NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17471, 15 May 1920, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Middle names were once illegal ia England. In Petrograd sugar is now being «ld at £600 a pound. The population of the African continent is 180,000,000. Chinamen regard it as impolite to wear spectacles in company. There are over 300,000 boy scouts in the United Kingdom. Over 25,000 people live permanently on. caral boats in England. An eagle kills it? prey with its claws and never with its beak. Brazil has nearly 800,000.000 coffee trees now bearing berries. The Thibetans put out the tongue as at sign of respectful salutation. Over 6,000,000 acres of land are under tobacco cultivation throughout the world. In Berlin, Professor Toss found the maximum speed of pigeons 100 feet per second. A butterfly farm has been started in France to supply scientists' demands for the insects. The value of London as estimated by the authorities who lew the rates is £55,500,000. Burglars recently broke into the Viennn Art Museum and stole treasures worth about £800,000. Africa's mines produce a quarter of the whole world's gold and four fifths of the world's diamonds. By Julv of this vear America's navy will consist of 940 snips of all kinds, including 16 dreadnoughts. The weight of a uniform coating of on« inch of rain over an acre of surface is 226,5121b, or 113J short tons. It is said that at 60 years of age i woman's chance of marrying is one-tenth of 1 per cent, or one chance in 1000. It is a curious fact that all fresh* water snakes in India are harmless whila all salt-water snakes are poisonous. Count Leopold Ferri, of Padua, hiA a library consisting of 32,000 volumes, aH of them the works tl female authors. Nearly a quarter of a million young eels have just been placed in the Thames to increase the English food supplies, Epidemic and certain other diseases ar« practically unknown in and about places, where bleaching powder, etc., are made.

Of all bodies of salt water the warmest is'the Red Sea, which has a temperature, even at it greatest depths, of 70 degrees.

The Japanese host never entrusts the making of tea to his servants on nigh occasions; it is a task he invariably performs himself.

Salt miners can wear summer clothes in the coldest weather without fear of catching cold, for colds are unknown among these workers.

In Turkey the disappearance of the sun at night is accounted for by the periodical retirement of that pious luminary for prayer and religious reflection.

Belting used on machinery in the Russian petroleum fields is made of camel's hair, which is said to resist greases better than rubber, cotton or leather.

On January 1 last, thero were in the public and private lunatic asylums rf the United Kingdom 96,340 patients, including 3739 who were classed as ex-?ervica patients.

According to estimate, fully 7000 norsepower to the acre, or about 4,400,000 horsepower to the square mile, reaches the earth on a clear day in the form of radiant heat. In converting an English park into an airdrome, engineers buried several hundred, feet' of a river and made it flow through an inverted double siphon built of concrete.

The cost of living since 1914. has gone up 200 per cent, in America, 250 per cent, in Britain, 330 per cent, in France, and Italy, 1000 per cent, in Germany, and 4000 per cent, in Austria. While consumption of margarine in Great Britain has increased from 3000 tons a week in 1913, to 8000 tons a week at present, the consumption of butter bad decreased correspondingly. . The solar system, in its race to some such goal in space as the star Vega, according to Herschel does eleven miles in a second, and according to later authorities from twelve to fifteen. <* Halley's comet approached our earth, in the August of 1939 at the rate of 500 miles a minute, being . accelerated to 2000 miles a minute and more as it increasingly felt the attractive force of the sun. It is estimated that in 1920 Mexico will produce 135,000,000 barrels of oil and that 120,000,000 barrels -will be exported. Thus Mexico will find about 20 per cent of the weld's oil requirements. Every family in Buenos Aires is to have the privilege of hearing at least one opera each season free of charge ati the new municipal opera house, to be erected under the supervision of the government. Man's walking cannot get much beyond six miles an hour, which was what Joseph Calib of Dumbarton achieved, without a break, in the distance between Dumbarton and Glasgow on the 2nd January, 1820. . It is 'supposed by many that all gold is alike when refined, but this is not the case. Australian gold, for instance, is distinctly redder than that found' in California. The Ural gold is. the reddest found anywhere. If the estimated total of £1,000,000, stated to have been recovered from the wreck of H.M.S. Laurentic, sunk in Lough Swiily in February, 1917, is correct, it represents by far the biggest thing ever accomplished, in the way of the ' recovery _ of sunken treasure.

A plan is reported for chartering a steamer of 10,000 tons, remodeling it into a suitable show place for Japanese products, aind sending it round the world. At each foreign port at which the ship stops, representative citizens will be invited on board and made more familiar with Japanese merchandise. The first bedstead of which history has anv account is that described in the book of Deuteronomy iii., 11. belonging to Og, King of Bashan. It was "nine cubits in length and four cubits in breadth," or about 16 feet long and 7 feet broad This was kept as a curiosity to prove how; great a man Og had been. It wag some time in the '60s of last century that red ink was first made. The only kind of red ink before known was made of cochineal dissolved in powerful solvents, and its colouring was destroyed when used with a steel pen. A gold pen or a quill was necessary. But with the new ink a steel pen sufficed. The Philippine Bureau of Agriculture announces that in consequence of energetic campaigns against locusts, no swarms of these insects have been reported anywhere in the islands since September, 1917. This is a condition that has not existed previously at any j time since the earliest settlement of the archipelago. Although to-day we all shake bands on meeting as a matter of course, there was a time when purists held that friends of opposite sexes, should not salute one another bv shaking hands. In 1820, Sa John Nicholl, giving judgment in » divorce case, remarked that conduct highly blameable and : distressing to the feelings of a husband had been proved j but, although 30 witnesses, had been «■ amined, no indecent familiarities beyond S had been proved. The -shaking--1 0 hands when ■• they;Smet ■■ was 1 now. av ; practice so frequent between -persons.:of y different sexes, however opinions might , £ as to itTdelicacy, that no oaSMWggft