NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10319, 19 December 1896, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Half a-milliox clerks are employed in London. V A freehold share in the New Rker Company sold for £125,250. The jawbone of the average whale is twenty-five feet in length. . Three times as many herrings are consumed as any other kind of fish. Penny-in-the-slot machines are to be adapted for electric light as well as gas. The telephone has penetrated the desert, one having been carried 150 miles into the Sahara. - It is estimated that the temperature of the earth at a depth of 200 miles is not less than 18,000 dog. Fahrenheit. A pinch of salt on the tongue, followed ten minutes afterwards by a drink of cold water, will cure sick headache. At an auction sale in London £1 fully-paid shares in a gold mining company were knocked down at threepence per share. An island on Lake Michigan has been secured by a syndicate, who have peopled it with black cats, which are killed for their fur. ' / Great progress is reported to have been made lately by the Salvation Army in Germany. Several new corps have been opened. The Lancaster Free Library report for last quarter shows the issue of books in two departments to have been Fiction 10,024, religion 33. '■ An infant died from injudicious feeding at Battersea, and the coroner expressed his regret that girls at school were not taught how to feed babies. - Spain headed tho list with 3000 hours of sunshine in twelve months, Italy coming next with 2300 hours, Germany 1700, and England with 1400. Ab a type-setting contest in London a machine set up 262 lines of newspaper type in an hour, six times as much as could be accomplished by hand. A' magistrate has decided that a bicycle is not luggage, and a cabman can either decline to take it at all or refuse to take it without special payment. The wife of a constable complained to a magistrate two months after marriage that her husband came home late and pulled the bedclothes off her to wrap round himself. A physician contends that too much sleep is injurious. Tall and bulky people, he says, require more sleep than others, and women can do with much less sleep than men. A whale recently captured in Arctic waters was found to havo imbedded in its side a harpoon that belonged to a whaling. vessol that had been out of service nearly half a century. A British Parliamentary return shows that in April there were 112,223 companies', with a capital of £1,145,402,993. Of 3527 companies started last year 200 are now wound up. , It is said that if our entire atmosphere could be condensed until it would occupy no more space than an equal weight of water, the entire air stratum would only be thirty feet in thickness. Never eat what in known to disagree with the stomach. Many doctors believe the belief that it will disagree with the digeo-

tion in some mysterious way often contributes to that result. The consumption of wheat in Britain is reckoned at six bushels per head per annum, which, on the basis of an estimated population of 38,900,000, makes a total consumption of '233,400,000 bushels. A syndicate has' been formed with a capital of half a million to develop the fishing industry. Twenty-four new steam trailers will convoy the fish direct from the fishing grounds to London, A woman of Florence, Montana, recently threatened her drunken husband that slit would go with him and get drunk every time he did. She stuck to her word once, and her husband has not touched a drop since. Ladies' hats are to be larger than ever in England this winter, if the French designers can have their way. We an threatened with a return to the hat in vogue . jyhi)i) ; the Queea, was young, to be known as Victorlft.' : ,t -'' r; ' A man sued his two brothers for four guineas, a loan and interest at the rate of 150 per cent. , Judge Waddy said it was scandalous, and made an order for the repayment) of the money at the rate of sixpence per. month. The Midland Railway Company, following the policy which they adopted somf ,time ago of providing pillows for the comfort'of pa,asengora in night trains, now supply passengers with warm nigs at a charge of sixpence each. . Lighted cigarettes were distributed th« other day among a lot of monkeys at tlx Zoo, in Paris, by some mischievous urchins. The animals puffed away ab the weed in evident enjoyment until the advent of tht keeper, who put a stop to it. " Personally I would rather b»" —said i speaker at a Protestant Alliance Conference at Shrewsbury—" an honest Roman Catholic than a Ritualist playing the doceptivo and unprincipled part of teaching Romanism, and at the same time receiving pay from the State." 1 The motor-car regulations issued by the English Local Government Board limit the speed to fourteen miles an hour. Local authorities may proscribe a less speed. Tlx drjver, upon a signal from a person in charge

of a restive horse, or constable, must causi the car to .stop,' A Chesterfield bride applied for a summons against her husband fov desertion. After being married a month lie wont) away, saying he had had enough of married life and wanted to go tq bis mother again. The magistrate adjourned tlio case, with a recommendation for reconciliation. A seagull was recently seen to seize a sparrow in St. James' Park, London, which it quickly took to the water. The bird then deliberately drowned the sparrow, dipping it in over and over again, till the poor littlf body hung limply down, with every vestigi of life fled, and thou, with one gulp, it WW swallowod. A young mail named Moore, who was injured while playing in a foot-bull match at Clonmelloti, County Westineath, died lioxt day in Mullingar Hospital. Moore bad been accidentally kicked in the abdomen by another player named Sheridan during a scrimmage, and never regained consciousness after the occurrence. A singular coincidence is reported by a Weymouth.' correspondent. A football match was contested thore recently for tho benefit of a colloaguc .who broke his lea' in a game a fpw weeks previous, and during' its progress another player suffered a similar accident, necessitating his removal to the hospital,* where both occupied the samo ward. An English llowor garden that has won more than local fame is that of tho Countess of Warwick. It has a " Siiakuspere border," where she . has collected all the shrubs, flowers, vegetables, and trees mentioned by Shakespero, to the number of '200. Then she has a " sentiment" patch', each plant in it having been set out by a friend. On every, bush in this plot there is a tug bearing an appropriate verse from some poo:. ~ Some curious facts in natural hiswiy are • that fishes have no eyelids, and necoisarily. sleep .with their eyes open; they swallow their food wholo, having no limital machinery furnished,them;. Frogs, toads, and wpentu never take food except that which . they are satisfied is alive. Serpents aro so tenacipuq of life that they will live for six months or longer without food. The head!, of the rattlesnake has been known to inflict n fatal wound after being severed from the body, A. man who had arrived from Johannes, , burg .went to a theatre in Southampton. He placed. his, overcoat, in tho pocket of which were notes and drafts to the value of ,£2?E<s.' over tho balcony. The money he afterwards found to be missing. The next day the pocket-book containing the same was handed in at tho police station by a • working (nan, who had picked it up in the , . j pit of the theatre, it having fallen from. th« fe-J. pocket. The finder was rewarded with £5, . V The 'aunniesb place in 'the British Isles,' ? being the first to complete the registration k ! ■pi' one , thousand hours ■of sunshine ' since, Januaryl,. is ' Pembroke, which ; Has been" followed closely by Falmouth,- Isle ; of ' Mail, > ; Hastings, Eastbourne, Plymouth,! Black; pool, and Dublin, in the order given.'- The other stations of the Meteorological I Office, . numbering / altogether nearly • forty, fell ' farther arid'?farther,; behind, the rear being bought un by Glr.sgow, London, and Glen- . .carron. \ ■- ■