NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19838, 7 January 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Four of the brides of 1926 were only 14 years,, of age, while 34 were 15. There was one divorce for every si* marriages in the United States in 1926. The chief speaker at a recent Reading temperance meeting was the Rev. T. . Gaddy. The London City Corporation provide* the Mansion House with £IO,OOO a year to maintain it for Lord Mayor. The world has two million lepers today. One-fourth of them are in China, while India has nearly as many. 5 'N _•' V : . Skins of cats destroyed painlessly in institutions fetch from Id for ordinary pelta to about- Is for the skin of a fine black cat. A new invention of interest to card players has been made in Vienna—-cards consisting of aluminium and celluloid, which will last a long time. English cathedral organists are very poorly paid, on the. whole, outside London. The salaries range- from £2lO in Chichester to £430 in Manchester. Britain has more than half a million dogs in excess of the number four years ago. The revenue from licences now amounts to £1,074,479 a year. Thick knees, coarse-skinned arms and ugly backs are three defects which M. Paul Poiret, the famous Paris dress designer, saw in American women. Crystal ornaments are popular on both sides of the English Channel. Necklets, brooches, rings and even shoe-buckles glitter with this substitute for diamonds. Currency notes now in circulation in Britain amount to close upon £300,000,000. This is a very large increase on the amount of gold in circulation before the War. A seashell held to the ear makes a noise like, the waves, because the shell acts as a sounding board aiuu magnifies the pulsing of the blood in the arteries of the head. Owing to the increased use of motors in agricultural work ill Britain farm hands who cannot get employment on the land are Beeking jobs as motor mechanics with some success. There are two Christmas Islands; one in the Indian Ocean, with 2040 inhabitants, and the other in the Pacific, with only 100 inhabitants. They are both British possessions. Holly, it used to. be claimed,- received its name, "Holv-^^wwe/^ fobpi the .custom of using it to churches at Christmas; it is, however, dexived from the Anglo-Saxon "holegn." Among the cosmopolitan population of Chicago, which totads. 2,701,705, are 500,000 Germans, 400,000 Polish, 330,000 each Irish and Italian, 250,000 negroes aud 200.000 Scandinavians. Five overcoats and three pairs of trousers were being worn , by a beggar arrested recently by the Glasgow police. It took two officers two hours to go through all his pockets. With a weight-lifting capacity equal to 30 passengers, the largest and most powerful air-liner in the world has been built in Scotland and is all all-metal monoplane with a wing span of 140 ft. Amerjcan girls are much mere addicted to the use of make-up than their British , sisters. There are 1200 different,kinds of . face powder and 650 varieties of rouge on Bale in the United States.

Kitty McHale, aged 13, broke all records at • Womb well, Yorkshire? by skipping 3028 hops without a break. It was her response to a challenge'from a girl who had skipped 1722 hops. No paint will ever be required in the new laboratory erected for Bristol University at a cost of £200,000. „-.All the joinery is of teak, and bronze has been used for all the metal fittings. A law recently passed by the North Dakota Legislature makes compulsory the display of a copy of the Teh Commandments in every schoolroom in the State, beginning with the current term. - The death has taken place at Lisvernan, Tipperary, of Denis Halloran, who is reported to have reached the' great age of 108 years and 11 months. Fond of smoking, he enjoyed his pipe to the last. The burning of coal in the City of London and neighbourhood was a punishable offence in the fourteenth century, one man actually being executed for disobeying the ■ order forbidding the use of sea coal. Over twenty languages are spoken in the diocese under the Bishop of Fulham; it spreads over North and Central" Europe from the English Channel to Moscow, and from North Italy to the North Pole. During the year which ended with September 30 last more than 272,000 new houses were built. The average annual increase in the number of houses in the five years before the War was only 61,000. Cricketers seem to enjoy long life, according to statistics. Out of 1000 of the players mentioned in "Wisden," only 40 died before reaching their 35th year. The normal rate for men collectively is 88 per 1000. Plum puddings have growjj est of an Elizabethan dish known as plum porridge. This was a similar mixfcisre of fruit, etc., boiled without being put ia a basin or tied in a cloth as is the plum pudding of our day. Wassail, a liquor now consisting of ale with roasted apples, sugar, nutmeg and toast, received its name from the AngloSaxcn phrase, meaning "may you be ia health," which was used in drinking a toast in the liquor. v. ,

Many of- the oldest carols vrere fantastic songs," which preserved curious legends so' old that their origin is forgotten. It is of comparatively recent years that Christmas carols became mora or less "sacred songs." The faulty nature of English orthography may be gleaned from the fact that only 60 words ars spelt phonetically, suck as so, no, potato, iota. Nearly every word, certainly every line, contains glaring inconsistencies." of spelling and pronunciation. The chain of office worn by Middlesbrough's Mayor is not yet paid for, although it was bought 50 years ago. Of the original price 01 £250, only £177 has been paid off, and at the present rata of repayment it* will take another 20 years to liquidate the debt. There is a lake near Batticaloa, on the East Coast of Ceylon, famous for its singing fish. The music heard on tha surface of the water is said to be caused by the opening and closing of the shells of bivalves. Emerson-Tennaat- mentions the instance in his famoun book on Ceylon. So delicate are the "mechanical ears" perfected by scientists to detect sound waves in the air th?t a gun fired on the East Coast of England was "heard" at Birmingham University, more than 135 miles away. The sound was not heard by human ears, but was detected by ths recording instruments. Men of modern stature are too small wear old .Scottish armour; so it had to be worn by dummies at a recent lijS| torical pageant. Swords used wi «•» time of James IV- of Scotland can bar® be lifted above the head of a man. Old Scottish warriors swung them about with one hand. The boneficeni effects "°J t hi for children have found presence pf ny an imaJ» are by various- tes£ that productiof |g more suitable * l>aT3( . the liver of of this vitamin, and tft es the shee f is X *3 « als£ > sential thanthfrtoftho cod, the liver of the grouse.