NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18943, 14 February 1925, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Christmas cards were first sold in England in 1846. It has been decided to electrify 400 miles of Japanese railways. Luminous gloves are being worn at night time by Paris motor-drivers. The New York police department has added six aeroplanes to its equipment. The United States is now importing bananas at the rate of four million pounds' worth a year. Two hundred thousand tons of sulphur are passed into the London atmosphere by coal fires every year. Bermuda and Mauritius have decided to take part in this year's British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. About 500 rooks who raided a field of beans of one and a half acres, in England, cleared the whole crop in a morning. Pollen grains have frequently been discovered in honey, and it is thereby possible to identify the flowers from which the honey was gathered. The Briton, a liner of the Union Castle Company, has made her last voyage. She is about 27 years old and has steamed more than 1,500,000 miles. The only swan that breeds in a wild state in Britain is the mute swan, which lays from three to six dull greenish-white eggs and then hatches them out. Twenty-five passenger trains carrying 4000 people were delayed at Durban because of a railway smash that had caused the lines to be covered with treacle. The largest bell in Britain is "Gren§ Paul," in the south-west tower of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. It is 9£ft. in diameter, and weighs seventeen tons. There is being recorded on the Brave Deeds Board of a Hackney school the name of Edward Orchard, aged 13, who has saved six children from drowning. Mrs. Louisa Scheller, of Fulham, who has died at the age of 90, was an apprentice milliner in the West-end when a girl, and helped to make Queen Victoria's hats. A crested canary, exhibited recently at the Mansfield Cage Bird Society's show, was judged to be the best bird in the exhibition, and valued at the sum of £2OO. * If the speed limit was abolished road collisions and the work of the county court would be doubled and trebled, said Judge Sir T. Granger at Greenwich recently. In America 200 million pounds more is spent every year on mot©r-cars than on furniture, and more money is paid to chauffeurs and mechanics than to school teachers. Miss Phyllis Woolliscroft, of Ilkeston, near Nottingham, has gained the distinction of being the first lady solicitor in the Midlands. She is going", to reside at Singapore. A thousand people the other day watched the mounting of the new bell for Cologne cathedral, replacing the great bell melted down during the war. It. weighs 25 tons. Edinburgh's famous landmark, the monument erected in memory of Sir Walter Scott-, is stated to be unsafe in its highest parts. It is 200 ft. high, and was designed by a working mason. Spherical, cast-iron shells made their appearance first about 1600. These w r ere nearly filled with gunpowder, the rest of the space being occupied by slow-burning material to act as a fuse. The Thames flows for twenty-three miles through the County of London. There are twenty-one bridges across it and nine tunnels underneath, two of the latter being for road and foot passengers. "Electrified" sheep on a Caiifornian farm are said to have produced a greatly increased yield of wool and twice as many lambs. The method adopted is similar to that used in electrifying crops. The earth's axis inclines at an angle for the same reason that a spinning pegtop circles round at an angle, and only gradually assumes an upright position, going to an angle again if knocked. Sixty thousand tons of cast-iron segments will be required for lining the tunnels of the new CUapham-Morden Tube extension. The total amount of material to be excavated will be about 500,000 tons. Three men were each fined 10s. at Hereford lately for playing pitch-and-toss in the churchyard at Breinton during evensong. It was stated that the vicar had been forced by the noise to stop the sermon. While showing a pit boy how mice were electrocuted, an electric pump attendant in the Croxdale Coal Mine, County Durham, accidentally touched the terminals with a lamp he held. Ho was instantly killed. Before the rising of the curtain on each act of the Chauve-Souris Company at the Strand Theatre, London, every member of the cast crosses himself or herself four times in accordance with the ritual of the Greek Church. Sir Hugh Lucas Tooth, M.P. for the Isle of Ely, and the youngest_ member in the House, played football in his constituency recently. He was right-half for Manea, "a village in the heart of the Fens, against March Town. As showing the revived interest in the British breed of bulldogs,'""Mr."' H. T. W. Bowell, secretary of the Kennel Club, points out that, whereas jpniy 572 registrations were made in 1919, in 1924 the total was over 1400. The word Zodiac means belonging to animals, and is the name given to a belt round the heavens containing twelve constellations which were named after animals owing to a fancied resemblance to the outlines of their forms. Two foxes which entered a fowlhouse at Pearsedown, near Bath, in December, and destroyed 30 fowls, were shot while making a second visit. The owner says these raids are an annual occurrence and always take place just before Christmas. In Guernsey, according to an analysis of the census of the Channel Islands ju«t issued, " the proportion of gardeners is remarkable and much higher than found in any of the English counties." The total population of the islands in 1921 was 90,230. For over 30 years Beaumaris Port Sani. tary Authority' have maintained a floatinghospital in 11 to Mcnai Straits for infectious cases from overseas, but not one has ever been treated there. It has now been decided to send any cases to the Bangor Isolation Hospital. Lizards and other victims are fascinated by a South American snake by means of its tongue, which is parti-coloured to match the reptile's forehead, cheeks and uuder iaw. When the tongue is shot out it looks as if the snake's snout were suddenly elongated into a wriggling point. \ queer African snake, which lives on eggs has a tooth-liko spike projecting downwards from its back bone, just behind the head, which is tipped with enamel. When it swallows an egg the latter passes down the gullet until it encounters the spike, which breaks the shell. The steamship Triritolite had a strange experience not long ago off the coast of Peru, when, for mile after mile, she ploughed through a sea milky white. The scientific department of the United States Navy accounts for this phenomenon by the presence of myriads of floating microscopic white plants. Mr. Thomas Knott, postman, was warmly praised by the deputy coroner at Hackney, when a verdict of accidental death was recorded in the case of Caroline Allen, of Dalston. who was btimed to death. Knott ran into the house and ex - tinguished the flames with his mail hag | and overcoat*