NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20028, 18 August 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

There are 20,314 miles of railway in Great Britain. The only fish that never sleep are the salmon, pike, and goldfish. London has now about 900 detectives. In 1877 there were 15. It costs £l2O a year to feed an elephant in the London Zoo. There was one divorce for every five marriages in Chicago last year. There are, in the United Kingdom, about 4000 cinemas of all grades. The British Government last year helped 63,000 people to settle overseas. There are 1200 new trains in tho London Midland and Scottish summer timetable. A meat van delivered £25,000 worth of gold and silver at tho Bank of England recently. An official report in Britain states that five hundred kinds of material arc used for men's shoes. British and German airmen who were antagonists in the war havo . dined together in London, The London ambulance service has received over 40,000 calls at its 13 stations in the last year. Two thousand young pheasants vera drowned in a flooded licld near Keswick, England, recently. The average daily consumption of milk m England and Wales is less than onethird of a pint per person. The names of three cottages side,, by side at Glyndebourne, Sussex, are "Anywhere," 1 "Nowhere," and "Somewhere." About 7000 musicians are employed professionally every day in the performance of music in London. About 20 per cent of the native passengers using the railway trains in India are said to evade paying their fates. A young man climbed up a 30ft. wall at Grimsby Corn Exchange and released a pigeon caught by its leg in the gutterP'Pe. . For some years the annual cost of running (he village of Stogumber, in West Somerset, has been between Is 2d and 2s 6d. Great Britain produces, approximately, 117,000.,000 pairs of boots and shoes every year. It exports about 12,000,000 pairs a year,, Motorists a few years ago thought their tyres did well with a mileage of 5000. Now mileage? of 10,000 and over are common. If the Qcean were dried up the quantity of salt remaining would be enough to cover 5,000,00 square miles with a layer" one mile thick. A rabbit became lodged in the main water supply pipe at Cottingley, in Yorkshire, causing the village to be without water for a whole day. One of the oldest maps known, a chart showing the 1 world in the Babylonian age and about 2700 years old, recently has been exhibited in London. Since 1912 the United Ancient Order of Druids has collected 427 tons of. tinfoil, which realised £II,OOO for distribution among the hospitals. Out of 1,000,000 houses inspected by the British Ministry of Health in 1926, no fewer than 13,260 were declared to be unfit for human habitation. •

A grape contains about 79 per cent water,, an apple 82.5 per cent., an orange 87 per cent., a, peach 88 per cent., and a strawberry 89 per cent. A cross between a cabbage and a radish lias been grown by a Russian scientist. This is considered one of the most difficult feats in plant-breeding. Modern aircraft are fitted with special compasses, engine and air speed indicators, inclinometers, engine gtiages, bank and turn indicators, and altitude recorders. Employees on the King's Saudringham estate can have the services of King George's own residential doctor in return for a weekly payment of twopence per family. A man with more daring than sense is said to have allowed himself to be'swept across! Niagara Falls in an immense'rubber ball, and to have been, recovered at the other side just alive. Beds instead of berths, running water, tiled floors, and silken bed ; covers are among th'e luxuries recently introduced into the Pullman coaches of certain American express trains. Bournemouth and Aberdeen have the greatest percentages in Britain of broadcast licences in relation to population—--154.5 and 116.5 per thousand. Plymouth, with 83> and London, with 78.8, are next. The birth-rate in France is increasing. It was 197,229 for the first three months of this year, compared with 189..575 for the first quarter of 1927. The marriages for the same period, however, show a decrease. To ensure the yacht being used for the electric and magnetic survey of the world's oceans really being non-magnetic, even the cooking-stoves are made of bronze, and the crew are forbidden to wear iron trouser-buttons.

Elaborately worked in gold and silver thread, a " state" nightgown formerly belonging to Charles I. was recently sold for £IOO. A nightgown worn by Queen Elizabeth as a young princess realised £125 at the same sale. Society women are now spending much less on dress, according to West End shops. Instead, they indulge in antiques, motor-cars, beauty treatment, furniture and decorations, and entertaining to a greater extent than formerly. The Finnish Consul-General in Leningrad. 31. Auer, and the Finnish military attache, M. Aegmelaus-Aima, were arrested in the street in Leningrad recently for carrying a photographic camera, but were released when their identity was ascertained. Prince Chichibu, brother of the Emperor of Japan, who is to be married next month, studied at Oxford, while his prospective wife, the daughter of the Japanese ambassador to the United States, was educated at a famous Quaker school in Washington. Bristol still maintains the famous " Maiores Kalendar," which the town clerk of Bristol began to write in 1479. From Henry Itl.'s reign until the present day the names of each mayor and his brethren are entered in this book, with the chief annual events during their term of office. Grape fruit is gaining popularity so rapidly in Britain that that country imported 421,000 boxes last year, as against 15,000 in 1923, 48,000 in 1924, 141.000 in 1925, and 158,000 in 1926. The increase is largely due to doctors advocating the grape-fruit habit, and hotels and restaurants including the fruit in their breakfst and dinner menus. The Admiralty Hvclrographic Department of the British Navy sells annually to foreign governments charts to the value of about £50.000. A rece'ufc United Slates Navy memorandum stated that there were 1200 points of the globe to which American vessels could navigate only by means of British charts.

A brother and sister, successive owners, who died aged 91 and 90, a cook who cooked fifty-nine Christmas dinners; a housemaid who served for over forty years; and two horsemen with lifelong service, both over 80, is the recoi <j claimed for Badwell Ash Hall, West - . 1