NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18891, 13 December 1924, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Drugs cost British provincial hospitals about £200,000 a year.

In Madagascar, silk is the cheapest form of clothing material.

About 270 tons of rails arc required to build one mile of railway.

Japan is the only country where seaweed is cultivated for human consumption.

Of the eggs of the great auk there are only seventy-five recorded examples in existence.

One lump of contuins the concentrated sweetness of about two feet of sugar cane.

Billiard halls are usually made from (he best ivorv, which costs as much as £158 a cwt.

Beneath King's Cross Station. London, there are acres of kitchens, pantries, stores, and wine cellars.

A London lecturer stated recently that chronic laziness should in many cases he regarded as a disease.

Poppies sold on the eve of Armistice Day last year for Earl ILug's Fund for e\ Service Men realised. 1259,000.

•V wedding-ring lost twenty-seven years ago has been pushed up in a garden at Hadley. near Worcester, by an onion.

London's meat ration, according to what passes through her markets, is about 2Ub. per head of the population every week.

British typists carried off the high speed and " perfect correspondence " prizes at an all-Europe contest recently held in Paris.

The fastest flowing river in the world is the Sutlej, in India, which rises 15,000 ft. ihove the sea and falls 12,000 ft. in 180 mile.-.

Women smokers now have accommodation specially reserved for them in a new express train between Chicago and St. Louis.

Among the women of America, 187,863 are registered as farm owners, 770 as farm managers, and 73,801 as tenant fanners.

Firemen on railway engines in England just over half a century ago started workat 15s for a 60-hour week; drivers received 30s.

Billingsgate, London's great fish market, (overs 39,000 ft. of floor space, while 182,000 tons of fish were handled there last year.

Skates arc found in comparatively shallow water, and have been known to attain a length of 6ft. and over, not counting the tail.

Parasol ants derive their name from a habit of biting off pieces of leaves much larger than themselves and carrying them over their heads.

The British climate has been too much for an Eskimo visitor from Baffin's Land. He caught cold on practically the first day of his visit to London.

Steam trains cannot leave a station platform at less than three-minute intervals or twenty in an hour. In the same period forty electric trains can be despatched.

A famous panther, known and feared for ten years in the neighbourhood of Secunderbad, India, has at last been killed. Its body bore numerous old scars of bulletwounds.

Third-class passengers in Britain have no legal right to enter a first-class carriage, however 'crowded the train, unless they are told to do so by a railway official.

Experiments are bjjing made in a Continental laboratory to> discover whether it is possible to abolish fatigue in man by means of a secret substance for preserving the muscles.

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which is now practicallv stamped out, cost Britain about £3,5(50,000, and -wan responsible for the destruction of over 200,000 animals.

In many parts of China, the women attribute magical properties for the euro of certain diseases to water drawn after midnight of the seventh day of tho seventh month. A roll of Egyptian papyrus fifteen feet long is being translated by an expert. It deals with surgery and medical treatment as practised three thousand years ago by quack doctors. British volutary hospitals are now in a much better financial position than they were in 1922; 66 per cent, of them had a surplus of income over ordinary expenditure last year. Parachute descents from aeroplanes, which are a feature of French aviation meetings, are often made by young inexperienced girls, who are tempted by the offer of a small fee.

Law costs amounting to close, on £800 were incurred in connection with a window broken during tho delivery of a ton of coke in Bradford. The case was carried to the House of Lords. " Cycle-airships," in which the rider operates a screw propeller by means of pedals, are to be tested, in Italy. Above the rider is a gasbag of sufficient size to support the wwght of the machine. Tho air contains some very rare gases. Neon, a gas used to fill electric bulbs required to give an orange-coloured light, is so scarce that St. Paul's Cathedral would only contain enough to fill a nutshell. Begging-letter writers are known who get regular incomes from their skill in wording pathetic appeals. One of the principal of these —a woman—has cashed cheques for more than £50 in one week. If the morning newspaper train, which leaves London at 4.45 a.m., started ten minutes cither earlier or later the effect would be felt in various parts of that railway system until 6 p.m. of that day. Tusks of ivory which have been dug out of prehistoric ice in Siberia were recently sold by auction in London. Their age has been estimated as at least 50,000 years, but the ivory itself is discoloured and cracked.

Geniuses have often come from large families; Balzac was the youngest of a long line. Napoleon was an eighth child. Benjamin Franklin was the youngest of seventeen, Wagner and Mozart were both seventh children.

Married couples who go to Paris courts in search of divorce are in future to be

in rooms with iron doors, resembling cages, while waiting to give evidence. This is to prevent noisy and painful scenes such as have occurred in the past.

Housewives who are fortunate enough to secure one of the council houses at Barnes (Surrey) will be able to sweep a room, boil a kettle, make toast, and do ironing by means cof a special electric plug, at a total expense of 3d weekly.

A roast ostrich 3ft. Jong and weighing 301b. was among the dishes served at a dinner partv given by some Australians in London recently. The ostrich was sent from Australia in" a block of ice and was cooked on a spit before an open hearth.

" Surplus women," so much discussed of late, will be rare in Briiam m 1971. 'three vears ago women between 15 and 65 were twelve per cent, more numerous than men of the same age; m about half a eenturv this excess is expected to drop

to li per cent. Employees of the Northern Pacific Railwav Oompanv, of America, have just been insured for \£10,000.000. The premiums are paid bv the company, and the policies, which fall"due at death or if the employee ■ s totallv incapacitated before sixty, are issued to the employees after a probationary term of service.

Mr Alfred E. Moore. Director of the College of Pestologv, has been experimenting with flies with a view to lessening their number.' He says the experiments proved conclusively that certain flies possess weak temperaments, other* assertive, while some are decidedly aggie sive The more aggressive and possess a resistance to disease in dirw> ratio to their trucuience.