NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11783, 12 October 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

On*k in every fifty persons over 80 years of aire is blind.

Ireland exports yearly 640,000 cattle and 641,000 sheep.

The average sheep weighing 1521b gives 9111) of mutton.

Great Britain spend? £123,866 a year on the British [Museum.

There are 48 different kinds of house-fly known and classified.

A caterpillar can eat 600 times its own weight of food in a month.

To crush a half-inch cube of granite requires a weight of eleven tons.

John Rolf? of Virginia planted the first tobacco for commerce in 1603.

Graves average sft deep in England, sft 6in in France, and 6ft lOin in Russia.

London water-rates work out at 13 6-10ths of a. penny per ton for the supply.

Men understand the art of happiness far better than women.—Sarah Grand.

In 1841 Ireland's population, was 251 to the square mile: now it is 144 only.

Australia's commerce is £30 per inhabitant a year ; that of India 10s only.

Russia. Austria, and France all have field guns capable of fifteen shots a minute.

One of the minor expenses of a locomotive is 100 gallons of lubricating oil a year.

Ireland's stock of horses decreased last vear from 610.415 to 597,641, a fall of 12,774".

Four per cent, of boys at school are found to be colour-blind; only 1 per cent, of girls.

Kangaroo have been known to jump a height of lift. A deer's best record is 9ft 6in.

I he first electric railway was built by an American, Thomas Davenport, in the war 1835.

In a- hurricane blowing at SO miles an hour the pressure on each square foot of surface is 3|lb.

The Bank of France can compel its customers to receive one-fifth of money drawn in gold.

Chaperon originally meant the hood of cioth which priests wore in the fifteenth centurv.

Careful records kept in an Orkney lighthouse show 1-'I,OOO hours of storm in the past 20 years.

Cairo is much the biggest town in Africa, with 490,000 people, of whom 25,000 are Europeans.

Half a ton of sawdust contains 1601b of charcoal, 1801b of acids, 2481b of water,. 1621b of tar.

Every British parish with a population of 300 or over is compelled by law to elect a parish council.

Thirty-three Germain towns now have populations of over 100,000, as against 16 fifty years ago.

The steamer Deutsehland's record speed is 584 miles in a day. She burned 570 tons of .coal in the effort.

On the average, one in four cases.of typhoid in the British troops in South Africa has proved fatal.

The Mint novj makes an annual profit of £780,000. Since 1872 the profits have totalled £5,400,000.

Potatoes were first cultivated on what is now the border of Peru and Chili in tlto Andes Mountains.

Out. of every one hundred pounds of paper manufactured in the world only six pounds is made into books.

British railways pay income tax on £36.400,000, mines and quarries on £13,420,000 a year.

Coffee was. first planted in Ceylon in 1840; 50,000 tons were grown in 1878. The industry is now dead.

Our mercantile marine is" 9,146,342 tons. To insure this, we spent on our naval forces £26,145,599 in 1899.

The London municipal trams carry 120 million passengers a vear, and make a. clear profit of over £90,000.

Norway, Servia, Greece, and Bulgaria are the only European nations which have but one House of Parliament.

Auber was the only well-known composer besides Verdi who ever composed an opera after he was 80 years old.

Of all the money transactions in England 97 per cent, are transacted by cheques ; only 3 per cent, by notes or gold.

Great Britain has 1600 steamers of over 3000 tons; Germany, 127; the United States, 120 ; and France only 60.

Ninety per cent, of the heat of all the coal dug in all the world is wasted; but only 50 per cent, of the heat of oil.

Nine thousand men and 41,000 wometv. work at British lacemaking. They x >ro ' duce six million pounds' worth a year.

The revolver carbine of the Swiss army, invented bv Major Kercklin, fires 48 shots in 24 seconds, and will kill at 2000 yards.

Nice and its neighbourhood hold the record for holiday traffic. The average is 2,800.000 arrivals in the course of a year. Eighty thousand cats are yearly exported from Great Britain. The total number in those islands is estimated at seven millions.

The Mint sweepings last year fetched £2179, yet the loss in manufacture of coins averages £245 per million of money coined.

An oak tree of average size, with 700,000 leaves, lifts from the earth about 123 tons of water during the five months it is in leaf.

Seventy thousand cochineal insects go to a single pound of dried cochineal. The world's crop of cochineal is from 3CO to 500 tons.

Norway takes 65,000,000 cod a year, valued at £1,050.000. Great Britain's total cod catch is 8,000,000 fish, weighing 13,000 tons.

The total daily circulation of newspapers in the United Kingdom was only 60,000 in 1801 ; 700,000 in 1851; and is now 8* millions.

The building with the largest stones in the world is not in Egypt, but at Baalbec, in Syria. The stones are 60ft long and 20it square. . '

The largest book ever made was the Jubilee addresses of congratulation to Queen Victoria. It is 18in thick, and weighs 63 pounds. '

France holds the record for the amount of coin in circulation—£B a head. We have only half that amount, while Russia has only 8s a head. ,

In 1850 the United Kingdom only possessed 14 dailies and 551 journals altogether. To-day there are 2448 dailies, and 2446 other periodicals.

British steam trawlers have increased in the last 10 years from 250 to 1000. Last year Hull added 58 and Grimsby 91 to her fishing fleet.

The record for navy firing is held by our biggest cruiser, the Tenable. With 6inch guns 84 hits out of 100 shots were; recently registered.

Ireland claims the honour of the first electric railway in the United Kingdom. It ran from Belfast to the Giant's Causeway, and was opened in 1883.

Two hundred and fifty million bricks are used in a month in the United Kingdom;; that is, each inhabitant uses ninety in a year. Each American averages 150.

Germany last year bought 588 tons of machine tools front us ; but during the* same time she purchased 4757 tons of American and 388 tons of French tools-

The largest lightning-conductor in the world is on the Lugspite Weather Station,, in Bavaria. It runs down the mountain side for three and a-half miles to a lake.

London's fire brigade now consists of 1159 men, 235 horses, 70 steam fire engines, and, 196 fire-escapes. There are 625 separate.fire* alarms and; 16,425[hydrants