NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13193, 2 June 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

i). i Bayonets were first made at Bayonne. is - j France, in 1647. .I; s i Over 500.000 people arc employed in Italy I 0 | in rearing silkworms. * Russian farmers hold an average of 27 acres to each family | n A cow's hid'. 1 , of average sue produces r about 5511 » of leather. e The Indian rhinoceros has the thickest 1 ! skin of any quadruped. ' ' j The population of the world to-day is in j round figures 1.480,000.000. , ,i i Icebergs sometimes last, as long as 200 i» i years before they melt entirely away. ' 3 < ! The cost of the Metropolitan Fire Bri- . 1 | cade is lather over £100,000 a year. I Tablecloths and napkins were unknown "MM ' tin Fiance before the thirteenth century. • '§ , The bones and muscles of the human body -.'i% e are capable of over 1200 different move- ; ments. v e Manchester has the largest free library in - i England. There are in all over 180,000 volumes. 1 (hi a tough average 45.000 sovereigns pass over the Bank of England's counters iM 'j every day. ~ Swedish schoolchildren, under the guidi mice of their teachers, annually plant about 'Ki t 600.000 trees. U'xllt To-day the stock of gold "kept in the 1 ' Banks of England and France is about " a £150,000.000. ' The last .Sovereign to abdicate was King Milan of Servia. lie relinquished' the I '\-Vv j Crown in 1889. , , -A 3 The traffic receipts of the " Bakerloo" ' j s tube for the first week of its existence -'JV (. amounted to £2025. •/>* Russia has no castles like those of the * * old feudal nobles of England or of the Con* §| f tinent to connect past and present. 'xjjttm 1 Returns of the Railway Clearing House 1 show that 1000 parcels a day are lost on \ J the railways of the United Kingdom. ' 'j The City Council of Buenos Ay res has ' adopted a regulation banishing itinerant _ ;li|p musicians from the streets of the citv. VilP '.■ • " H (unman insurance companies refuse to m . take any risks in the cast! of Alpine climbers Vtf ! unless an expert guide is one of the party. ' >1 I Glasgow has ho largest tramway system '$B|§ | of any town in Iho British Isles. Blanches- 7ter stands .second, while Liverpool makt* i a bad third. Jit ft is estimated that manufacturers of cot- }j# ton goods in America will alone lose * ISP £2,000,000 by the Chinese boycott of '*:$ American goods. * • Every year the American meat trade at Birkenhead increases, and it litis now at- ■ tained enormous - proportions, involving v' £15,000,000 per annum. J Since the great earthquake of 1801 110 'it less than 1110 and 2025 shocks have been r i experienced in Nagoya and Gitu respectively, two provinces in Japan. One of the strangest prizes offered :by f||f| the French Academy- of Sciences is £1000 ( for the person who discovers a method of -, V* communication between planets. ■ " The most out-of-the-way village in Eng- IS land is said to be that of l^arley-cum-Pitlou. '• ' This truly rural spot is over thirty miles - 'o,' from the nearest railway (station. .. ''-'iMSst A labourer was tilled £1 6s lid at Wood- 1 "".ty ' bridge (Suffolk) for stealing sixpence worth' - l 7;« of turnip tops, and failing to pay vfaa com- , '-p, mitted to prison for fourteen .days. ■ . 'sf'? Howard Ringo has escaped from gaol at §||l Roswell, New Mexico, by opening his > cell - "Jiff door with it lead key which lie made from r shavings left in the gaol by plumbers. Borneo women Use brilliant dyes for their • ' hair. ' The colours selected are not at all in accordance with European ideas, includ- , ,/sj ing. Us' they do, ■ green, pink, blue, 'and •scarlet, ' -'SSi . * V'y,.;,, ' ■ The oldest lifeboat in the- world is at • ; Redcar. She was one of the first built - M by Greatliead, and iii her active service , of sixty-four years was used to save five hundred lives, ■ ,3 I # A collection of 80.000 different species of butterflies is for sale at Dresden.. It ii 1 ,>S valued at £5000, and will probably bo ac- • , quired by the German Government for the Berlin Museum. •' U4 The only door of a. small