NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19292, 3 April 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

During a year a mo!o cats 20,000 earthworms.

There arc honey bees in India which build combs 13ft. nigh.

Machinery now in use can punch eyas needles at (he rate of 7000 an hour.

Voluntary hospitals in Britain spend 18.000,000 a year in tho treatment of disease.

Some disabilities, such as deafness, are aid to be associated with the colour of lie eyes.

Only one modern girl out of 20 knows how to sew properly, according to one expert in England.

The island of Madagascar has a belt of forest twenty miles deep which completely encircles it. Nearly 1000 ex-Service men are now employed as gardeners in tho War Cemeteries on tho Continent.

Salaries of teachers in London elementary schools will, it is estimated, cost £74,135 less this year than last. Among tho students recently called tc the Bar in England was tho Baronesi Clifton, a peeress in her own right. If a man walked four miles an hour without stopping day or night, he would walk round the world in 37 weeks. Jackdaws, magpies, squirrels, hedgehogs, cranes, peacocks, and swans we«» popular dishes in tho Middle Ages. Workmen have been searching for ova* 15 years for a leak in tho gas mains oat* side Vauxhall Railway Station, London. Mechanical dolls, which can walk witfc quite a natural'/grace, are being used a> mannequins to display the newest fashions The oldest ship in tho world Still in com mission was sold recently. She was buitit in 1800, but is still sound in her timber* For perhaps tho first, time for a dance recently took place in the Towee of London. It was held in the officers' mess. An average orange-tree produces, aboul 20,000 oranges, and a lemon-tree 80QC lemons. Twelve ambulance stations are maintained bv the London County Council The ambulances deal with some 600 cascr; a week.

The Monument, London, which is 202 ft. high, was designed by Sir Christopha Wren to servo as a tube for a lorifc telescope.

Bigger than Big Ben, Westminster'* famous bell, will b'e the now bell just ordered from a Croydon firm for export to America. - ■ ,

Only ono person—the King—is exempt from the payment of postage. Othat members of tho Royal Family affix stamp® to their letters.

Pope Pius XI. has instructed a ne-w Feast, that of " Christ the King," whiat is to be celebrated annually on the lai% Sunday in October. Millions of pounds -aire spent every yeu in Britain on furs, mostly rabbit, whicki are imported from all parts of the world, but could be produced there.

A gigantic lamp of 450,000,000 candlepower is used to guide night flyers in the Trans-Continental Air Mail Service between Chicago and Cheyenne. Human skulls are changing in shape, according to Miss V. Georgo, a London scientist, who believes that our faces are growing longer and narrower. Fifteen thousand letters, written between 1833 and 1883 by Mme Huhetto Brouet to Victor Hugo, have been sold in Paris by auction for 18,000 francs. Flats, in a new block of buildings in Piccadillv, London, are being sold at from £4250 upwards. The mipst expensive flat, priced at £25,000, is already sold.

During 1925 over 200 launches of lifeboats were made round the British coasts and 580 lives wore rescued from shipwreck, an average of over seven lives for each week of the year. Ten feet high but more than 1000 years old ia the " Kaffir Bread " plant to be , seen in the Royal Botanic Gardens, London. It is said to get all its nourishment from an internal source of its own. Strav mineral-water bottles and siphons 1 collected in a radius of 100 miles round London aro taken to a clearing house, where they are identified by certain marks and returned to their original owners. An American firm is selling to hot-els and similar institutions ail electric towel " in the form of a cabinet which, when a foot lever is depressed, releases through a pipe a largo volume of hot air for drying the hands and face. Mr. James Barnett, a Northallerton septuagenarian, has completed 60 years service as a bell-ringer-—57 years at the Northallerton parish church. Mr. Barnett is still halo and hearty, and is the oaptain of the bell-ringors at NorthI allerton.

Thirty years ago the Foryd Bridge on tho Chester to Holyhead main road between Flintshire and Denbigllisl.iro privately bought for £BOO. io-duj it l reported that the present owneih 'want £27,000 for tho bridgo, for tho freeing of which a proposal is being made. In tho making of bricks, according to tho latest methods, through aU cesses of screening, mixing, moulding and pressing, only ono human hand intwferes This is tho hand of the boy who r oC ubtcs tho flow of water from a top inta tlio mixer, more in dry weather, less m wot.

Last year as regards tho number o* passengers killed in tram accidents iu Great Britain has almost the same clean sheet as the years 1901 and 1908, whoa thM-o was not a single M«1 passenger train accident. Tho accident returns for 1925 show ono passenger as having killed duo to a train accident. Among tho stores placed on board thai Arundel Castlo for a recent voyage from South Africa were 100 turkeys, 1000 chickens. 100 ducks, 500 head of game, 250,000 cigarettes. 4000 cigars, 1000 bottles of champagne, 3000 bottles of other wines, and 25,000 bottles of mineral waters, besides spirits, liqueurs, ale, stout, and so on.

Several of the inmates of tlio Leyburn (Wensleydalo) Workhouse, who wero . taken to a cinema the other day had never previously to an exhibition of films. Their <W experience of tho movies" delighted them, and they are anxious to prn- a second visit, although lluy cannot understand how the figures move on the screen. An estimate of the bird population of tho Island of Bute was attempted by the Rev J. M. McWilliam in a papor read to the Royal Physical Society in Edinburgh recently. On the basis of shooting records and personal observation, he said, there was reason to believe that the birds of Bute might number 400,000, about 6000 per square mile. There is a young American in London who is very much talked about, and is said to bear a remarkable likeness to the prince of Wales. He has caused quite a stir in certain circles, and once or twice there have been some curious misunuerstandings through the resemblance. The American's friends have nicknamed lum " Feathers," probably after the Prance n crest. , George Geoffr- of Warwick Bridge, Cumberland, sentenced by the jjf magistrates at Carlisle to two monto imprisonment for f Jn _ children, was stated to be „ re f [tfe wr dole and 31s 0d weekb «Mj X's- s; «*>><***•