NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19792, 12 November 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Bananas are said to exceed nearly all other trait or vegetable in food values.

The British national stock of cows is 82,000 higher than it was two years ago.

Bats are estimated to consume food worth £70,000,000 in Britain every, year. Cats are- subject to comparatively few diseases, and fewer still of these are contagious.

No motor-coach at present on the British roads weighs more than about seven tons.

Among the Santhals, marriages take place at night, and the bride is conveyed to her husband in a basket. The Japanese alphabet possesses two sets of characters, katanaka for the use of men, hiranaga for women.

" Too few foxes" and " too much wire" are complaints made about the huntiug prospects in Bedfordshire. Wakefield Prison, in England, has its own weekly newspaper. Contributions from the prisoners are encouraged. A picture postcard which has taken 21 years to travel 90 miles has been delivered by a postman in the Princes Park district of Liverpool. Although there are estimated to be over half a million different kinds of living. insects, oniy 60 species are definitely known to be disease-carriers. Short skirts and pink silk stockings are very popular among many African brides while brick houses are replacing the native mud huts in many districts. Every morning three people leave their homes in London, and the next their families hear of them is that they have been killed in street accidents.

Ai well as British money, coin 3 for West Africa. Cyprus, Palestine, East Africa, and many other parts of the Empire are made at the Royal Mint. The pain due to the poisoned bite of a snake has been described as "like a whitehot iron slowly moving up and down inside my arm," by a keeper at the London Zoo.

done in waterproof paint have been used to decorate bathing-costumes for use at the smart British resorts this year, some of the pictures being quite elaborate. England's third largest bell, known as Big Peter, has just been returned to York Minster after.. being, recast. It stands eight feet high and weighs nearly eleven tons.

A block of offices that will constitute the largest building in the British Empire is under construction in Montreal. The ground floor will have an area of 1,250,000 square feet. Although " face-lifting" may keep a person youthful in looks science has yet to discover any method of rejuvenating hands which , give away age even more thoroughly than faces. Steel Is the material suggested for a new school at Dunkeld, Scotland, owing to the high cost of brick building. By the latter method a school costs £36 per school-place provided. Accommodation for 43,305 more pupils in the British elementary schools is provided in the plants approved for the current year by the Board of Education. There are to be 55 new schools.

Using only a penknife and a pair of scissors, Mr. T. Keane, of New Cross, has made a model, five feet long, of Southwark Cathedral, with surrounding buildings, as it appeared in 1540. Showing the globe on ah azure shield, to represent the ether, and encircled by a golden ring to denoto broadcasting, a new coat of arms has been -adopted by the British Broadcasting: Corporation. Houses bnill; in Britain averaged 60,000 a year before the war; but by the end of December there will have. beer, nearly 230,000 houses constructed this year alone, if the present rate is maintained.

Six sons, three of them over 70 years of age, acted as pall-bearers recently at the funeral at Dallas, of " Granny" Douglas, Morayshire's oldest inhabitant, who was within 18 months of her 100 th birthday. , The average life of wood in sea water is from 10 to 15 years. In tropical waters it may be two years only; Sound piles have, however, been removed from fresh water in which they have stood for more than 1000 years. Material which cost only 3d was converted by a model engineer of Weston-super-Mare, Somersetshire, into a model of a pumping engine, valued at £IOO, and which was recently awarded a silver championship cup. Telephone messages in Britain are replacing telegrams in popularity, The latter fell from 78,000.000 in 1911 to 49,000,000 in 1925: while phone calls increased from 797,000,000 to 1,016,000,000 in the same period. k Whale flesh was a recognised article of food during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In England whale was either roasted and served on the spit or boiled and served with peas. The tongue and tail were the favourite parts. Special courses of lectures are provided for the teachers of London County Council schools, including such subjects as the history of costume, ase of electricity in the home, voice production, arid industrialism in the Far ISast. " Farm labourers are the best ratepayers," said the chief rating officer during a recent case at Witham (Essex) Police Court. " How they do it I don't know; but 1 have never had a penny arrears with regard to farm labourers."

London has thousands of basement stores, kitchens, and - cellars well below the high-water level of the River Thames; the fact. that these are very seldom flooded is due to the main drainage scheme, which experts state is the finest in the world.

In Andjia, a district of Morocco, a person who has headache cures himself by having his head shaved and burying the hair in the earth of a saint's grave. An extracted tooth is deposited at a shrine to prevent, the other teeth from decaying and aching. The London and North-eastern Railway Company's Flying Scotsman express, which makes the world's longest non-stop railway run, between London and Edinburgh, has completed over 6000 miles without losing a minute, and drawing trains weighing 400 tons.

The governors of the famous Harrow School acquire businesses in the town which trade with the school, and run them as school enterprises. To a catering department, provision stores, outfitter's, sport requisites supply, and book and stationery shop they have now added building and decorating. In the register of St. James' Church, Bury St. Edmunds, is the following entry: "Christopher Newsam married Charity Morrell. Charity Morrell being entirely without arms, the ring was placed upon the fourth toe of the left foot, and she wrote her name in the • register with her right foot." Modern young women are a great advance on what their grandmothers were, although they are apt to be rather boisterous. That is the opinion of Sir Edmund Gosse, the famous niter no in his seventy-ninth year. Oiv the, otner hand, he finds that our youiig men aie "very gentle and gracious. Pocket wireless sets, contained in a box the size of prising a mimatdie tod foj . tht> W&SBL , A smaU collapsible earphone®.