NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11544, 1 December 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Cream gruel is the ideal food for invalids. Germany has one doctor for every 1951 inhabitants.

During. 1899 Spain bought sixty-seven vessels in England.

Four thousand tourists arrived in Egypt during the last season.

Picric acid, a component of lyddite, is used to adulterate beer.

There are 256 railway stations within a six-mile radius of St. Paul's Cathedral, London.

The strength of a lion has been shown to average only 69 per cent, of the strength of a tiger.

A penny will buy 20 times as much nonrishment in the shape of oatmeal as in the form of beef. i

The longest plant in the world is a species 01 subtropical seaweed, which grows to 600 ft in length.

Sherry owes its peculiar taste to sulphate of lime, 2£lb of which are added to each 18001b of grapes.

The thirty-three largest towns of England andl Wales have a total population of nearly 12,000,000.

Among the Chilians a belief prevails that the juice of onions is a sure cure for typhoid fever if given in its early stages.

A big London restaurant estimates its loss in food spoiled, while on the counters and in the windows, at £600 a year.

Emigration in Hungary has assumed unusual dimensions lately. During one month 15,591 passes were issued to emigrants.

Coloured globes in the windows of ists' shops were first displayed by th Moorish druggists of Arabia and Spam.

The Hebrew population of London has more than doubled during the hist twenty years. It is now estimated at between 100,000 and 120,000.

There are 2300 church-bellringers in the diocese of Oxford. This is the largest number in any English diocese. Exeter comes second, and Devon third.

The costliest paintings of modern times are Meissonie# " 1814" and Millet 9 'The Angolus;" £32,000 was given for "1814 and £30,000 for " The Angelus.'

In Western Virginia twin brothers, whose wives are twin sisters, wedded the same day, are rejoicing in the birth at the same hour of a set of triplets apiece.

A company has been formed to supply the English market with reindeer venison. Telemarken, in Norway, is their headquarters. They have a herd of 2400 deer.

Earl Rosslyn is a man of many sides. Ha has just returned from Africa, and is now busily engaged on a book. When that is finished, as Mr. James Erskine he will return to the stage.

The Queen, when travelling by rail or sea, generally passes part of the time by playing patience. She has always been fond of games of all sorts, and is a skilled chess and whist player.

Three thousand boys, representing London battalions of the Church Lads' Brigade, attended a special service held in their behalf at St. Paul's Cathedral, when the Bishop of Stepney gave the address.

Vermouth is made of white wine, flavoured with red Peruvian bark, rhubarb, orange peel, iris root, veronica, centuary, cinnamon, elderflowers, germander, and sugar. Truly a wonderful compound!

The vicar of Littlehampton has established a novel form of Saturday night entertainment, called_a " penny smoker." The working men sit at tables, smoke, play draughts, and listen to songs, etc., the vicar presiding.

In Mauritius they make tea of the leaves of an orchid. In Peru they drink mate, a tea made from a native species of holly. The Abyssinians make a tea from the leaves of Catha edulis, which has strong stimulating qualities.

The Rhine has enjoyed a novel sensation from the visit of a flotilla of German tor-pedo-boats, which the Kaiser sent up the river in order to show the islanders a sample of the new navy that is costing them such a pretty penny.

Douglas Buchanan (three years old), fell out of a L. and N.W. train between Pennington arid West Leigh, and was killed. His mother, who was travelling with him, was only prevented with difficulty from jumping after him.

Formosa now controls the camphor product of the world. The Japanese annual production has dwindled to 300,000 pounds ; the Chinese has nover exceeded, 220,000 pounds, while the Formosan supply averages 6,000,000 pounds a year.

The body of a Viking, in. a wonderful state of preservation, has been dug up in a peat bog at Doracndorf, in Schleswig, and placed in the Kiel" Museum. The hair is red ; it is clothed in coarse woollen material, with sandals on the feet. Kiel experts think it was buried 1500 years ago.

Some 5500 Germans, Poles, audi Swiss left their own countries last month to settle in England. Against this incursion of aliens, which shows a considerable increase on last year's record, must be set the emigration of 17,000 British to the United States. More than half of these came from Ireland.

A telegram from New York says that Mrs. Howard Gould, who has been sued by her dressmaker, demanded a jury of women, but the judge decided that although man is as ignorant of the technicalities of women's i dress as the babe unborn it would imperil the foundations of justice to admit women to the jury box. The late Admiral Sir Henry Fairfax's wellknown estate of Ravenswood, Roxburghshire, including the lands of Old Melrose, Broomhill, and Redrigs, with excellent salmon fishings, was sold at the mart, Tokenhouse Yard, after a spirited competition, for £41.000, to Mr. William Younger, of' Moray Place, Edinburgh. An extraordinary freak was played by lightning during a heavy thunderstorm in Coventry. The lightning struck the chim-ney-stack of a house occupied by a watchmaker, and split it to the basement, magnetising all the tools and! watches in the workshop. It is thought it may be possible to demagnetise the smaller articles and parts of watches, but the larger tools are com•pletely spoiled. More than 200 Catholics, among them Bishop Healy, left Holborn Viaduct Station, one day lately, for Dover, en route to Rome. The pilgrims were divided .into eight guilds representative of Irish saints, each section being led by a guildmaster, carrying a wand of office. The pilgrimage will be received in Rome by Cardinal Logue, who will present the Pope with an address of loyalty from the Catholics of Ireland, together with a large sum of Peter's Pence. In his home, it is said by one who knows him, General Botha is a model husband and father, his wife is a cultured lady of charming appearance and demeanour, his children are well brought up and receive the best of education, both in the language of their country and English. Nothing more charming could be imagined than the home life of the Botha family, and Lord Roberts, since going to Pretoria, has taken many opportunities to express the pleasure of himself and his esteemed consort of meeting the family of the plucky Commandant-General of the burgher army—a feeling which was freely reciprocated. Of the old customs still observed more- or less reverently in the city that of the annual presentation of fruit to the Lord Mayor is one of the oldest, but ever one of the freshest. Time was when the fruiterers paid toll. But this became an irksome, not to say quarrelsome, custom. So it was agreed that the fruiterers should present every year a peace offering of fruit to the Chief Magistrate, and that he in return should invite them to dinner. This interesting function took place lately, apd the collection of British home-grown fruit displayed with floral decoration in the Lady Mayoress' drawingroom at the Mansion H&usef was JTOrtby. &9 occftßian, \7 ».'