NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20235, 20 April 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

It is said there are about 300,000 public footpaths in England. Over £15,000,000 was paid for over 1,000.000 motor licences in Great Britain in 1927. I Bozeat, Northants, England, with a population of 1100, has. 250 residents named Drage. The pulpit of a chapel near Doncaster is in Lincolnshire, while the congregation is in Yorkshire. