NEWS IN BBIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13325, 3 November 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BBIEF.

Silver crowns were first coined in 155!. The normal life of a mouse is three years. Pigs have been known to kill and devour sheep. Queensland has 56 men to every 44 women. Snails' eyes are at the end of the upper pair of feelers. The longest mile is the Hanoverian. It is 11,559 yards. Fourteen pounds of good hay will keep a sheep for a week. The sailing ship James Barnes once covered 420 miles in 24 hours. Sheffield uses yearly over two million ring-bones for knife-handles. The Hindus will never willingly sleep with their heads to the north. Flowers as a rule are about 1$ degrees warmer than the surrounding air. A falcon, trained to carry messages, has ■ covered 750 miles in sixteen hours. The Gulf Stream runs out of the Gulf of Mexico at nearly five miles an hour. It is calculated that British newspapers use up nearly 450 tons of paper dailySouth American theatres all have galleries, to which ladies only are admitted. Nickel and 'bismuth both have the peculiar property of expanding as they cool. The Greek Church forbids the marriage of those more nearly related than third cousins. ' : " . ,■■ A bridge between England and France would, it is estimated, cost 34, million pounds. . Otto, or essential oil of roses, costs £120 per pound; oil of jasmine is worth £108 per pound. ■'.■■• ~,' - • The Abyssinian peasant is bathed but thrice in his life— birth, at marriage, and at death. -'■-,*■; Montreal has the largest flourmill in the British Empire., It turns out 5000 barrels of flour a day. n ...;.,■;.-: The light emitted by a firefly is absolutely without heat. It is due "to a form of phosphorescence. - In the United Kingdom there are 3420 .-/■ persons to ten square miles ; in Australia, 13 to ten square miles. At the Skerryvore lighthouse a force of wind of nearly three tons to the square foot has been registered. , . Worms bring to the surface yearly as much as ten tons of soil to the* acre on grass and cultivated land. ■ ■ : The mercers are the richest of City guilds, then the drapers, third the clothworkere, and fourth the goldsmiths. The population of Ireland has been declining at an average rate of over 20,000 a year during the past ten years. • Wheat seed will germinate in one day, but barley . takes; seven ; days, and peach kernels require twelve months. Cats' fur has no oily substance in it, and consequently is more easily wetted through than that of most other animals. The huge camellia, tree at Pilnetz, near Dresden, .is over 40 feet high, and has . about 40,000 blooms every season. The metric system is based on the.distance of the equator '.. from the pole. The.," ' ten-millionth .of this is called' a metre.; ,'• . At John Hopkins' University, Baltimore, is, a thermometer which is said to ■be the finest ever made. -It cost £2000.' The huge statue of Liberty in New York'. ' Harbour' is built up of cast 1 iron. V Thef^^r-£.„ V| face; is covered with a thin layer of copper. : -'"■■' '.Godaid's huge: fire-balloon, .made in 1864, was • heated. 1 by an i eighteen-foot stove, *' weighing with the chimney almost half a ton. ;"' 5 ;.,-'.:.'. :; .;•', ,'.•''■'■;..-,', ; -,-..: ",- i.';V.K- ;■-':■: .j-" j --v:.:-'".'f

In the reign of Queen Mary; square-toed shoes became the fashion, and a proclamation forbade their 'width to- exceed v six inches.' v .-,.. -•. •/ - : .-•> "•■'■,-' .-^;-'; : ' ii"- : \'-:i'( One hundredweight of poppy seeds will yield about 601b of oil, but sunflower seeds yield only 151b from a hundredweight of seed. . . Austria was the next country;after England to build and .open a steam railway. * She beat France in this respect by one day only. - Bank of England - notes for £10 were first issued in 1759. "Previously no notes ,' were under £20. Notes for £5 were first issued in 1793. ."'""•- "_• John Thomas Hewitt, a sailor; walked up to a policeman at Birkenhead, and asked to be locked up, as he feared he might commit suicide. Book-keeping is said to'have been first t regularly practised at Venice in the fif- * teenth century. .A treatise on' the subject waa .published in 1494., f v The Black Stone at Mecca is undoubt- 4 edly the _ oldest idol in ' the world. 'It was once white, but has been worn black? by .--• the kisses of 'the faithful. " The learned, boy of Lubeck, Christian . He'necker, could read at one year- old, and write before he was three.'. He only lived four years, but before his death could speak four languages. A Blackburn man named: Meehan, who, was summoned for assaulting his sister; ex- '< plained that he was annoyed/because the ? girl spent all her money on scented soaps, , face powders, and hair washes. - - A motor-car was entering Coventry when a hare was started' on the roadside. The ' hare kept well ahead of the car until Coventry was reached,'and then the hunt waa joined by several policemen. The hare escaped. • *■ " ..■/;.:;:;/,,: : :V'<v A new species of trout which has been discovered in the United States has been named after President Roosevelt. It is said to be the earnest of all the trout, and is a '.-.•■, native of Volcano Creek, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. During 1905 there were recovered from the Seine, at Paris, 101 human bodies, 2114 dogs, 898 cats, 2869 rats, 568 hens, 36" ducks, 92001b of meat. 215 rabbits, 12 sheep,; - • 31 horses, 44 pigs, 3 calves, 1 monkey, 1; serpent, and 681 birds. ' " ■•"',.' -*- Miss Mary Alexander, of Eckington, ; Villa, Reigate, celebrated her 103 rd birthday recently. , She lives with her two sisters, Elizabeth, who' is 93, and Sarah Ann, ; who is 90. ,In the afternoon she entertain- - ed a party of friends at tea. ; ' ' j The Zuyder Zee, Holland's great inland I sea, is not a natural feature of the country, I but was formed by a tremendous inundation. due to the culpable neglect of a highly-paid State official, who failed to remember that certain dykes needed repairing. Mr. Robert Bedford, the oldest inhabitant of Woking, has just died at the age of 93 years. When he was married 70 years ago' his wife was warned that he could only live a few years; and might die at any moment from heart disease. Judge Lumley-Smith, K.C., decided in " the City of London Court, that a father is .;■ not liable for debts contracted by his minor son for clothing. He said that a father is not bound to support his son unless the sou becomes chargeable to the' Poor Law guardians. . ...■.-: " ■ f The cost last year of the bridges controlled by the Corporation •of < London * as.. Towe/ Bridge, £14,480; £1325; Southwark Bridge, r £2035, and Blackfriars Bridge, £2328 Tbeßndge House Estates had a. balance in hand ot £23,889. No 'fewer : than 1,500,000 ' picture poetcards were delivered daily in Paris during I July and August—an average of one per I head for the entire adult population. The normal number delivered daily, is 700,000, but this .vas swollen by cards sent home by holiday-makers. While the two young daughters of a farmer near Sioux Falls, lowa, were gathering berries their dogs found a wolf, which, how- . ever, killed ; them. ■> One of the girls ran at the wolf, rained blows' on its head "with a pail, stunning the animal, and then, killed' , it before lit' 1 could recover. '■'.'": . ,J -■■■■■ r ".■'""■'-...'.•.'' .."*. -.' . ,:■■,'■■ '■.':.''- ■ ; ..,- .■..■.'■■.'.*'■