NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12213, 7 March 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Both Primates of England are Scotchmen. There are how over 700 lady university graduates in Ireland. Mr. Marconi is stated to be working at a portable wireless telephone. M. Jean de Reszke has been decorated with the Legion of Honour. Scotland shipped 11,279.422 tons of coal last year, constituting a record. About 28s a minute is spent by the Mid- • land Railway Company on coal. ' Soldiers have been given permission to wear service dress when cycling for recreation. Insurance prospectuses printed in Gaelic are now being circulated in the Scottish Highlands. The Coventry School Board has agreed to provide spectacles for children with defective eyesight. By pecking a hole in its wooden box ft valuable parrot succeeded in escaping at Malvern Railway Station. Fifty-two years is the length of service of one employee of the Newcastle and Gateshead Water Company. Women are superior to men as interpreters, stated Mr. John Troutbeck, the Westminster coroner recently. Dnngeness Point is making a steady growth seaward of about eight feet a year through the accumulation of shingle. John Plannagan, the champion weight and hammer thrower of the world, is new a member of the New York police force. . Wild red deer are increasing so rapidly in Devon and Somerset that special efforts are to be made to reduce their numbers. ■ Women clerks employed in the German State railway offices are nob allowed to work later than ten p.m., or begin earlier than six a.m. " Australia is more British than London," maintained Sir John Cockburn lately at the annual meeting of the Geographical Association. .'■■ Saying "I want bread," a blacksmith jumped; through a milk-shop window at Dublin. He has been sent to prison for two months. " . \ Ten hundred and fifty-five fatal accidents involving the loss of 1166 lives, occurred last year in mines and quarries ,of Great Britain. Hordes of rats are now causing' considerable annoyance at Glasgow Harbour, where the pests boldly pillage grain, even in the day time. -■■■;: ' " Guard against the mental disease commonly known as ' swelled head,'" is the latest advice to teachers given by the Bishop of Chester. Germany's fire brigade plant and industry will be represented at the International Exhibition of Fire Preventive Appliances to be held in London in May. Loss of custom through opposing the war in South Africa was given as the cause of his failure by a publican lately at 'the Worcester Bankruptcy Court. r Dr. H. Walford Davies, organist of the Temple Church, has been appointed, musical director of the Bach Choir in succession, to Sir Charles Stanford,- retired. Vacili Georgesen, a Roumanian doctor, who is walking through every country in Europe for a wager, is now traversing England on his way south'to London. Dungarvan Urban Council has passed a resolution requesting the post office authorities to substitute a motor omnibus for the mail cart at present running from Clonmel to Dungarvan; - . - M. Plelive, Russian Minister of the Interior, states that one of the most important' objects he has in view for the future is decentralisation in-" the general-administration. of the Empire. Four hundred and -three, persons committed suicide last year -in Vienna. The number of attempted suicides was 557. Disappointed love was the cause in the majority of'cases. Sixty girls, who are being sent out to Johannesburg as domestic servants by .the British South African Expansion Committee, left Southampton for Capetown in the Harlech Castle. One of the members of the United States House, of Representatives has introduced an' amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the accumulation of private fortunes over £2,000,000. . ; ' 5 To be released from army service a German grenadier put one of his fingers in 8 chopping machine and allowed it to be cut off. He has been sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. '' ■ / \ At Coriano, near Bologna, the municipal council voted £8 to enable fourteen person* suffering from the bites of a mad dog to make a pilgrimage to a shrine where curM of hydrophobia are reported to have taken place. Three of the pilgrims have since died. During a funeral service in a church at Mashfield, Wisconsin, a fire broke out and burst through' the floor just under the, coffin. With great difficulty the coffin wa» extricated from the flames and carried, out of the burning building. Several of th« mourners'fainted. The Glasgow magistrates at a meeting i lately decided to stick to their guns with regard to barmaids, and instructions were given to warn license-holders that if they did not abolish the liquor dispensing Hebea they might stand in danger of being licenseholders no longer. - Vi'j;: V An extraordinary marriage ceremony has just taken place at ICochi, Japan. The bride-elect committed suicide on the eve of her wedding. The body was recovered, and at the request of the dead woman's parents the ceremony took place between the living bridegroom and the corpse. The Bishop of Stepney, the • Rev. Cosmo Lang, gave an address lately to about 100 men at half-past seven in the morning at the All Hallows Shelter in London Wall for workers who come up by the early cheap trains, but are landed several hours before their places of business are open. From the pulpit of St. Xavier's Church,' St. 'Louis, U.S.A., the Rev. C. H. Bronsgeest declared lately that there was too much handshaking and kissing' of brides after a marriage ceremony. . The custom, he added, was growing unbearable, and the Church would no longer permit it. At an inquest on Daniel Pemberton, killed while working on the railway at Twickenham, Thomas Harwood, who was working with him, said that he would have been killed by a passing express if Pemberton had not pushed him out of the way. ft In doing so Pemberton was caught by the engine and killed. There is good news for prisoners serving shorter sentences than six months. . ' They, too, may soon have the option of reducing their terms of confinement bv good conduct and industry in gaol. Under the Prison Act, 1898, the inmates have worked wonderfully, stimulated by the prospect of hastening their liberty. ; In some colliery districts in South Lancashire pit-hean fires are practically inextinguishable. One at the Bridgewater Trustees' Moslev Common Colliery, near Worsley, comprising hundreds of toDs of. refuse, has just broken into flame again after a long period of smouldering, and presents at night a singularly weird sight.

A warning was administered lately at Edinburgh to Clementina Macdonald, or Sinclair,- who had contravened the Uniforms Act >by having, without; permission, worn the uniform of His Majesty's Regiment of Royal Highlanders, she not being a person serving in His Majesty's military forces. The' woman said she donned ' the ; kilt for a bet to walk down High-street. 1, 7fV'i r • In a five-column editorial, J. S. Ford, editor of the Yorkville, . South Carolina Yeoman,, announces that rather than continue living with his wife three alternatives are preferablesuicide whisky or divorce.'.; He -does not fancy either of the first two, toe. third »is i impossible in South ■ Carolina: •'. so .he is suspending , publication .; to " visit a State where divorces arc obtainable. 5 i .VWVV; t :i ''7 •" ""' ■' ''