NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11686, 22 June 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

London import 4,000.'.'C0 parasols and umbrellas a year. English railways cost on an. average £45.700 a mile. Of 5756 ships i tiling at Malta last year 5325 were British. 5219 people in .he British Isles own estates of over 6CO a.-re-. 960.000 emigrant leave Europe yearly; 20U.CC0 return fvo.H abroad. Franee has the most expensive Parliameat. It costs £300.000 a, year.

Poverty is no ciinie, but nevertheless it is punishable With hard labour for life.

France has 4A million acres of vineyards; Italy, 7j millions: Spain. 4 millions.

Then; are 232.521 women employed in English, cotton factories; only 147,245 men.

Two bundled and ten tons of honey, worth £12.000. are the yearly produce of Ireland.

Holland has 10,100 windmills, each of which drains oil an average 310 acres of land.

The average weight of a cubic toot of salt water is 64ib; ot a cubic foot of fresh, 621,1b. Switzerland holds the European hospital record, with six bads per 1300 of her population. A tailor makes but 15s a week in Germany : he earns 25s in England, and 58s in New York.

Islington is the most thickly-populated parish in England, having 112 persons to the acre. Bolton comes next.

£186,000.000 of British savings are invested in Savings Banks, of which the Post I like takes care of £130.500.000.

The share of each pursuit in '.ho British islands of British trade is £11 19s 2d of unpunishable by hard labour for lite.

The value of wine grown in Europe is 183 millions sterling; of the product of all the rest of the world, 9 millions only.

In 1879 only four British boroughs paid over a shilling in the pound in education Kites. To-day more than 40 do so.

The largest, needle manufactory in the world is at Redditeh, Worcestershire. Over 70.000.C00 needles are made there weekly.

Germany takes nearly 38 millions a year of British exports—more than any other European nation. France takes 221 millions

The total loss to creditors due to bankrupts in. England and Wales was under millions last year, against over 13 millions in 1870.

The Falkland Islands have hardly any trees, and are devoted entirely to sheep. Their total area is is a little less than that of Wales.

America now lias three cities of over a million inhabitants. New York has 3.437.000: Chicago, 1,698,000; Philadelphia, 1.293,000.

At a London inquest the other day a woman stated that she gob a living by sewing steels into corsets at 3|d a gross ! She could do two gross a day !

The speed of the Deutschland, the fastest liner in the world, is 23.36 knots an hour, that of her nearest English competitor, the Luacauia, 21.81 knots.

4793 million yards of cotton goods aro exported from the United Kingdom in the course of a year; but only 200 million yards of wool and 165 million of linen.

Of the total trade of the United Kingdom, England and Wales absorb 91 per cent., almost 8 per cent, goes to Scotland, and the remaining l-J per cent, to Ireland.

In 1850 Great Britain produced 2,250.000 tons of iron out of a total world's product of 4,420,000. To-day her share 'is oniy 8.600.000. out of a world's total of 42,200,000.

The Corporation of Lichfield has at last become possessed of the house in which Dr. Johnson was born—thanks largely to the munificence of one of the citizens, Mr. Alderman Gilbert.

It is the custom on the birth of a Japanese baby to plant a .tree. This is carefully tended until the party is about to be married, when it is cut down and made into an article of furniture for the new home.

It his now been officially announced that of the gun carriages which bore the body of Her late Majesty in the funeral procession from Osborne to Windsor, one is to be placed in the Tower, the second at the Castle, Edinburgh, and the third at the Royal Hospital, Dublin.

Lord Curzon's salary as Viceroy «if Indiais £15,000. Nest to him in point of salary come Lord Minto's position, with £10,000, us Governor of Canada, and Lord Hopetoun's in Australia, with the same amount. Sir J. "West Ridgeway, Governor of Ceylon, gets £8000 a vear.

The Municipal Council of Paris lias hit upon a capital idea for encouraging citizens to.beautify the cily. They give an annual prize to the architect and the builder of the most beautiful building erected during the year, and allow the owner to deduct 50 per cent, when lie pays his taxes.

Mr. McKinley's speeches on tour indicate his determination to favour Free Trade. He believes that since America has attained commercial supremacy freer trade is desirable, and he now seeks to popularise the Free Trade idea. It is said that Mr. McKinlev is planning a tour of the world in 1905."

Owing to the ravages of the tigers among the cattle at the foot of the Himalayas, the planters have been experimenting with .Swiss cow-bells, which are hung rouad the necks of the cattle. They have proved a great success, and the mortality has been reduced one-half. A firm at Basle has received a large order fur cow-bells.

There is a very pretty practice which the Fishmongers' Company have at their Court dinners. The ladies being absent from the feast, each guest on his departure is offered the acceptance or a handsome casket of choice sweets to take home to his wife and family. The outside box serves for a workbox, and is for years a pleasant memento of the occasion.

A new game is called '"baby tea," and is played in '.his way : All the guests come provided with photographs of themselves when babies. These are shuttled together on a table, and the skill of the game consists in discovering to whom the photographs belong. This is no easy mutter, for all infantile features are pretty much alike before the camera. The lady or gentleman who guesses the largest number correctly is the winner.

It is staled that the census returns for Norwich reveal a large excess of females in that city, and the surplus tends to increase year by year. At the 1891 census there was an excess of 7724 women, but this year's totals show that there are 9652 more women than men, so that presumably the proportion of "' old maids" in -Norwich must be uncommonly large. Dorking, it is reported, has nearly a thousand fewer males than members of the gentler sex., the totals being: .Males, 5253; females. 6157.

The proportion ot females to miles in Torquay, as ascertained by the recent census, is alarming, even in a country where the sex have it all their own way in the matter of numbers. There are roughly, according to the returns, about twenty thousand females to thirteen thousand males. In addition to this, another fact has come out which must, strike terror into the hearts of any local Wellers. It has been shown that the majority of the female residents in Torquay are either widows or spinsters.

The first returns announced regarding the population of Edinburgh, were in error, some districts annexed in 1900 being overlooked. Edinburgh has now a population of 516,540 This does not include Leith. In 1801 the population of Edinburgh and Leith was 82,560. 'lie boundaries of the city are now tar-reaching, and include the seaside town of Portobello, the seaport of Granton, and a portion of the Parish, of Duddingston. In 1891 the population was 272,978, thus givjjjg an, increase 9.1 35*562-