NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19508, 11 December 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The London Underground Railways have 250 t rains moving at the same time. Only three telegraph-offices in Greater London are open for business after 8 p.m. All the policemen in the city of Cincinnati have been equipped with pocket cameras. A mechanical violin has been produced in France. A real bow and real violin are used. Brazilian coffee exporters are experimenting with now bags made from a common weed. Two Roman milestones have been discovered at Bowes, and are being preserved at Northallerton. Bread uiat will keep for sis years without deteriorating was exhibited at a recent London Medical Exhibition. A dahlia in a garden at Ashfordbv, England, has climbed seven feet, and has produced nearly eighty blooms. Among the money current in Britain there are five separate and distinct designs in silver coins and four in bronze. The jaw-bones of a whale have been unearthed during excavating operations near Bishops Stortford in England. Canada ilias one golf-course for every 19,393 inhabitants; in the United States there is one for every 25,793 people. The combined ages of four brothers named Mundy, living in a jstreoi of Abbotsbury, in Dorset, total 3*59 years, r Over a hundred hens belonging to farmers in the Barnard Castle district in England were recently killed by badgers within week. The Royal Lion which appears on the smaller silver coins came into use under George IV;; the shillings were then known as " Lion Shillings."' The British Office of Works has accepted the offer of the Colic-go of Pes tology to rid Hyde Park ol! caterpillars by removing the cocoons. The tolls' collected by the Panama Canal last year amounted to £4,600,000. In March 506 vessels, with 2,600,(XX) tons of cargo, passed through. Garden and otljor produce of art estimated weight of nearly one million tons is dealt with annually at Covent Garden, London's famous market. Excluding tramcar and trade licences, there were 1,690,000 motor vehicles licensed in Britain on August 31. This included 99,000 motor-cab:?. Representing nearly 3£ years' work at a cost of £2OO for materials, a model locomotive weighing scwt. has been bought by the South Kensington Museum, For climbing to the top of a high tree in tho dark, and rescuing a black kitten, Mr. George Baker, of Aidershot, has received the R.S.P.C.A. bronze modal. While cleaning out tho vault of a Kansas bank a slab of wood, on which was written out a chetjue, upon which the bank paid out in 1908, was discovered. News bus been known to travel at the rate of over 1,000 miles in fifteen minutes by means of tho " talking drums" used by tho natives of the Gold Coast. West Africa. Smoke in industrial areas so pollutes, the air that town dwellers receive only one-third of the jinn's ultra-violet rays which those who live in tho country enjoy. The fust person to drive a horse-drawn coach over Honisjter Pass, Cumberland, 55 years ago, was Joseph Benson, of Workington, who has diea at the age of seventy. Throe hundred and fifty persons over 70 years of age, 21 over 80, and 6 over SO, out of a population of 4000, is the proud boast of Emsworth, a village near Portsmouth. The late Dr. John Russell, of Burslem, has loft £3OOO to found, furnish, and maintain in Insch, Aberdeenshire, his nativfi place, a free library, rccreation-room, and bowling green. The British nation ijs growing more sober, judging from tho number of convictions ifor drunkenness, which were 75,077 last year, a decrease of 4,005 on tho previous year. In the Borough of Hoi born, London, {' there are $45 factories and workshops in which 254 different trades are carried on. Women ortly are employed in sovonty-ouo of the workshops. A Spanish newspaper has offered to give £1001) to any person who cm write an article convincing an international court of arbitration that Columbus, was Spanish by birth. A Dearham collier was fined IDs a few weeks ago for searching for game. He pleaded: " I have, not seen beef nhico the * coal stoppage started, and I thought I would try to get a rabbit for dintie^" Liners carrying first-class passengers only, ( and iin which there are private suitoa comprising: a vestibule, sitting-room. bed= room, and bath-room, are being built for use between London and South America. Pearl buttons to the number of 22,000 ornamented a suit which is the prourl possession of Mr. George Atkins, pf Wal- . ham Green, London. Sewing on these buttons used up 72 reels of carpet thread. Marriage and sports of all kinds are not approved of by a curious religious sect, the Dependents, of Laswood, Sussex. They go into mourning when a child sis born and rejoice, when one of their congregation dies. - Housing under the London County i Council sho.ws , a deficiency oil over £BOO,OOO this year. Up to March 31„ th» Council had built 21,981 houses and flats, providing accommodation for 149,726 persons. Women, who were first admitted as members of the Pharmaceutical Society in 1879, have taken up the work of chemists so thoroughly that there are now almost as many women as men studying for the society's examination. Lightships at present under construction for Trinity House have, it ig said, a much better light, worked from huge dynamos, than those already in use, and will ho fitted with wireless, so as to keep them in touch with the shore. Among the curious plants grown in the Chelsea Physic Garden, the second oldest botanic garden in the country, ia one which has no roots. It hangs from the branches of tropical trees and draws in food through its leaves. Seeds are tested by twenty-five girls in the National Seed Testing Station, outside Cambridge. Each year they handle more than 20,000 sample packets, picking out the good seed from the bad or dead and specially hunting down weeds. There were 33,005 apllieatiorm for patents at the British Patent Office last year, and the receipts from patents fees were £391,677, from designs fees, £11,213, and from trade marks fees £46,960. Iho applications received from women inventors numbered 608. Burglars broke into a factory in Paris which makes a specialty of constructing electric burglar alarms, and stole 12 complete alarm systems, which were ready to be shipped. The owner of. the factory told the police that he was always too busy to ■ make a burglar alarm for his own factory. - After a four days" search a Bradford man found £3OO worth of bank notes in » rubbish heap. Ho put them among soma old papers in a cupbo&d, but while he was on holiday a charwoman cleared out the apparent rubbish into the dustbin, whence it was sent to a municipal rubbish tip.-.:

Doctors are puzzlec! by tbo <Mtp®rie»ce of Mr. F. G. Lee. In the Inst three years he has given blood t<:» 24 patients &fc tho Middlesex Hospital. Seven; of them have died and, although Lee. hiwl ae?sraitfn anv of them, at the ejcact i&oment of their deaths he is isaid to have f«lt ssveia paifts in his arm.