cottage at Ponders End, i Middlesex, having become too rotten to tyke; the occupant of the cot- > i;J tage lias had to nail it up, and uses the W window for entry and exit. "•• 'If a® The young Queen of the Netherlands ' , yu knows all about tulip culture,' has visited r countless bulb farms, and is much interested in some promising other varieties that will ' ■il come into the market next year. f MI 3S Forests of leafless tree* may be met with in some parts of Australia. • The■ respire ~ SESfS through a little stem which apparently an-,, swers the jamo.purpose asi a. leaf. The tree ~ is known, as "the leafless i acacia." t('j?.:l|||g >'l rag An African elephant is of value only for : its ivory, of which a full-grown animal > >\?i yields from £50 to £60 worth. On the * -i< other hand, a working Indian elephant cannot be bought for less than £500 to £700. An Italian who was carrying an umbrella " in a heavy snowstorm in New York lost '" * his way audi fell over a palisade 100 feet - : t high. The umbrella acted as a uarachute, , tiw and the man escaped with a few slight ■& bruises. ' I 'W« "Stand Alane." the famous natural tower 011 the beach between. Cockbuiuspath and. 1 > t , ( Dunbar, which was visible for ai distance of /•'% tweny-fivc miles tit. sea, fell with a terrific '* v is3| crash recently, bringing with it about 1000 -jSPi tons of red rock. J Miss Julia Gooding, an eccentric woman,. seventy years old, was burned to death at Clapham. She was unable to es- ~,11 cape from her room because she always kept the windows nailed down as a precau-. tion against burglars. ; . > ~ The "dyomis," a. rodent of a species supposed to be extinct, lias been found: to be common in some parts of Brazil, and the* 'Vjgra j specimen preserved in the museum of Ber» v ; 3l 1 i 11, supposed to be the only one extant, '/Jv' has depreciated in value. jsfjk j Lake Titicaca, the highest- navigable lak#> in the world', is to be lapped for electric- ; : power to run the Peruvian railways and ffl > Juj supply a surplus sullicient, it is hetieved, , . ,)ji to enable Peru to take a prominent place 1 "'J among the manufacturing countries. -fi A few yea is ago a. soap-boiler's shop was Vi'-Vfi discovered in Pompeii, having been buried : 's® beneath that terrible rain of ashes that fell ji upon thai city 79 A.I). The soap fotmd in , ', |S| the shop had not lost its efficacy, although i:. had been buried eighteen hundred years. ~>] The pons used by the children of Japan. 1 consist of bamboo and rabbits' hair. The >'4m pen itself is a tiny brush of hair tied to tho ■ end of a bamboo stick. It does not seem i *.§?j possible that writing under such circum-' t stances could 1>: good, but .Jafwne.se children % really write wry well indeed. A machine that can do the work of one , hundred men may be seen in London, fold- .hvfp! ing magazines, putting them in gummed , *5 'fTOI "paper, addressing them, and dropping them > i'« it) sacks according to the locality of their » destination. Thousands of magazines are 1 ; ''m thus made ready for the post in an hour. " "V' jl Attempts are being made in ■■ Frauce. to ll* train oxen for saddle-riding, and several races have been organised to test their capacify. They have been'. trained not only - v'as racers 011 "the flat," but also as success- 1 ? ful jumpers. The bridle and saddle .used ' are similar in general design to those for I hunters. • • . .'■. • Spiders are- notoriously and historically Ml fond of music. At a performance on the Continent recently the concert-hall was made disagreeable' by tho sudden invasion of spiders, which were drawn from the cracks 5 and crannies of the ancient building by a \ ~ violin solo. The crawled about ihe floor > and on to the stage. , It is said that Japan, with a population * : -, 1 of about 47,000,000, employs upwards of i 3,600,000 persons in her fishery, fish-curing. l|iS and aquatic industries, including * profitable seaweed and sea-salt' farms. Great Britain and Ireland, with a population already ex- - ® ceeding 45,000,000, probably do Hot. even. ■" ■ employ 200,000 persona in these trade* ,