NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16895, 6 July 1918, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The Hou3e of Lords has 635 members. Sixty persons in every million are born blind.

London gets weekly 4,000,000 boxes of matches.

Eton boys aro digging soldiers' plots in England. Aliens in prohibited areas in Britain number 1809.

Making paper heels is a Shoreditch (London) trade. Sixty thousand soldiers' graves have been photographed. A locomotive going at express epeed gives 1056 puffs per mile. Seven hundred and fifty thousand British shop assistants are on service. A " nickel" is American slang for the five-cent piece, and is equivalent to 2^d. It has been proved that plants thrive better under white gase than under green. Over 7000 men and 30,000 tons of supplies are sent daily to France from England.

The average depth of British coal-mines is 800 ft. The limit of practical mining is 4000 ft. More tobacco is smoked per head in the United States than in any other country except Holland. Seven thousand Canadians have been decorated by the British Government for conspicuous bravery. Of 2585 Old Hnileyburians who have joined up, 1373 have won honours, including three V.C.'s. Forty-three tons of farthings, or 15,000,000 pieces, were issued in eleven months of last year. The number of cars in the Province of Ontario, in Canada, has increased from 220 in 1903 to 100,000. Sixty-one million out of the 121 million acres which make up Spain's area are mountain and waste land. Marble is still quaried in the way em. ployed over 2000 years ago, when the Parthenon at Athens was built. During the past twelve months pay for tile British Army amounted to £112,000,000 and for the navy £13,000,000. Owing to fraud and other reasons, 1,300,000 excess fares were collected on the London district railway (underground) last year.

Babylon's population could never have exceeded 1,200.000. Probably the number of people in Borne was less than this figure.

As tho result of the simplification of divorce proceedings 38,000 applications for divorce have been made in Pctrograd since tlie Revolution. A war gift of twenty-five thousand pounds has been unanimously voted to the Mother Country by tho people of Jersey Channel Islands. A tablet to Thomas Gray, author of the ;" Elegy in a Country Churchyard," has been unveiled at his birthplace, 39 Cornhill, London.

Land in England and Wale* under wheat on February 1 was 2,504,000 acres, compared with 1,225,000 acres on the same date last year. Sir Swire Smith, who became M.P, for Keighley in 1915 when 73, died in London recently. He was tho founder of the first technical school in England. Blinded soldiers at St. Dunston's, London recently gave Gilbert and Sullivan'u "Trial by Jury"; three V.A.D.'s played the plaintiff and her bridesmaids. Soldiers' wives may not tinder any circumstances be evicted for non-payment of rent in Germany, according to a recent decision in the Berlin law courts.

Sinco tho beginning of 1917 the British output of high explosives' has more than met our own demands, enabled us to build up large stocks, and supply our allies. The fountain pen is not a recent invention, as might bo imagined; for it is referred to in Samuel Taylor's " Universal System of Shorthand Writing," pub* fished in 1786. An Imperial clogs office is Germany's very latest war department. _ It will deal exclusively with the acquisition and distribution of wood suitable for use as soles

for boots and shoes. Confectioners in Austria have been forbidden to make cakes or pastry containing flour or any flour substitute. Bakers must use the flour apportioned to them exclusively for making bread. The new Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick. Dr. Hallinan, refused the use of his cathedral for a requiem Mass for the late Mr. Redmond on the ground that it would bo introducing politics. Statistics show that the food bill of an average workman's family in Christiania, which in 1910 amounted to 645 kroner, is now 1136 kroner. Christiania is the most expensive place to live in Scandinavia. In 1913-14, just before the war, nearly 3,500,000,000 letters were dealt with in England. It fell a little in 1914-15, but even with the decrease 3,409,000,000 letten, were carried, equal to 74 letters per head of the population of the United Kingdom,.

Lung gas is the name which the soldiers have given to the suffocating vapours that | 1 are used against them by tho Germans. The gas comes over in waves, and immediately sets up irritation of the breathing passages which subsequently develops into tuberculosis. If one big ship containing 6000 tons of ! wheat is sunk, it means the loss of . 5,376,000 half-quartern loaves of 21b each. That represents the loss of a week's bread ration for 2,688,000 people, or the star- -. I vation in bread of a fair-sized town for i fifteen months. Unique features marked the celebration of the golden wedding of a couple in Pennsylvania recently, they held the anniversary in the same house in which thewedding had been solemnised, and wore the game clothes in which they had been married fifty years ago. At the beginning of the war broken meat and other table refuse in camps and barracks was generally tlirowir into the tubs outside tho cookhouse, and sold as swill for pigs. But now glycerine for munitions is obtained from this " waste" at the rate of 1200 tons a year. The navy offers financial inducements to I the men to become good shots. A gun- . I layer, Ist class, receives 8d a day in addition to tho pay of his substantive rating, ■ and there are corresponding allowances for the various grades of proficiency, down to 3d a day for a seaman-gunner. The speediest of all dogs, the Russian wolfhound, is to be used in Utah to rid tho State of wolves, which have lately ; been very destructive to stock. The dogs ought to be profit-makers, for it is said that each wolf they run down will net £30 to the dog's owner, the stock owners paying £20 and the State £10. Burma is the world's largest producer of rice, and, though less than a tenth of tho crop is exported, even then her ex- . ports constitute more than half the rice which comes into international trade. The Burma rice crop overages twenty-eight million tons a year, and upwards of two and a-lialf million tons are exported. The tallest chimney in the world has recently been completed in &»gonoseki, ■ Japan. It is of rcinforred concrete and i stands 570 ft. high, on a hill 430 ft, higher ji than the copper smelter with which it is .-. connected, so that it discharges its poison- M ous fumes ICOOft. above the plant. The • chimney is 42ft in diameter at tho base. '-■-,-, Caught in the nets of some Dutch fishing ; vessels, a German aeroplane was destroyed ; and the pilot turned over to the Dutch Government. The Germans, sighted theo-.j fishing-boats and came towards them close to tho water's surface. Tho 'piano. had ' " been riddled by English shrapnel. An ex-['.■.-'• plosion occurred after the aircraft had r ;;- : dipped into the water and had ■ become en- Cmeshed in the note.; The officersi- : wer* rescued and interned in Holland. i ' ' ■: