NEWS IN BRIER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17853, 6 August 1921, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIER

m< • Copper is said to have been fiisf; dlseoXJ ered in Cyprus. New York City boasts of S«S 13,000 miles of concrete sidewalks. The first submarine built in Spain; has been launched at Carthagena. In only 14 Chinese cities are tltara fatephone systems of appreciable sizs* The president of one. of thp largest Trade Uaions in America receives £5000 a year. A recent report shows thai China fc.'S 45,000,000 sheep, 23,000,000 hogs fcnd 16,000,000 cattle. Fifty-three of the ships of thfl Roya3 Navy completed during 1914 can novr bs regarded as obsolete. Mexico's output of petroleum for tbq year will total 27,000,000 barrels, 50 pes cent, above that of last year. Coal has just been discovered in the Isld of Man, which up to the present, has had to import every ounce it has used. The aeroplane altitude record-, 33,1.33 ft.* was gained by R W. Bchroeder in the United States on February 27, 1920. An expedition supported by Americas science it to search for the blue tiger, an unknown species, in Southern China. The death-rate from fever is at. present the lowest in the history of England and the least of any country in the world. Tame snakes are used in Morocco to clear houses of rats and mice. The sight of a snake seems to terrify the rodents. The telephone wires in the United States aggregate 28,827,108 miles—enough to girdle the earth at the equator 1153 times. The area of the City of London is a little over one square mile. The area of the County of London is 117 square miles. A man appearing in Bow Coanty Court as a witness had his bald head tattoed with stars, birds, a stag, and other animals. There are 1,500,000 Jews in New York, as many as in all the rest of the United States, and a tenth of ail the Jews in the world. A Danish expedition is excavating id South Greenland for relics of the Vikings. An ancient ourial place has already been discovered. A proposal to raise the age for attendance at the day continuation schools to 16 was defeated at the London Education Committee. At Munich on September 15, 1909, Paul Guignard rode 63 miles 255 yards in an hour. He was motor pacetT and had a wind shield. On Whit Monday the London bams and buses carried 5,000,000 passengers. Th« population of Ixindon b than 8,000,000. A Chilean mountain consLsta of an ahnosi' solid mass of more than 100,000,000 tons of high grade iron ore averaging 68 pea; cent. metal. The malt liquor called porter is said to have obtained its appellation on accouxtb of its having been drunk by porters in th 4 City of London about 1730. An average spruce tree when converted into paper yields about 500 pounds of th»* product. If a novel runs to 300,000 copied the destruction of trees would be 600.

To awaken the interest of the Frenchi people in their Far Eastern Colonies, films of li|e there are being made by the Cot* oniaJT Office for e-rbihition in France. The average deposit of soot over Loodod for the year ending March 2L, 1920, was 40,000 tons. In 1916, it was 55,000 tons* and since then it has steadily diminisliedLi A painting which has hung on the wall of a room at King's College., London, for many years has been identified as one oj the best examples of the work of Vandyckw The bamboo sometimes grows'two inches in twenty-four hours. There are thirty varieties of this tree; the smallest is only six inches in height, and tho largest 15Q feet. It is authoritatively stated that ths United States intends to retain the 300,000 tons of German shipping which was seized in American ports when the United States entered the war. French surgeons have discovered means to remedy the amputation 6f the thumb, one of the commonest of factory accidents* The big toe is grafted from the patientfjj foot on to his hand. The material damage dene by smoke td property in Manchester and Stlford is estimated at £1.000,000 a year, or about £1 per head of the population. In Pittsburg the damage is £4 per head. Lambeth Guardians are buying black stockings for the aged women in theic home at Norwood, to be worn when they go out, as the white ones they regularly; wear are considered unsightly. French breeders of Alastian wolf doga (which are making as much as £500 or £700) are sending experienced commercial travellers to push the sale of the breed in the principal countries of the Continent. The number of visitors to the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, London, during April was 113,629, and the receipts for admissions £3519. The total number of visitors from January 1 to April 30 342,646. The opening of the summer session a£ the London County Council commercial institutes in June showed a notable increase! in- tie number of young men and women who are learning Spanish for commercial purposes. The structure of the eye of a fish is suefal that the organ is specially adapted to contact with the water. Indeed, the eya| of the fish needs water as, like the whale's, it has no tear glands, and would; no# of itself keep moistened. Three giant wooden trestle bridges! k* Alberta, Canada, one 235 feet high, mors half a mile long, *T»d containing 1,200,000 feet feet of timber, are no longer) in use, and are being dismantled so that the timber may be sent to France to help] in reconstruction. The decline in American prochicfcroii ofi wool is the subject of a report which H attracting some notice in the United States. The requirements rose gradually! from, 681,000,0001b in 1910 to 68,000,0001H in 1920. In ISIO homo production waa 321,000,0001b; in 1920 it had fallen tot 266,000,0001b. Imports had consequently; risen from 260,000,0001b to 422,000,0001b.. At a time when there is an appeal fr«t funds with which to purchase flour fed! shipment to the Chinese famine victims* it is rather unbelievable that in normal times China produces sufficient flour £o» export purposes. Yet in IS2O almosS 6,000,000 barrels of Chinese flour wera shipped to Europe. New mills are contemplated in the wheat-growing sections. Canada has now attained third place amongst the nations of the world as « shipbuilding country. With a coast line of such tremendous length on both Atlantic and Pacific, and the most extensiv* fishing grounds in the world, it is broV natural that shipbuilding should be an important industry to the Dominion of Canada. According to the Department of Marine and Fisheries, the gross tonnage built in 1920 was 204,635 tons, representing 351 vessels of one kind and another. Forty-three thousand eight hundred and two persons in the United Kingdom were assessed for super-tax in 1918-19. One hun-< dred and six enjoyed incomes of more than £100,000; nineteen fewer than in the ye* p prior; but three more than in 1917. The total number of super-tax incomes had increased in the year by 9402, but this was 1 acocunted for almost entirely by the low« ering of the assessable limit from £3000 to £2500. There were 24,713 incomes under £5000 on which super-tax was paid, aa compared with 16.707 in 1918. The total wealth assessed showed continuous progress. The figures are: 1916-17 g j £261,939,179; 1917-18, J 1918-19, £333,482,427, I