MEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13727, 18 April 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

MEWS IN BRIEF.

| Small-pox scars cannot be removed. Photographs were first taken in 1&&, .. It costs £13,146,000 a year to run Lot* don. Only 900 peopk in a million di« of old age. Imitation coffee beans are being made of flour. A Laplander will often skate 150 miles ia a day. Santa Fa is the oldest city in the United States. American girts spend £50,000,000 » year on sweets, England spend* £1,900.000 » yn< on foreign gloves. A man should weight 261b fot every foot of ins height. _ Ihe population of America increases b? /Ctu persons ,» cay. Kpping Forest is the Urgtst recreation ground in the world. About one-third of the population of th« world speaks Chinese. Due inch of water covering two *jti»r# feet measures a gallon. To read all the standard works would take a nun 3000 years. The Atlantic Ocean is six and a-half f«>et higher than the Pacific. Blood travels through the body at the rate of 12 feet a second. Over £106,000.000 worth of telegrams *nd cablegrams are sent annually. Over a million miles of telegraph winw are stretched over the earth. Only four per cent, of the rank and fibs of the British army are married. In the northern parts''of India sheep. are made to serve as beasts of burden. Over two million cedar pencils are used every year in the United Kingdom. The average weekly loss of vessels on the seas throughout the world is 12. Among the Greeks breeches indicated slavery. A free man never wore them. One thousand new preachers are needed every year to keep the. pulpits supplied. Use soft water for watering plants. If it is naturally hard, soften by adding sods. At meetings of the Cahient no official record of any kind ,s kept of its proceedings. The British colonies are seventy times as hit as the area of the United Kingdom.

There is enough magenta, dye. in a pound of coal to colour five hundred yards ol flannel.

It is said that a craving for intoxicant* can be killed by eating a plentiful supp'y., of apples. It is estimated that one million and a-half of the inhabitants of London were born i». the country. An Antarctic iceberg has been seen that, was 20 miles wide, 40 miles in length, and 400 ft in height. It is estimated that £8,500,000 yearly changes hands in bets on horse races in tlm United Kingdom. The highest church steeple in England is that of St. Walburg's, Preston, which is 303 ft in altitude. Over £10,000 worth of pearls were taken from mussels in the Tay in three years during the lust century. The knife on a guillotine is weighted with 1501b of lead. It falls nine.feet in threequarters of a secondNinety thousand boys and men <»re solely engaged in the occupation of fishing roniul the coasts of England. A glass factory at Liverpool possesses a glass floor and a smoke stack 105 feet high, built of the same material.

Mr. Albeit Midlane, who has written upwards of 1000 hymns, has never received payment for any of them. Cylleue, a well-known stallion, haft been sold by Lord Marcus Bcresford to th* Argentine Republic fur £25.000. The hairspring on a watch weighs onetwentieth of a grain per inch. One mile of this wire would, weigh less than eight ounces. ~ • In Germany all workmen, servants", and clerks above 16, and getting less than £100 a year, are obliged by law to insure against old age. The Hampstead " tube" is the deepest subterranean railway in the world, being 251 ft below the surface just north of Hampstead station. Lake Moral, in Switzerland, turns red every ten years, owing to the presence of a tiny plant, which is only visible through a microscope. Women are recruiting for the Liverpool Scottish Volunteers. The one who get* the largest number to jr in the ranks will win a £5 prize. An orange hit exactly in the centre by a riHe shot will vanish. The fruit is spit* up into such small pieces that it is. impossible to rind them. From eight ounce of coal we get font' different dyes—Vermillion, imigncta. aurine, and alizarin—in quantities sufficient to colour 1620 yards of cloth. Recent discoveries of representations of the process of oyster culture show that the ancient Romans' methods were more advanced than modern in this respect. Greek and Roman doors always opened outward, and when a man was passing out of a house he knocked on the door. so at not. to open it in rite fair of a passer-by. In flic reign of Charles f. the rates of postage were:—Coder 80 miles, twopence; 80 to HO miles, fourpenre; over 140 miles, sixpence; London to Scotland, eightpenc*. James Quitrby, of Bolesbury, Bucks, hai a record as. a voting citizen. He was 90.;' years old on November 19 and bilked U, the poll on election day, and has voted 6$ times. Three hundred Berlin streets are planted with GOO trees, which are said to represcut a value of nearly £40.000. About a thousand gardeners and assistants are employed to take care of them. The Spanish Armada. with which Philip of Spain attempted to conquer Britain, consisted of 132 ships. 3165 cannon, 8776 sailors, 2033 galley slaves, 21,855" soldiers, 1355 volunteers, and 150 monks. Underground photography has recently made such progress that mining engineers are now able to illustrate their reports with pictures showing the exact appearance of ledges, ore bodies, and other features of importance. After the death in a garret of a blind beg« gar named Martin, who hud lived on chanty for years at a village near Clermont-Fer-rand, the police found a quantity of copper coins, worth in all £160, stuffed iu the mattress of his bed and under the bed. Altogether there were about 60,000 copper coins which Martin hoarded. Creslow. a parish in Mid-Bucks, has bub, a single ratepayer. He is Mr. Richard Rowland, gentleman farmer. Besides being the owner of the whole p?rish of 885 acres, Mi. Rowland, whose age is 35, is Ids own overseer, rate assessor, rate collector, parish council, department of public highways, auc a host of other public things. Some undertakers, whose customers are poor people, are using coffins made of. paper. The coffins are made in all styles of pressed paper pulp, just the "'same as th* common paper buckets. When they art warms A . and stained they resemble, polished wood, and in point of durability it if claimed they are much belter than woode* ones. Motor-car breakdowns have been so fits* quent recently with the. young actresses oj London, who are fond of motoring, thato they have often been unable to return to towu in time for the theatres at night. Managers are now introducing in their agreements 1 a clause to the effect that then* shall be no motor rides "outside the Leade* radius'' without written permission, '" r, r'"'.