinea family Bible, the County Court judge condemnedthe" practice of paying so much for a Bible when one could be obtained for a shilling. Three samples of ice cream, as sold in the streets of London, were found to contain respectively 4,200,000, 2,150,000, and 5,340,000 bacteria. The dirty conditions under which ice creams are vended are said to constitute a public danger. The craze for smoking cigarettes made of tea appears to be rapidly spreading among the women of America. A tea cigarette is said to be equal to the tea for two strong cups, and being inhaled instead of taken, its action is said to be ten times as great. A coin-sorting machine has been invented. It automatically sorts miscellaneous coins by a simple arrangement of wires. The gate money of the Preston Agricultural Show amounting to £1500, on being pub into one of these machines, v.'as properly sorted.

In Scotland, desertion for four years is snifieient ground for divorce by Seoteh law, although in England desertion alone would not enable either party to obtain a decree of divorce, bub only one of judicial separation, which, of course, would not carry with it the privilege of remarriage. Japan has ordered six more ships for her navy. One of these is being built in Japan, and orders for the other five have just been placed with shipbuilding firms in England. Each of the new vessels will be 450 feet in length, and of 5550 tons, the carrying capacity being 7500 tons dead weight. A wife asked a London magistrate if she was bound to keep her husband. ■ The magistrate: " Certainly not." Applicanb: " If I don't give him money he strikes me." She lived in a/flab and paid the rent. The magistrate advised ber to shut her husband out and coma, to him if ho annoyed her. The German Emperor has given a gold watch to Mr. Charles J. Hargreaves, lata master, and a sura of £2 103 to Louis J. Orphana, late steward, of the steamship Nessmore, of Barrow, in recognition of their services to the crow of the German ship Cleopatra, of Bremen, when in distress at sea. The only woman employed in the responsible position of a train despatcher on a single track in the United States, is Miss Byrd Watkins, of Junction City, Kansas. She is only 23 years of age, but has been one of the bosb train despatches on the Union Pacific Railway for the past six

years. About 250,000 canaries are raised every year in Germany, and besides the 100,000 birds that are sent to America, the English market takes about 50,000; the next best customers being Brazil, China, the Argentine Republic, and Austria, to which countries salesmen are sent with large numbers of birds every year. The directors of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company are seeking Parliamentary power to raise the sum of £500j000 by the issue of Debenture Stocks. The money is wanted in connection with their rolling stock, for the demand of their steamers, the enlargement of some stations, and perhaps the building of new ones. A rich vein of chrysoprase, a translucent quartz of great value, has been discovered in Tulare county, California. Specimens sent to Tiffany, the great New York jeweller, were estimated to be worth £10 to £20 each. Ciwysoprase, in its perfect state, has hitherto been found only in Siberia, and no great quantities of the precious stone have ever been put on the market. A Bill introduced into the House of ' Commons to make a short way with the i organ-grinder proposes that every itinerant ' musician, finger, or mountebank most be registered and wear a badge, and produce his certificate whenever required. Furthermore, he is not to " play, sing, or perform within 300 yards of any church, school, or hospital, or of any dwelling-house whose occupant objects." / ■ -\ The new photography-or "radiography," as it is now being called— making rapid strides, and several " experimenters in England have succeeded in making theX rays penetrate right through the human body, with the result that the vetebrai and spinal cord are shown in full detail on the photographic plate. The internal organs are also shown on the negative to a certain extent. Mr. Edison is said to have discovered, after experimenting with some 1800 chemicals, one that absorbs the/ays and'' translates them into shadows . .visible to the naked eye, so that a photo. ;. graph is unnecessary, unless required tor a■l