NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20112, 24 November 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Motor-cars are mors widely used in the provinces than in London. ' The Metropolitan Fire Brigade, London, costs about £650,000 a year to maintain.

It is authoritatively stated that one well-known British 6hot accounted for 50,000 wild ducks during his sporting life.

The world's gold reserves are estimated at £2,519,800,000, the principal holders being America, Britain, France, and Japan. Half tho total population of Britain lives in five industrial districts, which comprise only one-tenth* of the total area of land.

Great Britain has £4,000,000,000 invested in foreign countries; the figure for tho United States is not much more than half this.

Industries are springing tip in British towns and villages bo rapidly that even in the most rural districts factories may be seen.

Many of tho inhabitants of tho Irish counties of Down and Antrim speak a form of old Scots, with littlo sign of tho Irish tongue.

London's most used bridge is that of Westminster, followed by London Bridge, Vauxhall Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, and Putney Bridge. A collection of clocks, numbering 222 in all, and claimed as tho finest collection in the world, was recently sold in London for £30,000

Tho growing popularity of the saloon typo of motor-car in Britain is having the curious effect of causing lady motorists to discard hats.

London's bill for elementary and higher oducation last year was £11,582,345; in 1917-18 it totalled only, £5,802,529, about half the figure to-day. Trained to beat out flames, a dog at Horbury, near Wakefield, England, extinguishes matches or cigarette-ends dropped by passers-by. The word "set" has so many different meanings and extensions that' it takes 30,000 words in the Oxford English Die tiunary to deal with it. Tickets issued by the Great Western Railway during 1927 numbered 100,000,000. Plated end to end, they would stretch a distance of 2022 miles. A Russian scientist claims that by using certain chemicals ho can make the inanimate bodies of men and animals transparent and. invisible. Flamingoes and birds of similar structure take time to get up speed to fly. Hence it is that tney can bo kept in open enclosures at zoological gardens. /

Pennies to the number of 800,000,000 are collected every year in London from the slot gas motors of consumers served by the Gas Light and Coke Company.'

In Russia there is. a "language island," where about a million and a half Germanspeaking people 'form a community founded in tho first case by Catherine tho Great.

There is one policeman to each aero and to every twelve of the population of the City of London. This latter figure refers, of course, to the small'night pop. ulation.

Allotments in England and Wales numbered 1,079,000 and covered 163,500 acres at the end of 1926. This was a decrease of about 36,000 allotments on tho figure for 1925.

The stocking trade of Leicester is in such need of trained labour that the firms put their names down months beforehand to secure girls from the,elementary schools as learners.

When Georgo Bernard Shaw's play, "Man and Superman," is given in full the actor playing the principal part speaks 50,000 words. This part is as long as the .average novel.

Thero are estimated to be 250,000 shops open in Britain every Sunday; of these 40,000 are in the London area. This Sunday trading involves work for 2,000,000 people.

Aeroplane trips are the novel cure for whooping cough "discovered" by a German doctor; the young patients were taken for cruises of an hour each at~ a height of 10,000 ft.

There are fifteen divorces for every hundred marriages in the United States of America; the majority of wives who divorce their husbands do so on the plea of cruelty or desertion.

Whilo most people are proud to know perhaps one language in addition to their mother tongue, Sir Georgo' Grierson, of the Indian Civil Service, is master of 179 languages and 554 dialects.

Presented to Prince Charles Edward, the young Pretender, by his admirers in 1745, a shield was recently sold in Londin for £4OOO. The Pretender's snuffbox brought £l3O, and his pistols £2OO.

After disappearing from a Norfolk church in 1919, a piece of silver plate has just been bought in a London saleroom. Tho cup to which this belongs, which also disappeared, was recovered in 1921.

Recent tests provo that London's busiest traffic centre is Hyde. Park Corner; 64,268 vehicles, including 55,441 omnibuses and motor-cars passed it during a recent checked period of twelve hours.

Dictionaries were formerly much more simple than they are to-day. In an old volume " dog" is described as " A mongrel or mastiff; a creature well known;" whilo a horse is simply defined as " a beast."

Britain manufactures thousands of millions of needles every year and supplies practically every other country in the world, eighty per cent, of the output of Redditch being exported. Yet no one has discovered where all the |>ld necdlon go-

Successful tests have been carried out on Lako Ammer, Bavaria, with a new dovico for ensuring the safety of vessels in foggy weather. Two fingers are suspended over ( a map, and in response to wireless control continuously indicate tho ship's position. * -

s A freak rainstorm recently occurred in Kent, between Cobham and Chatham. Rain fell in torrents over an area about 50ft. \vida» and two miles long, roofs on ono sido of the road running with water, while those on the other side 'were quite dry.

To establish his poetic merit tho Turkish poet Kiazim Bey, of Konia, has had his brain X-rayed. *The radiologists agreed that it showed exceptional weight and striking convolutions. The poet has sent photographs of tho medical report to all his critics.

A prehistoric astronomical observatory, which it is estimated was constructed in 1181 8.C., has been unearthed at Buotzow, Mecklenburg. Tho observatory is in tho form of circles of stones, which served for tho observation of tho annual circuit of tho sun and also as a calendar.

An oak trco estimated to bo» 1000 yeais old, weighing 18 to>.s» a »d w foUed ace girth of 54in.. has been i j ~ « or 5, S.t WcW as much as £2OO many years ago. F dand Wales any '•" fl when the population was less numbered c^pared wi th S3 for 1926, which was tho lowest rate since 1886«