GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19061, 4 July 1925, Page 3 (Supplement)

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

A RECORD-BREAKING BRIDGE. A brirlgo which, when completed, will ho tho greatest mechanical achievement in the history of engineering is to bo built across the entrance to San Francisco Harbour. Tho bridge will be 4000 ft. between piers, more than double the length of any otlfFr bridge in the world. The towers will lie 1010 ft. high, and the total length of, the bridge will be 6640 ft.. SURGICAL MARVEL OR MIRACLE. As the steamer Montrose was nearing Quebec recently William Holland, of Liverpool, a fireman, lay apparently dead, of pericarditis. There was no sign of heart beats or respiration. An Irish priest admininistored the last rites, and asked for the prayers of the other passengers. Later the ship's surgeon operated upon the patient, and an extraordinary recovery was seen. Passengers were divided as to whether this recovery i> attributable to a miracle or to tho surgeon's skill. 21', 1,000 LONDON DOGS. Only 21,222 menservants were employed in the. County of London last, year, according to n ref&rt presented to the, London County Council. Last year the council received £115,165 from this source. Dogs, of which there were 217,039, accounted for £81,390 of the revenue, armorial bearings brought in £3203, and licenses to kill game £7232. There were 9120 persons who forgot to take out licenses of one sort or another last year. Those who forgot to license their dogs numbered 7639. DISAPPEARANCE OF A DOLPHIN. The man who tried to sell the lions in Trafalgar Square to an American tourist has a rival in Paris. He went to 1 he Place de la Concorde, the noble square in Paris, where workmen were doing repairs for the city authorities, and told the foreman he had been sent to take the bronze dolphin from cno of the fountains. Tho man had a hand -art with him and the workmen obligingly helped him to hoist, the. dolphin on to it. He whoeled it away, and now the best endeavours of the poiice have failed to trace him! BOAT GIVEN TO THE GODS. Oaken timbers lately discovered during ploughing at Haugasund, Norway, arc supposed to be part of a fourth century Viking ship which never reached the launching stage. All the pieces of the timber show clearly the. marks of workmen's tools. One piece, about nine feet long, is delicately curved, and was evidently intended as part of the vessel's prow. It is supposed that the timbers were left by the builder or owner as an offering to the gods. It, was a custom to attempt to propitiate the Old Norso deities by presenting them w;th portions of a valued piece of work. THE SILENCE OF CARLYLE. When Sir James Matthew Barrie, who celebrated his 65th birthday in May, was a lad at' Dumfries Academy, he occasionally caught, a glimpse of Carlyle when the Mgo visited his sister, Mrs. Aitken. The old man would walk dourly through the streets, taking no notice of salutations, but one day J.M.B. and a friend determined to get a word from him. Waylaying tho great man on a lonely road the boy inquired if he could kindly tell them the distance to a certain vil- * lage. Carlyle merely lifted his staff, pointed to a milestone in the near vicinity, and silently passed on. ROMANCE OF AN ABBEY. Ramsay Abbey, the seat of Lord d* Ramsey, who died recently, has a stratum of romance undeilyinjj its rather modein magnificence. Twice within a short period tlie^estate descended to female, heirs, arid in both instances the unforeseen happened. In 1674 the joint heiresses, members ot tho Cromwell familv. sold the lands to the noted Colonel TiMis, whose writings afterwards shocked the great Protector. Then the colonel died, leaving the estate to his wife and daughters, the latest survivor of whom left it to two servants. From th-rn it was purchased into the Fellowes family, ancestors of Lord de Ramsey. FINDING A LOST GOLDMINE. A voung American mining engineer has just rediscovered a very old Mexican goldmine in a curious manner. In the days of Cortes the Spaniards called a mine, by tho name of Cucaracha, the Spanish for cockroach, because of the large numbers of these insects that swarmed near it. At tl ie time of the Mexican rebellion of 1812 the mine was sealed up. Apparently everyone who knew the secret was killed, because nobody could ever locate tho Cucaracha mine, The engineer