NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12955, 26 August 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

An uncut diamond looks very much like a Lit of the best gum arabic. Over,a ton of silver plate belonging to the late Duke of Cambridge was sold recently. The. cost of the British expedition ink Tibet was £1,015,935, all of which Indi? will have to bear. During the present year 2843 person? in England have been convicted for cruelly to animals. King Edward's hospital fund for London will receive from the Drapers' Company a yearly .subscription of £1500. .t'ho earliest mention of shaving is ill Genesis xli, 14, where it is said, ".Joseph shaved himself and changed his raiment." In olden times screws were made by hand, and live minutes were spent in making one. Now a machine rattles out 60 in. a minute. The yield of cider in 1904 was the largest ever known in France. It was 924,595,000 gallons, which is double the average product ' for lite last ten years. The first trousers in their present shape were introduced into the British army in 1813, and tolerated as a legitimate portion of evening dress in 1816. Herbert, Holdsworth, a "steeplejack," was killed and his brother Arthur was seriously injured by falling 70ft from the top of a tower at Gildersome, near Leeds. His Majesty the King has graciously forwarded a donation of £3 to Mrs. Baybut, of West Stow, near Bury St. Edmunds, who recently gave birth to triplets. In manufacturing occupations, the average life of soap-boilers is the highest z and that of grindstone-makers the lowest. The combined salaries of the presidents of the fourteen leading universities in the United State* do not equal the amount paid to the head of one life insurance company. No fewer than 850,000 gallons of beer were consumed at Munich during a recent week. This is nearly two and a-half gallons to every man, woman, and child in the city. Judge Russell, in suspending for three years the discharge of a money-lender named Edwin Webber, said he was the first bankrupt money-lender he had ever heard of. It is asserted that a, water-wheel rims faster at night than in the daytime, because at night the water is cooler and therefore more dense than when warmed by tfee sun. A Russian, whose defective heart gave out a musical sound which could be heard six feet away, has died at Chicago. He made a living by exhibiting himself at medical schools. The . Sfaatsanzeiger (the German official gazette) records the appointment of Dr. Wilhelm Kalker as a member of the Imperial Sanitary Council. Dr. Kalker has been dead for three years. Thirteen hundred colliers left work at Bwllfa because seven men would not join their union, and although they have got the men into line their strike will have cot* them at least £2000 in wages., The inmates of the Princes Road Workhouse, Lambeth, have "struck" against a dietary of stewed rhubarb. They have eaten it for some months, but they say that they have had more of it than they wanted. The heat experienced in Darmstadt caused a. cask of 370 gallons of beer to explode as it was being conveyed through the streets. The liquor, ejected at a great force, knocked down an old woman, who died from shock. The discovery has been made, by a scientific Frenchman that potatoes planted near an electric wire grow to be very large, and that tomatoes in contact with an elec- - tric wire ripen eight days. earlier than usual. The noisy horn of the beanfeaster is likely to be silenced by the London County Council, which will be asked to sanction a by-law making shouting and the use of a noisy instrument on i, public vehicle a punishable • offence. The telephone was first practically used in England in 1876, when over 115 miles of wire existed between London and Norwich, but no telephone exchange was established until 1879, when ten offices wereconnected. A curious effect of a flood is reported from South America. Large portions of land, torn off the banks of the Parana, have been carried down the river, bearing with them to Buenos Ayres innumerable crocodiles and large serpents. Hermann Grun, a watchmaker, living at Bingeu, Germany, has been sentenced to a month's imprisonment and ordered to pay £220 damages to the family of a labourer, whose brain became affected by a box on the - ears which Grun gave him. Two Genoa woodcawers, on the eve of their respective weddings, tossed to decide whether they should exchange brides. When Bautista Serreoni found that the toss had' given him his own sweetheart he poisoned himself with a pint or carbolic acid. The policy of retrenchment introduced by tire Government of Cape Colony hais had ami interesting sequel. The salary of Mr. Viator Sampson, the Attorney-General, was recently increased by £1000, but he has voluntarily reduced the amount to £600. The seahorse is built upon a pecs?.!*? ''- plan. It has the head of a horse, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a snake. In swimming it assumes a vertical position, and when wishing to rest it attaches itself to a convenient stalk of seaweed by means of its tail. An influential section of. educated Parsees seem likely to secure the erection of a. crematorium at Bombay for the disposal of tha Parses dead. This would substitute cremation for the present system of exposing ths bodies on the Towers of Silence, where they ! are devoured by vultures. "As I was walking along St. James'■< street," said Mr. Bruce Stevenson, a dental surgeon, to the Marylebone magistrate, "I saw the prisoner strike his wife a very cruel blow. 1 attacked the man in defence of tbp woman, but she immediately attacked me.' The magistrate only laughed.Dr. Springett, vicar of Brixton, says in his farewell address to his flock: "It is hard for a vicar to know all the people in a parish, but J. find 1 can always make the acquaintance of many parishioners who want a, little ready money. ■ These are always the first to welcome me to a new parish." A Bradninch poultry dealer has discovered that some of the farmers who send bin fowls stuff them with pieces of metal in order to increase their weight. Eleven birds which he opened before sending them to London contained over twenty pieces of iron, weighing in all two and a-half pounds. The inflexible precepts of Buddhism against the taking of life have come strangely into conflict with the movement for the production of silk in Ceylon, since the demand for unpierced cocoons involves the killing of the worn.' inside. Unpierced cocoons are ten times as valuable as pierced ones. The French Courts have declared invalid the will of Mile. Maniere, an old woman, who left her entire fortune to the Paris Zoo. I Mile. Maniere had a passion tot animals, i which, during her lifetime, she showed by j renting two rooms in order to shelter a pel : eel, a Persian cat, tour parrots, six dogs, j and many othe; favourites, ! During a salvage case at mouth a memI ber ot the Gorleston lifeboat crew said that i recently, after 60 hours' lend work, he and his mates returned to the harbour with a crew they had jesvued. The crowd called for "three cheers for the Gorleston lii'eboatmen,"' but that was all the payment they received, although they were £5 or £4 out of pocket. "I told him several times that he was not to go near the watci,'' said Mrs. Monk, a distressed mother, in the Poplar Coroner's Court. Ucr six-year-old son .Alfred wont for a walk with a little boy named Charles Franks, who reminded hint that it was "naughty" to go close to Duekftt's Canal. The child did not. heed the warning, how« ; ever, and he fell in and was drowned.