NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 13967, 28 September 1918, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

.An apparatus for aerating water was.' patentee in 1807. The highest clouds aro only about ten miles above the earth. Gloves were first worn in England in the reign of Edward 11. Card-playing was first introduced into England in the year 1350. Tea plants at the age of seven years yield 7001b of tea to the acre. President Wilson golfs every morning and goes twice a week to the theatre. The game of billiards was invented by a Frenchman named Devigne in 1572. That most indispensable article, the pin, was invented in England in 1543. A woman tractor driver lias ploughed thirty-four acies in a week in East Sussex. More than 22,000 teachers havo left the British schools to join the army and navy. Nino acres of potatoes have been planted by the authorities in Richmond Royal Park, Surrey. The citizens of Grimes County, Texas, have agreed to use no wheat until the next harvest. , Dr. Hermann Rosemeier, former editor of the Berlin Post, predicts a social revolution in Germany. A chauffeur to or.e of tho highest offi- ; cers at Camp Green, U.S.A., is a millionaire several times over. A London fortune-teller who boasted she had told the fortune of the Kaiser 27 years ago was fined £5. In the parks i.nd open spaces of the I London County Council there are no I fewer than 11,000 allotments. Grey horses aro the longest lived. Creams are usually delicate, and are seriously affected by very warm weather. When Libiu was bombarded during the early days of this war, house windows rattled in Gotland, a hundred miles away. Over eight thousand special constables havo been serving in the London Special Constabulary since the beginning of the war.

Feathers strewn in the path of a bride took the place of rice and confetti _ at a wedding held at Boston, Lincolnshire, recently. If every bullet had found its billet, all tho combatants on both sides would have been wiped out in the first three month» of the war. A dug-out similar to tho Y.M.C.A. dugouts in" France behind the firing-line has been built outside the Aldwyeh Hut in. the Strand, London. Engineers in Norway are planning to coT.solidate and unite several small waterfalls to obtain 200,000 hydro-electric horsepower in one plant. fix weeks profit on waste paper collection by Depford Borough Council (England) amounts to £56 8s Bd, being at the rate of nearly £500 a year. Of eighty-sir army chaplains who have given their lives at the front, fifty-seven were Church of England members and nineteen Roman Catholics. Sea-shells murmur because the vibrations of the air, not otherwise observable, are collected in the shell, and by its shape are brought to a focus. East Finchley (Eng.) Baptist Sunday School has, at a cost of £93, sent to men serving with tho forces, 2150 letters, 8200 newspapers, and WOO magazines. Sold just after the declaration of war foi £13,000 and in 1915 for £15,250, the steamship Sydney Beid, 2852 tons, has just changed owners for £42,000. ' The largest painting in the world, exclusive of panoramas or cycloramas, la in the grand salon of the Doge's Palace at Venice. It is 84ft wide by 34ft high. School children in Germany get reward stamps for collecting old papers, scraps of metal, rags, and even hair, all of which are used in Germany's extremity. Russia, with a population of nearly 130,000,000, has only about 19,1U) physicians. The United States with a population of about 100,000,000, has over 120,000 physicians. Not yet nineteen, with over two years' service at the front in the Royal Fusiliers, Sergeant-Major Arthur Bailey, of Hounslow, London, has been promoted regimental sergeant-major. A horse owned by a rural mail-carrier of Nashville. Indiana, U.S.A., is twentyseven years old, and has travelled 60,000 miles during the thirteen years he has been in the mail service. Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, daughter of Ex-President Roosevelt, sold the superb sapphire bracelet the Kaiser sent her for a wedding present and donated the proceeds to tho Red Cross. The Lancashire Fusiliers still retain the custom of shouting their Minden yell, and on Minden Day wear their roses to commemorate the stubborn stand they made in the rose gardens. , The record for hard work at Woolwich Arsenal (London), is held by a fitter in the gun-carriage section, who has not missed a single shift of fifteen hours' ■ daily since Ihe outbreak of war. . i During the two days' stay of the yesI ceL at Portsmouth 17,000 persons visited ! tho Liverpool ferry a|teamers Iri!s and ' Daffodil which landed raiders at Zee-

Brugge under terrific German fire. Th« famous Warboys (Hunts) cockerel has now raised £9000* for the Red Gross. In three years he has travelled 11,900 miles, has been sold 8500 times, and mode thirty-five times his weight in gold. Clog rations are now being given out in Germany. An Imperial Clogs Office has been created, which will deal solely with the acquisition and distribution of wood suitable for the making of clogs. Engaged on tanks for use in the manufacture of margarine, a London workman rereu'.ly established a new record by driving in 4276 rivets in a nine-hour day. Tim pneumatic tool used by the man weighed 2841b.

Germans are now using dye in their gas shells to stain the craters and thus I warn Germans to keep clear of them as I they advance. The gas hangs in the ! craters for hours after a shell has exl ploded. Since the employment of women conj ductors, the executive of the London Gen--1 oral Omnibus Company has interviewed no fewer than 30,000 applicants, and fourteen per cent, have been accepted and passed into the service. A thousand hostages havo been torn from their homes by the German military aut' : : ues in Northern France, and sent to Molzminden camp. They have been I selected from among the notables, and included educated, refined girls. An infantry sword has been presented by the United States to the armories of tho Tower of London. It will bo exhibited in the same case as the swords present by the Japanese, Belgian, French, Montenegrin, and Italian Governments. ! There u a little fish which haunts the weed tracks of the Gulf Stream, and there builds its nest and lays its eggs like a bird rather than a fish. This animal imitates in colour the weed it lives in, and, like tho chameleon, constantly changes its colour. Watered milk was excused by a dairyman at Swansea, Wales, last spring, under a novel plea. He told the judge that it was quite true the milk was adulterated with water, but that a large snow-ball had fallen into his pail as he was making his rounds. A scheme for preventing parasites of the cabbage family from depositing their eggs comes' from the U.S.A. Department 'of Agriculture It consists in placing sand saturated with kerosene— cupful to a bucket of dry sand—at the base of th« plants along the rows. It will alio kill young maggote.