who had heard the story came, while prospecting, upon some rocks that seemed alive with cockroaches. Ho immediately thought of the old Mexican story, and a careful search resulted in the ancient workings being discovered. ADMIBALS AITD THEIR BATONS. The rank of Admiral of the Fleet, in which there is a vacancy by Sir Doveton Stui dee's death, does not necessarily : carry with it a baton. But there have been cases in which b.itc.ns were awarded as a personal gift from tho Sovereign. The last instance was that of the Duke of Edinburgh, who received a baton from Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, in 1897. The baton bestowed upon William TV., in 1820 hv Oeorge TV., and granted in turn to Admiral of the Fleet W. P. Williams-Freeman, who was promoted three days after William's accession, may now be seen at the Royal United Serve f* I titution Museum. Tt resembles that of a Field Marshall except that tho staff is blue instead of crimson. LEAD MINES GIVEN AV/AY. A wanting has been issued to Derbyshire lead mine owners that they tnav ii,l; possession of their workings unless Ihcv p'tnrn to mining for lead instead of sundry more piofitable bv products us<>d in ,teel manufacture This recalls the, curious law-, governing tlie lead mines < i the IVak di liact. Every mine, of which there are hundreds in the county, i-, registered by the l'iriiiasfer of the Soke, and any mine left nr.'.v -irked beyond a certain period can be i laimcd by anyone who .--arcs ro do so. 'When a claim is marl" the owner is notified that unless he recommences operalions within 21 days tiie mine passes to the new claimant, who has to pay certain fees, and assign a percentage of the ore won as royalty to the Crown. NEW LORD LEVERHULME. The lain Lord Leverhiilnio is succeeded in the title by bis son, tho Hon. W. H. Lever, who is 37. The new peer is tall and robust, and has a knowledge of men .Hid affairs gained by a thorough training , in his father's business. On leaving Cambridge be followed, as far as he could, bis father's career, and went to work at the soap factories at Port Sunlight, where he learnt the business from bottom to top. The new holder of the title has a great capacity for work, and has been actingcliairman of Lever Bros, for many years. The new Viscountess Leverhtdme —a few years younger than her husband—is the daughter of tli6 lato Mr. Brycc Smith, and lived before her marriaue in a residential suburb of Manchester. They have one son ahd twe daughters.

TUNNEL 13 MILES LONG. For five yenrs engineers have been slowly drilling away 10,000 feet below the summit oi Keiser Mountain in California. It was a thrilling moment when the tunnel was finished lecently. About £4,000,000 have been spent on the tunnel,. which is 15 feet wide, and over 13 miles long. It is to unite the waters of the Florence and Huntingdon Lakes in the San Joaquin valley, and will he the longest tunnel in the world to be used for the development of electricity. SEATS IN THE COMMONS. Mr. Speaker has reminded the House of Commons that seats are a matter of mutual courtesy. The House of Commons, which has more members than seats, has persistently maintained tho rule that there is no prescriptive right to any seat in the House. There is one exception. A member who has been thanked by the House in his place has a light, to that particular seat as long as ho is a member of the Houst., but such cases are extremely rare. Even the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition have no absolute right to their places, as was made clear many years ago when Cohbett " jumped" Peel's seat on the front Opposition bench. TRADITIONS OF CYPRUS. Cyprus, in the Mediterranean, which has been proclaimed a colony, has a curious medley of associations as the birthplace of Venus, the place where St. Paul inado his first convert, the Roman pro-consul Paulus Sergius, l and the burial place of Halima, the foster mother of Mohammed, much visited by devout followers of the Prophet. Venetians, Genoese, and Crusaders had their part in tho history of Cyprus, and there is a gruesome story of the capture of the Castle of Famagusta by the Turks in 1571. The Venetian defenders capitulated on a promise that their lives should bo spared, but the. Turkish admiral promptly flayed Brigadino, the Venetian general, alive, stuffed his skin with straw, and hanged it to his yard-arm. PEOPLE OF