NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12818, 18 March 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Country girls in Spain seldom wear hat* or bonnets of any kind. ■- v ■- '■'

1 Spotted or.figured vei'l3 are.bad for the sight, and should never be worn. ~'■ :

• In Windsor Castle there is a set of Rose du Barri china which cost £30,000.

A species of ants that sow and reap a harvest has been found in Trinidad.

In all mountainous countries flowers are found growing up to the line of perpetual snow.

It is estimated that there arc at least 60.000 cyclists awheel in London on a line Sundar.

Rain has never been known to fall U that part of Egypt between the two lower Falls of the Nile.

A Dublin carman lias been summoned fot driving his car with "improper velocity.* The charge was dismissed.

At the coronation of a- sovereign th* Lord Mayor acts as chief butler, and re ceives for his fee a gold cup.

Stockholm is built on no fewer than seveft islands, and St. Petersburg on both sides of a river and on several small islands.

The Imperial Canal in China is the long est in. the world, and connects no fewet than forty-one cities in the course of its 100 miles.

Lager beer is rapidly gaining favour in England. A large brewery for the manufacture of lager is to be erected at Burton-on-Trent.

The chief police authorities 01 Vienna contemplate introducing the phonograph to tecord verbal evidence in important criminal cases.

There i* evidently money in medicine. The estate of the late Sir Henry Thompson, Bart., the eminent surgeon, is entered at £226,298 2~ sd.

The president- of the Herman Cat Club vouches for the existence, in a German vi!laac. of a nineteen-veai-old cat which has had 150 kittens.

Owing to the huge salaries demanded by capable chefs and waiters, the best restaurants in Buenos Ayres have been obliged to close their doors.

In the south of Lincolnshire many marriages are being postponed through the lack of housing accommodation. Even love in a cottage is unavailable.

The first of January has not always been the first day of the "year. For 700 years prior to the fifteenth century the year commenced on Christinas Day.

All native-born and naturalised Danes over sixty years of age receive pensions of 10s to 18s per month, if unable to support themselves or their families.

In India elephants over twelve aud up to forty years of age are deemed the best to purchase, and will generally work well until they are eighty years old.

Arabs invariably wear beards because Mahomet, the founder of their religion, never shaved. A long, flowing board is regarded by them as a sign of distinction.

Miss Florrie Carr, of South Brisbane, Australia, swam ICO yards against competitors in lm. 19 2-ss. This is bilioved to constitute a world's record for a lady.

The sale of the Duke of Leinstcr's Irish estate has been practically completed, 444 tenants having become purchasers. The total purchase money was £752,221.

It has been decided lhat 111 future the Portsmouth flotilla of t'estroyers shall be known as the Portland flotilla, and the Mc:lwar flotilla as the Felixstowe flotilla:

A Yarmouth publican, asked by the Bench why he was: leaving bis establishment, said he had ,trie.d .to. keep a quiet bouse, and.found- the trade declined in consequence. '•• "• -\ ..

To escape from the North . (Shropshire Hounds, Which wore hot on his scent, .i tired fox plunged into a pool.- and brought his career to an inglorious and unorthodox termination.' - .

A bull dashed into a china store at IfiJhurst. Sussex, and succeeded in executing a series.of intricate manoeuvres without damaging a single article. it was dragged out by the tail.

" The law is not the foolish thing some people think." said Judge Addison, K.C., at the Southwark County Court. "Even a judge exercises a little business commonsense at times.'' .. ,

" You can't lock up a woman for nagging her husband," said the Greenwich magistrate to a constable who accused a woman of this offence, and called it " using threatening language." ;

In a " friendly" football match at Sittingbourne, Kent, one player.,sustained concussion of the brain, .another a broken collav bone, and the third a.dislocated ankle. The match was stopped ~

Continually crossing the legs, and thug making the joints brittle, .was stated at an inquest to have caused the death oi a Bristol asylum inmate. While pulling en her stockings her thigh bono.- cracked.

» Amos Bickersteth, the most notorious desperado iii Wyoming, has eloped with a seventeen-year-old novice from a convent. She is also the daughter of the sheriff, who is hunting Bickersteth with a posse of 200 men.

A well-known citizen of, Petersburg, Virginia, has worn the same overcoat lor fiftyeight years. He bought it in a second-hand clothes shop in Baltimore for £8. The material is English pilot eloi.h, and it has retained the original colour.

At Netistift, Upper Austria, s a -pig. ate ft pocketbook containing £100, which, a farmer had dropped in tne stye. The pig was killed soon after, and it.was then. discovered that :he banknotes, .were>already digested beyond recognition. . ; -.'i ' "

" He is a great nuisance, and is under the impression that all the girl* in 'the- district are in love with him." Thus a policeman described Anthony Schlemahn;- aged thirtyfour, of Woodford Bridge, who throws love poems into young ladies' gardens.. '»*; ' : t '•'

John Green, an Irishman, .who lias just died at Accrington. aged 95,'. never earned in his life more than 15s ' a week. His staple diet was Indian, porridge, morning, noon, and night, with a cup or tea as aspecial luxury once in. a while on Sundays.

• Commander Robinson, of the steamship Armadale Castle, writes to the Cape Times that on his last voyage to South Africa the .ship's perpendicular stem struck a. fish which " was about the volume of one of our lifeboats at the broadest part—say eight feet."

When Lyman Fox. jun., of Baltimore, U.S.A., heard a burglar in the house, he woke up a servant to take a. note to his sleeping wife, telling her of the fact. She captured the burglar, in sentencing whom the judge censured the husband for his cowardice.

In a complicated contract action brought by a builder against the County Council of Galwav and Roscommon, the Dublin; King's Bench has dispensed with the services of a jury, and decided to have the case tried by a judge, with an .•xperkneed architect as'assessor.

William Kennedy, accused at Marl-borough-street of being intoxicated after having been turned out of several publichouses, said : "It was my boots, sir. They are tens. I usually take about fives. It wasn't me they turned out. It was the boots. I could not keep upright."

While a man was digging a well in Belgrade some bricks and mortar fel 1 "on him from a height of 72ft, and he 'remained thirty hours in o crouching position- before he was extricated. • On regaining the top he ar once turned back to re-enter the well, explaining that he had left his hat below !

Lord Curzou, passing through: Calcutta, detected grammatical and literary errors in the inscription upon the house where Macaulay lived when i : member, of (he Supreme Council in 1854-8. V He immediately wrote a long and characteristically minute letter t> the Bengal Government detailing all the errors, arid an amended inscription Las becu provided. , ?' V ... * 5 ■,-, : J