NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18281, 23 December 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Only one man in 203 is 6ft. high. The mainspring of a watch is 2ft. long. A kangaroo could jump a fence llftf. high.

Five chapels in London are now used as factories.

The mines of the world employ about 3,300,000 men.

A coffee tree yields about a pound of beans in a season.

"Peculiar" is the strange name of a. little village in Missouri.

Blood passes through the heart at the rate of seven miles an hour.

Cotton valued at £152,000,000 was damaged by the boll weevil in 1921.

Burns' Clubs, in all parts of the Eng-lish-speaking world, number over 300.

Women lawyers are much more numerous in America than they are in Britain.

Ants which can eject poison through a hollow sort of tub© exist in Indo-China.

The first male musk ox to be captured alive arrived recently at the London Zoo.

A young man in the Sussex village of Ditchling is said to be suffering from leprosy.

It is proposed to build another bridge over the Forth at Alloa at a cost of £171,000.

King George's racing-pigeon cotes at Sandringham are among the finest in the country.

The average maple-tree yields enough sap to produce between five to ten pounds of sugar.

A real "champagne." made from Devonshire apples, can now be obtained in England.

Policemen in Sweden receive small decorations for their knowledge of foreign languages.

Dragon-flies, which are quite harmless, are often falsely accused of having stinging powers.

St. James' Park, London, used to be a swampy meadow, in which stood a hospital for lepers.

Bronze turns green with age in Britain only; on the Continent it turns a dirty black in colour.

Products of dyestuffs factories have the property of kilting the germs of about fourteen diseases.

When not ton duty, soldiers in the British Army may wear Flanders poppies on Armistice Day.

Vegetables grown on allotments in England average out in value at about £10 per plot annually.

Perfumes remain costly because the materials for making them are still twice as dear as in 1914.

Bermondsey. London, has 80 miles of streets, of which about 70 miles have been planted with trees.

Cress- is the quickest growing plant- Tt has been known to flower and seed within eight days of planting.

Farmers in Nebraska, U.S.A., have found it cheaper to burn their corn than to sell it and buy coal for fuel.

An eagle can live twenty-eight days wfTuout food, while a condor 'a said to be ame to fast for forty days.

Living to be over 100 years old, Mrs. James Johnston, of Montreal, has outlived everyone mentioned in her will.

Danish eggs are now numbered by a special system -whereby each can be traced to the farm from which it originated..

With a population of 800. Sennen, England's most westerly parish, has eight persons between the" ages of 82 and 95. Fully 25,000 people visited the wireless exhibition, which closed afc the Horticultural Hall, Westminster, London, recently.

A whip snake nearly 4ft. in length wan discovered in a bale of Turkish carpeta which arrived seme time ago in London.

Thursday is regarded as the hardest day by London busmen; it is the most popular early-closing day, and so traffic is heavier.

While crossing the Atlantic in a fog recently, the steamer Andania had to sound her whistle constantly for over 3000 miles.

A torpedo-plane, able to travel at 150 miles an hour, and carrying a torpedo weighing 1± tons, is being built lor the Air Ministry.

Tips amounting to £10 a week are often given to the porters dealing with the luggage of American visitors at one London terminus.

Two people were killed and three injured when :i waggon loaded with explosives blew up near the Dutch Customs station at Oldenzaal. After voyaging 45,000 miles round the world, during a period of nearly two years, a motor-ketch, 129 ft. long, recently arrived at Cowes. A stockman, named Henry Gilbert, who has just died at Westwell, near Ashford, Kent, at the age of 82, had been employed on one farm for 74 years. Halifax, Yorkshire, has two building societies, the largest and the third largert, respectively, in England; their combined assets amount to £15,000,000. Typing 106 words a minute, a member of the staff of the International Labour Office, at Geneva, has just won the French Typewriting Championship. "Women are more absent-minded than men," says the manager of one of the biggest key registries in England lose" their keys much more often." Lady Ann Cavendish, the 13-year-old daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, broke her "collar-bone while out with the High Peak Harriers at Monyash, Derbyshire. Hamburg's " Zoo," formerly one of the finest in the world, has now only one polnr bear and one elephant, although it still has a fair show of lions and tigers. Turtles, snails, and frogs' legs prepared in certain ways are to be placed on the " banned" food list, and import of them forbidden by the German Government. Magnificent armorial bearings and decorations, after being hidden for two centuries under a heavy coat of varnish, are now being restored in Westminster Abbey. When a small wooden house at Valenciennes collapsed with the noise of an explosion, it was discovered that a giant fungus growing beneath the floor was the cause of the damage. After spending £9 15s on cultivating a plot of marrows, a Bedford farmer recently sent a ton of the vegetables to market. In return he received Bd, after all expenses were paid. The 5000 varieties of dahlias now on the market have developed from the wild single dahlia which was introduced into Europe from Mexico a little more than one hundred years ago. The British Houses of Parliament cover an area of eight acres, and have a river frontage of 940 ft, They contain more than five hundred rooms, and abort eighteen residences, the resident population being about two hundred. Unexplodei shells, bombs, and other " live" war souvenirs to the number of 66C0 have been picked up in Paris streets since the beginning of this year; it is suggested th?t owners of these dangerous articles are " dumping" them to get rid of them.

The halo had its origin nearly two thousand years ago. To guard against the possibility of rain etaininjj the marhla faces of their gods tho Greeks need to protect them with a large metal plat© placed over the top of the head. These were mistaken by painters in later years for emblems of divinity. Accordingly, our Christian saints are pictured! with, |&| ring which we call a halo*