MANY LANGUAGES. Professor Alice Werner, of the School of Oriental Studies, who, besides knowing most European languages, teaches the dialects of some 300 African tribes, would have delighted Byron, who counted himself something of a polyglot, and loved to meet others who could equal or excel him ill linguistic achievements. Byron's greatest find was Cardinal Mezzofanti, afterwards librarian of the Vatican, who could read, speak, and write in over 50 languages, irrespective of dialects. The poet put, him through various tests, and declared, "Ho is a monster of languages who ought to have been at the Tower of Babel to act as universal interpreter. I tried him in all the tongues of which I knew a single oath, and, egad, he astounded mo even in wy English! " LONG-DISTANCE PROPHECY. A mysterious volume, " The New Koran," published in London in 1861, is now exercising the attention of the School cf Oriental Studies in Finsbury Circus. Only one copy of this remarkable book can be found, although tho school have tried everywhere to obtain a second. They are now consulting the British Museum authorities on the subject. The main interest of the volume to the a vera go man is the fact that, although dated thirty-nine years before tho end of last centurv, it predicts the great war of 1914. A body calling themselves the Pacifican Fricndhood seems to have been responsible for The New Koran," and a, "key" to the volume is promised on the last, page. But so far this " key " has not been discovered. SEEKING ALEXANDER'S TREASURE. Search has been begun bv the Azerbaijan Archaeological Society for the. treasure of Alexander the Great,' which is believed to lie buried near the village of Andrivka, in the Shemakha district, about 65 miles from Baku, on the Caspian Sea. Although there arc no precise historical data indicating the existence of such a treasure, the archaeologists were led to excavate by tho statement of a resident of Andrivka, named Savelieff, "who declares ho is in possession of an ancient map taken from a Turkish sultan many years ago, showing the exact spot where the treasure is buried. Tt, is an established historical fact, that. Alexander's troops mutinied at one point in the great empire-builder's campaign against Persia in 331 8.C., and local legend has it that he hid all his gold and royal possession, together with the spoils of war. somewhere on the Caspian littoral, in order to prevent, them from falling into the hands of the mutineers. A COALFIELD COMEDY. A reported discovery of coal on an estate near Winslow, Buckinghamshire, has set tho experts by the ears. The people of the district have long believed that there was coal in the neighbourhood, and a number of experts, who have visited the scene of the find, declaie themselves satisfied that there is coal close to the surface. On the other hand the Geological Survey are very sceptical. They say the geological structuie of this distiict is such that, it coal exists at all there, it can only bo at a very great depth. A shallow shaft is being sunk, and the progress of the opeiations is being watched with much inteiest. Who will prove right, the mining cxpeits or the geologists? For. if what the. former sayis true, if coal is found near the surface in this part of the country, it, will be in defiance of all the laws of geology. HARVEST OF SNAILS. The harvest of the succulent snail of the cultivated spaces for European consumption has begun in Suitzciland and France, and thousands of men and women vvili be busy throughout t!ie coining European summer in this curious industry. The annual production in both countries is about .£3,000.000, but as the demand is far greater than the supply, the devices 'of tho adulterator supplement nature, and pieces of meat, generally veal, are introduced into the empty shells. The large fields which are prepared for tho propagation of the snail generally lie at the edge of a wood or fere.it, sheltered from the sun. During their short lives cultivated snails are supplied daily with vegetables and greens in plenty. A snail has thousands of tiny teeth. These are arranged in 135 transverse rows on the tongue, and as there arc as many as 105 in each row, it follows that an average snail possesses over 14,CC0 teeth. The price of snails in restaurants varies according to the season and the " crop," but the average tariff is Is. to Is. 6tl. a dozen.