NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19720, 20 August 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Over 80,000 people visited Shakespeare's birthplace last year. The women police of London cost £9407 6s 7d last year. Blocks of salt ivere once used by tho people of China for paying taxes. New publications arrive at the British Museum library at the rate, of 30,000 a month. Clouds travel at immense heights. " Mare's tails," for - instance, are found 30,000 ft. up. Air taxis can now be had at Brooklands for any part of Britain or Europe at a shilling a mile. In the City of Paris there are stated to be more than 100,000 trees, only ona of which is an oak. Uniforms for British postmen have to be stocked in 1800 sizes. Each complete suit costs „£1 lis 4d. A lady living at Wem, Shropshire, has received through the post a wedding-ring she lost 18 years ago. The London Rover Scouts have given 600 blood transfusions to save life, since the begining of this year. One by-law in Los Angeles makes it illegal to bathe two or more babies in one bath at the same time. Out of the total number of traffic accidents in Great Britain last year, nearly one-sixth were due to pedal bicycles. Twelve families with an average of ten persons each were among the 830 British immigrants landed at Quebec recently. The Boy Scouts are still adding to their numbers, which were increased last year by 79,000, Britain alone supplying 15,C00 Forty ponies and 250 donkeys have been licensed for Blackpool sands this year, but licences for six camels have been refused. A baby born now, according to a British statistician, has an expectation of 56.58 years of life if a boy, and 60.47 years if a girl. Greyhounds are perhaps the oldest known type, of dog. Stone carvings dating back to about 400 8.C., show figures of these animals. In the regular " shopping list " of the London Zoo appear large quantities of sunflower ■ seeds, mealworms, condensed milk, and dried flies. Beer has a history which goes back to 5000 B.C. The earliest brewers were faced with the difficulty of producing a beverage free from cloudiness. Some 2,000,0001b. of fish scales are used every year in the United States in manufacturing backs for toilet articles. The material resembles mother-of-pearl. Pictures built up of pieces of wallpaper are the newest "art" hobby. The inventor is a Sussex man who has turned out some very charming effects. Wild strawberries have been growing in profusion on the raihv'ay embankment at the station at Chelsfield, Kent, and have been picked by waitingjpassengers. In the porch of a*" church in Pntnev, London, is a library containing 1000 volumes. Borrowers simply walk in and help themselves to any book they fancy. The new list of ancient monuments in Britain scheduled for preservation contains 400 items, including castles, abbeys, towers, city walls, bridges, forts, and earthworks. . .. Two small shopkeepers in East London have offered their ponies free to any sports club for mowing and rolling on condition that a good home for life is assured them. Tests recently made by a scientist go to prove that dogs are perfectly indifferent to moving pictures. Cats showed signs of fear at certain films such as 1 dog pictures. No drink and no readmittance are two of the rules adopted by the Academic Dance Club recently founded in Oxford. Undergraduates of both sexes are allowed to dance together. Out of the 55 principal private estates in Great Britain, at least 35 are not for sale, either"" because their owners do not need the money or because they can't dispose of them. Sweet-eating is greatly on the increase in Britain, especially among men. This is said to coincide with the decrease in drinking; people who eat sweets lose their taste for liquor. Boilers, tall chimneys, and the use_ of pit ponies are all to be cut out by electricity in a new pit in Warwickshire, where the pit-shaft is also to be sunk by means of electricity. Bananas are said to exceed nearly any other fruit or vegetable in food values. They contain 460 calories per pound, as compared with potatoes, 385; milk, 325; macaroni, cooked, 415. London's County Council schools are visited every year by Germans, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Swedes, and Norwegians, who wish to inspect our system of education. Salmon fishing on the River Severn, which is carried on with baskets and nets in May, June, July, and August, is done with appliances very similar to those used nearly 500 years ago. Honey has been stored by bees inside the roof of a fifteenth century farmhouse near Dorking,' Surrey, for over a century. The weight is now so great that the ceiling is showing signs of collapse. While British Civil Servants of . the lower grades are supplied with yellow primrose soap to wash their hands, on promotion to the higher grades they can have brown or white Windsor soap. There is a strange clock in the polytechnic Institute at Zurich, Switzerland. It never needs to be wound, but is run by a mechanism set in motion every time the temperature changes two degrees. " Mercy bullets " that stun instead o£ kill will be used by Captain Barnett W. Harris, of Chicago, to capture wild animals. An anaesthetic within the bullets renders* the animal temporarily unconscious. Sold for the benefit of the Red Cross and for one day only, a special series of Spanish stamps was recently issued to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of King Alfonso's accession to the throne. For four centuries the massive oak table in St. Thomas' Hospital, Canterbury, has been in daily use. It teats 20 "persons, and was intended for poor pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket. Pointed toes have always been favoured by women. Leather soles of shoes worn bv the Roman ladies of the London of 1800 years ago, and recently discovered during excavations near tho Bank of England, prove this. Parasol ants, which are natives of Trinidad, cut off circular pieces of leaves and carry them into their underground nest, to be used in building up mushroom beds. A colony of these ants is now installed in the London Zoo. With a population of thirty people, Stoke Pero, a tiny village in the wuus of Exmoor, Somerset, has no school or policeman. There has not been a parish rate collected since 1917, when money was required for a new bell rope. At the funeral recently of Troop-Sergeant-Major Edwin Hughes, the last of the 600 who took part in the charge of (ho Light Brigade at Balaclava, five trumpeters of his old regiment, the loth Hussars: from Edinburgh, sounded th» "Last Post." Mine workers endure the heat in the shafts more easilv when salt is added 10 their drinking water, it has been foun.l.Excessive perspiration causes a loss oi su.fc from the body, and replacing this loss prevents much of the exhaustion that would otherwise result.