NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12931, 29 July 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

lndia lias 132,000 lepers. California has forty Cltinese temples. Berlin lias 86,000 telephone connections.

The French Army prefers Irish horses fof its cavalry.

Austro-Huugarian papers are printed in 15 languages.

Germany has an army of 8,000,000 agricultural work

Russian farmers hold an average of 27 acres to each family.

The Turkish cavalry is admitted to be the finest in ail Europe.

Four limes more Irishmen reside in the United States than Englishmen.

The nations richest in horses are the Argentine Republic and Uruguay.

Salt Lake is 4000 ft above the level of thai Pacific Ocean, and lias no visible outlet.

Statistics show that the Chinese live longer than the people of any other nation.

Newfoundland is without reptiles. No. snake, frog, toad, or lizard has ever been seen there.

Berlin paid over £1,200,000 last year for its lunatic asylums, hospitals, and the care of paupers.

One of three salmon • recently netted at the same time by a Severn fisherman weighed 551b.

Some of the fish in the Royal Aquarium in St. Petersburg have been exhibited for more than 150 years.

There are just 40 inhabitants in the little French hamlet of Auinoiie, and 24 of them are over 80 years of age.

A Coventry firm lias oil order a largo number of cycles for Japan, to fee delivered 011 the cessation of the Avar.

A Moravian, workman, named Olsak, ot : Wsetin, died after eating a. live toad for a' wager of fire bottles of brandy.

An in keeper in Norway is not permitted to have female attendants in his taproom,' unless it be the wife of the proprietor. In the Shetland Isles. there is a gull which defends the flock from eagles. It is therefore regarded as the privileged bird. The smallest tree in the world is the Greenland birch. Its height is less tlian three inches, yet it covers' a radius of tw? or three feet.

More women titan men go blind ii Sweden, Norway, and Ireland; more men than women in the rest of Europe and the United States. A Coventry firm is said to have sold 6000 motor cycles, and the demand, instead-of diminishing, is now greater by threefold than it was a year ago. A Paris theatre has replaced ail its in- : flammable scenery by scenes -painted oil galvanised iron and metallic gauze. The' framework is of iron tubing. The Government's share of the profits of the. Ceylon pearl fisheries is three times as much as that of the divers who risk their lives in search of t'ho treasure. Dr. Torrey's revival hall at BrixW is to be put to a strange use. The "War Office has purchased it for removal to Aldershot, where it will be "oonverted" into ai drill, hall. I ...

The Bulgarian Minister for Public Intaction has prohibited the wearing of corsets by the pupils in the girls' schools of the principality. The penalty is expulsion from school.

A dealer named James Griggs, who was found in possession of 426 pheasant and partridge eggs at Mildenhall, Suffolk, rn's; lined-'.'£42 12s. ■ This-was. ait. the rate of -t . 24'aitreggT

; There are 'fifty 1 members of the Stock Exchange who have been in the House for half a century. The oldest member is Mr. B. E. Kennedy,' who was elected so long ago as 1836.

Having received only £81,000 in donations for the last quarter, the officials of Chicago University comment on the fallingoff of the public support formerly accorded to the institution. By the return of the National Banks it is shown that the United States now holds one-quarter of tie entire amount of mined gold in the world. In 18S0 the amount was under 17 per cent.

"Monsieur Beaucaare" was played for the 518 th time at the Imperial Theatre, London, on a. recent Saturday night. From, its reception a good ran may ba anticipated for the present revival. ( In a gamekeeper's lodge af) Hill Place, Swaninore, Hampshire, a robin lias built a nest on, a shelf in a bedroom, and passes' in and out undisturbed by the movements of the occupants of the house. •

A' priest who was unfrocked for com-. ; plicity in a robbery was married in the • prison at San Francisco de Lccca, Spain, to ; a lady whom he had defrauded of £3000. but who , had fallen in love with .him. Explaining that ho had no dress the burgomaster of. Hesselhurst, Baden,' appeared at a Court function in picturesque peasant costume, and received much gracious attention from the Grand Duke. Having carried out their vast irrigation works on Mars, its inhabitants, said Professor Bay Lanbester at Oxford, must be far in advance of tie inhabitants of the earth, and in a condition of universal

j. he curious annual custom of raffling for jßibte among the children of St. Ives, Huntingdon, took plaoe recently. Six Bibles are raffled every Whit Tuesday, in accordance with the provisions of an ancient bequest. To aid in the destruction of the numerous porpoises which are doing great damage to the sardine fisheries a French destroyer, says the Paris-Journal, has been' ordered to proceed po the Bay of Douarnenez, near Brest.

Ihonuis Frederick Ooi'pes, a boy employed as " tennis scout" at the Queen's Club, was attempting to recover a ball from the roof of a building at Kensington when lis fell through a glass-topped' outhouse, and sustained fatal'injuries. A "Bachelors' Elopement dub," formed two years ago at Watcrbury, Connecticut, because of its founders' belief that weddings were too prosaic, has been reduced to its last member. • All his associate;, have eloped end married.

Some time . ago a London gentleman named Martin, lost his purse, containing £30, whilst staying at Ringmer, Sussex. The missing property, quite intact, lias just come to light during the removal of some boards from the village green.

"i am just three years old now. The other hundred do not count," wrote Mme. Marie Blanc, of Crest; France, to a friend whom she invited to her 103 rd birthday party. The old lady is still in the full enjoyment of all her faculties.

An interesting visitor to London is Mme. Dieulafoy,. a famous French traveller and archieologist. _ Alone with Mile. Rosa Bonheur, the animal painter, Mme. Dieulafoy shares, by special permission of the French Government, the right to - wear masculine attire.

Charlotte Mien Knot wood, the wife of a retired merchant living at Fentiman Road, Lambeth, died after swallowing lotion intended for the relief of rheumatism. A piece of paper found lying at her feet bow the words: "1 aift afraid I ruined you. Taken stuff. Wauled to die."

Although Mr. Alfred Burn, an Alnwick bootmaker, is a freeholder he is called upon to pay is Id a year "quit rent" to the Duke*of Northumberland. As he objects to " feudalism'' and refuses to pay, seventeen pairs of boots have been seized to satisfy the duke's claim for three years' arrears.

The work of cleaning the outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, by a sand-blast process has proved so tedious that it has been abandoned. It is, moreover, believed that the hard shell which the weather has caused to form on the surface o; the stone is a natural protection that it would bo, inadvisable to romovo.