NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19892, 10 March 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The value of property insured in London against fire exceeds £2,000,000,0£XX Calls received by London's ambulances have riseri from 2405 a year to 39,445 since 1915.

A baby girl weighing only three-quarters of a pound has been born at Caerphilly. Glamorgan, Prebendary Carlilc', founder and honorary chief secretary of the Church Army was 81 in January.

Wembley Stadium has been made available as a playing field for school children, of the London area.

Eating an apple after a meal or at tea-time is almost as good for cleansing the teeth as a good bmshing. Bristol last year imported more than 25,000 tons of tobacco, on which nearly £22,000,000 duty was collected.

Sir Harry Lauder has given the Lord Provost of Edinburgh £1350 for three Lady Lauder Pensions for aged poor. The Queen has purchased four watercolours by the second Earl of Ypres, front an exhibition at the Goupii Gallery.

A man who escaped from Morpeth, Northumberland, Mental Hospital, walked 20 miles to his home, where he was captured.

Including fees for exhibition dancing at hotels and clubs, instructors at the op of the tree may make as much as £3OOO a year.

Among the edible fish little known to the general shopping public in Britain are siathe, ling, gurnard, megrims, witches, and cat fish.

Specmens representing a complete set of the minerals of the Dominion of-. Canada have been presented to Birming. ham University. Australia will have a future population with dark hair, dark eyes, and olive com r plexion3, if the prediction of some scientists is fulfilled.

The suggestion that the name of Elstree, Hertfordshire, the British film-making centre, should be changed to Hollwood, has been abandoned.

All the war relics in Manchester's parks will be sold as scrap metal -if a resolution passed by the Parks Committee is ratified by the corporation. A silk shawl made in Norwich in 1803, and given by the Queen to the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, is now being shown there. Although £IOO,OOO has already been spent on the safeguarding of St.* Paul's Cathedral, it is not expected that the work will be completed before 1930.

A woman of 64, who had £29 in her possession when she was arrested, has been sentenced to a month's imprisonment for begging In Charing Cross Road, London.

Portland cement must be so fine that more than three-fourths of it will pass through a sieve of 40,000 holes per square inch—a sieve so fine that it holds water.

Cafe 3 and similar places outnumber bakeries in France by more than ten to one; Paris alone has one drinking establishment to every seventy-five inhabitants.

Records show that when William IL made the New Forest as a huntingground twenty villages, some quite large, and about a dozen hamlets were destroyed.

The Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich, Dr. Hough, burst into tears while officiating at the funeral of his godson, the Rey. L. N. Woolley, vicar of Oakwood, Surrey.

Aeroplanes are beginning to replace the dog-teams of romance fa carrying mails in Canada during winter. Each "plane will have a capacity of 15001b. of mail. Eighty-three theatres in different parts of Great Britain recently gave performances on behalf of Brinsworth House, Twickenham, the home for old music-hall artists.

Two tunnels which will allow motor vehicles to travel under the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey to the number of 3800 hourly have just been opened. Over-rigid discipline and too much coddling, destroying a child's self-confi-dence, or causing him to feel fear are> faults which parents must avoid, accord ing to one expert. ' The Petroleum Export Association of Ne New Yoi'k has secured a five-year's contract to suppy all the crude oil and not less than 25 per cent, of the refined products required by Spain, Pigeons have been known to attain a speed of over a mile a minute. On one occasion a pigeon accomplished a journey of 477 miles at an average speed cf 1531 yds. a minute. Most of London's street traffic accidents are due to trade and commercial vehicles, followed by private motor-cars, motorcycles, omnibuses, push-bikes, and tramcars, in that order.

Scott's ship, Discovery, on arriving back from its last Antarctic voyage, reported passing an iceberg near the Orkneys that was tilirty-five miles long and • averaged 150 feet in height.

A bottle of |herry is presented to the clergyman preaching on Sunday morning in St. Paul's Cathedral, London; the custom is centuries old, and the wine is the gift of the City Corporation. Working days lost through labour disputes in Great Britain amounted to 8,500.000 in 1924, 8,000,000 in 1925, 162,000,000 in 1926, and 1,000,000 up to the end of October last year.

H.M.- Commissioners of works have refused to sanction the demolition of God's Providence House, Newport, Isle of Wight, scheduled for preservation as a monument of national importance. The population of quite a large country town could b'a accommodated in the Equitable Building, one of New York's sky-scrapers; there are 63 elevators, 5000 windows, and 10,000 doors in the buiiding.

Tobacco imported into Great Britain from the Dominions overseas has increased from 15,953,3591b. in 1925 to 33,958,1591b. in 1927. One company is now engaged in marketing nothing but Empire tobacco. Mr. Charles Seymour, aged 53, o! Mitcham, Surrey, an employee of the Air Ministry, who had been missing for a month was- found unconscious at Hull, and on recovering was found to have lest his memory. A church in Hermsdorf, Silesia, is equipped with a heating system which enables every visitor to heat his seat .as much as desired. The tubes run along the benches, andi every seat has a switch for regulating the heat. Mr. Thomas H. Solly, for many years a prominent Essex farmer, has, at the ago of 63, sold his farm, Mundon Hall, Maldon, of more than 300 acres, taken Holy Orders, and become a curate at Pur* leigh, near Chelmsford.

Thomas George Miles, a hairdresser, of Huntingdon, who has died at the age of 78, was ona of the few remaining survivors of the disaster to the pleasure steamer, Princess Alice, which was •sunk in the Thames in 1878 with a loss of 650 lives.

Nino women of Batiifrilaad. County Down, Ireland, have, by ?. c Jf'° tes "been Supreme Court in the United S > declared heiress.. tooao-tod Farmer City, Illinois. . t ired Dr. Fie d 'S;v."cL." S££ after 25 years A 0 a t,teoded his Sg O.U, priseaiod «th