NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13537, 7 September 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Ton two dogs owned in England Frsnc* has five. Balloons are used for drying linen in Paris laundries. Pekin is known in the East as the " Potbidden City." - The oldest document en linen paper appeared in 130 S. New Zealand has seven bishops; Australia thirteen. Steam does for £1 what would cost £160 to do by hand. In three years the progeny of a pair of rats number 1000. A railway engine may roughly be said to be equal in strength to 900 horses. Russia leads the world in planting forests. America in devastating them. Whistling «il do much towards the development of a robust physical frame. There are 200.000,000 copies of. the Bible scattered throughout the world. . About 48 per cent, of all the crime, committed is the work of habitual criminal*. A farthing of Henry 17. has sold for £17, and a half-groat of Edward 111. for £23. _ .. '.':':.-..': ■■>.-■<■ In a survey between Chicago and St. Louis an error of only one-half inch was' made. . . ~ . '' •; Fully one-third of the land in Great Britain is' owned by members of the House of Lords. '" " .. " '."' 1.'.;; ' The finest silver fox skins come from Labrador, and are worth as much as £40 apiece. •.,.'. . ■'■ :i >.""! .'".■ '"■'" In England there are forty-one crimes committed by men for six committed by women. ;; ' No one knows precisely what proportion the blood bears to the weight of the human body. Wedding-rings were worn by both Jews and Romans at dates long prior to the Christian era. " * - • * .: The decrease to the world's shipping by wreck and breaking up averages 725,000 tons yearly. For sewage-farm disposal of sewage one acre of . land is required for every five hundred inhabitants. The. Civil List of the Kins of Greece is the smallest in Europe. It does not exceed £40,000 a year. In English towns dry refuse thrown, into dustbins overages a weight of 101H per inhabitant per week. It is calculated that, the amount spent in advertising in England < amounts le about £90,000 every day. . ~-'<■ China and JaDan produce 12,500 tops of silk annually; but" about 60 per cent. of this is retained for home use. v ~ The number of deaths that occur on the globe amount to 67 a minute, and • the births to about 69 to 70 a minute. * \ The blood thrown out by the ,neaH'; travels seven miles in an hour, or 4,292,000 miles in a lifetime of seventy years. , -J The average size of Australian flheep runs is 36,000 acres, while sheep runs • in South Africa average only 5500 acres. ';^ The most costly war in the world was the American civil war. It.cost the North 1200 and the South 800 million pound*.' . Of thirty species of hardy fruits com ■ monly grown in English garden*, about ten are indigenous to the country. There is an increase in infant mortality of late years both in France and England, and also, but to a less extent, in Prussia. Tho autograph of Queen Elizabeth is worth about £6, that of Henry VIII. £8, while an autograph of. Heury VII. fetches £18. ■ . ■ ■' -' ';' i■ "- Tho State coach used by the King/of Spain is drawn by eight pure white horses, with white plumes and 'white harness. ". Tho word "slothful" is rather a mi 8nomer, for in its native habitat large tree—a sloth can, and does, travel Very rapidly. ■ ■'".'.*, !/*'■" The United States has 5840 building societies, with nearly two million members, and . capital exceeding 98 millions sterling.. , , \ r ,' 0 * Bronchitis and similar complaints are responsible for the deaths of more people in England than are any two other dilleases together. f ■■'■;■ '■ '«?• - To erect an ordinary telegraphic Me on poles costs £30 to £35 I mile. VTo put the wire underground costs eleven times that sum. , '.V' The ashes of the meteorites caught and burnt up in our atmosphere add, It is estimated, 1000 tons weight to the earth every three years. > "■,\',C~\. The Paris Academy of Medicine offers a prize every year for the discovery of an absolute cure for tuberculosis. So far, no one has won it. , - , . A box thrown overboard by the steamer Hunter was picked up 20 months and 26 days later, having drifted in that time 'a distance of 4791 miles. Excluding about 80,000 . small vessels, the commerce of the world is carried on by 30,100 vessels, of a total tonnage of about twenty-five millions. f

The porters in Constantinople are /said • to be the strongest men in the world, and i after them the Chilian miners and the I bearers of Northern China. : ' The skull of a human being grows rapidly up to the age of seven years, and then very slowly up to the age of twenty. After that its growth ceases entirely. ,-. The guns at Waterloo were heard at Dover, 180 miles away ; and the Jubileeguns at Spithead, in 1897, were heard at Bridgwater, 100 miles as the crow flies. In 1850 the fastest vcsbc! afloat was the Asia, of 1500 horse-power, and 11 knots. In 1856 came tho Persia, of 13 knots; and in 1883 tho Alaska, of It knots . ... .• '.■'• -.' During historic times Spanish America has yielded 220 tons of gold, of a value of 310 millions. The total output- of the United States is approaching . the same figure.. •.;;-; ■; ..". ■ , ,-:,•;;i-j,' $£■ .Danes seem more prone to commit; suicide than any other people. About; 256 Danes per million die yearly by suicide, which is nearly treble the average for England. The fifteen principal learned societies in: England have a total membership of nearly 35,000. The agricultural has the largest membership; the geographical comes second. . .'' The worst attack of cattle plague known in England was from 1865 to 1867. \ 124,332 cattle died and 110,163 were slaughtered. On this occasion the plague was imported from Russia. Horse-chestnut is a totally misleading word. Here horse" is a corruption of the Welsh word " gwres," which means hot or pungent. So, too, in the expression " horso-laugh" and horse-play.' Scottish banks differ from English in that they have the power of issuing notes, which are not repayable in gold except at the head office. Thus the cost of opening a branch bank in Scotland is very small. In the United Kingdom 46 per 100,000 inhabitants are in prison. This average compares favourably with other countries.In the United States 132 per 100,000 are in prison on any given day, in Italy 217, ana in Cape Colony 310. ; ' Street porters lose more work through illness than men of any other occupation. Their average loss is 9 days; the average for the whole country is 5 2-3 daysClergymen are the best off in this respect, losing as they do only 3J days apiece annually. 7 ' Our domestic poultry are believed -to have originated from the jungle cock of Northern India. Domestic fowls are not mentioned in the Old Testament, but they were known in Babylon TOO ' 8.C., aria. Julius ■ Caesar. found thorn in England nearly 2000 years ago. The Chinese kept poultry in 1400 B.C. * .."'" ..:' ' * ■'_~.',:.;{.'..'•■.: " -'■:] '\ - •',; V'. ;';■■■