NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16234, 20 May 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

J oak of Arc could rot read or write.

Japanese and British bluejackets dress alike-

Bushmen's food consists largely of locusts.

Mayors of London used to be elected for life.

Maces arc carried by Turkey's irregular cavalry.

The Irish make jellies out of a kind of sea-weed.

Yachts have been made wholly of aluminiumMilton was blind when he wrote " Paradise Lost." Three tons of grass usually give one ton of hav.

The salary of the Archbishop of Canterbury is £15,000 a rear. In Japan tea-leaves are often ground into powder before use. Four out of the last nine Tsars of Russia have been assassinated. The longest drought on record in England lasted forty-nine days. In one year a horse or a cow will eat nine times its own weight. The arms of Aldershot are an alder-trea and pyramidal heaps of shot. The carcase of a horse yields four hundred and fifty pounds of meat. It used to he illegal to charge mora than Is 8d for a hat in England. London is seven hundred and forty-six miles from Berlin by mail route. Visiting-cards made of sheet-iron were one of Baron Krupp's specialties. Every year about fifteen people out of every thousand in England marry. Eclipse, the famoys racehorse, was unbeaten in any of its eighteen races. Phrenology was at one time forbidden by law, as being dangerous to religion. Unskilled seamen in a ship's crew are called " boys," no matter what their age. The letters A.P.F. on the back of a train mean " Another Portion Follows." Nearly one-third of the entire surface of of the globe is covered by the Pacific Ocean. Pads and gloves only came into use in cricket with the introduction of over-arm bowling. Foil is used by jewellers under the setting of precious stones, to add a lustre to them. * An official song-book is issued by tha Lords of the Admiralty for the use of bluejackets. From fifteen to fifty Brazil-nuts grow in one seed vessel, which is as big as a man's head. There is a law in Nebraska requiring hotel proprietors to furnish bed sheets 9ft in length. There was three times as-*auch silver in the old fourpenny groat as there is in our modern shilling.

One bricklayer can '±y about 1500 or 1600 bricks in a day of ten hours, leaving the joints roughThe descendants of a single pair or rabbits would, in four years, amount to over li millions. On a fine day a. weather-glass on a hill a thousand feet high will declare that th» weather is stormy. The inhabitants of the United Kingdom receive, on an average, about seventy-five letters each a yearAt one time in England people were prohibited ,by law from making hats of anything except heaver. Eight olive-trees on the Mount 'of Olives, Jerusalem, are known to be overeight hundred years eld. Speakers of the House of Commons generally receive a pension of £4000 and a peerage on retirement. Red ants may be kept out of sugarbarrels by drawing a wide chalk-mark round the top, near the edge. Al at Lloyd's means hull, anchors, cables, and stores first-rate ; A2, hull firstrate, but furniture second-rate. Over 80,000 officers and soldiers of the Salvation Army are now arrayed against each other in the European v-ar. According to palmists, short hands denote impulsive judgment without- analysis, while long hands denote capacity for detail.

Weavers of Cashmere shawls take two

or three years to finish a pair of the very finest. These shawls fetch upwards -of £100 in LondonLord Roseberry is averse to pink. The sight of a lady in a pink dress has caused! him to lose the thread of his argument in a political speech. In the Scottish Highlands in olden times a burning wooden cross was carried blazing to and fro among the clansmen to rouse them to battle.

Bridal, a3 meaning a feast to celebrate a wedding, is really " bride ale," " ale ' ' being the term formerly use to indicate any festival in England. Dropping from a height of 6000 ft, the 35-ton weight of a Zeppelin would strike the earth in a little over seven seconds at a speed of 5000 ft per second. The Chinese language is very difficult to learn, for, although there is no alphabet. it is necessary to master about twenty thousand syllabic characters. Birds have an extra eyelid, which can be drawn over the eyeball to protect it from the strong sun, while the proper evelid remains open, enabling them to see-

A rough census of war workers has revealed that approximately three million people are employed, directly or indirectly, in furnishing supplies for the army and navy or for our allies. Australian bower birds construct galleries under hanging branches, which they adorn with highly-coloured feathers, rags, shells, bones, etc. These bowers are used for mating in the breeding season. A bar of iron worth £1, worked into horseshoes, is worth £2; made, into needles, is worth £70 made into pen-knife-blades, is worth £657 ; and made into balance-springs of watches, is worth £50,000. Three hundred years ago glass windows which were only to be found in the houses of the wealthy, were considered so precious that when people left their houses for a time they used to take the windows out and put them carefully away. In normal times England and "Wales has about 50,000 police, of which London claims over 19,000. Scotland has 5616. and Ireland nearly 12,000. The cost of police protection to England and Wales, including London, is about four and a half million pounds yearly.

The serfs of Russia were liberated 54 years ago by Alexander 11., grandfather of the present Tsar. These serfs were not. slaves to be bought and soJd ; they could only be transferred with the land they tilled. The ukase of the Tsar pave freedom to fifty million serfs in the Russian Empire. Italy harvests about 22.000 acres of tomatoes yearly, and the wastage amounts to practicallv " nothing- The skins ami seeds, formerlv discarded, are new utilised. the former as" stock feed and the latter as a source of oil. The crude oil is suitable for soap-making and for lamps and the refined product is said to be edible. Siberia. Russia's great dominion in \sia contains nearly five million square miles It lias a much warmer summer than is generally imagined, the spring beginning in April or .May, according to the district and continuing until the end of August-' The winter is. however, very severe, all rivers being frozen oves by the end of November,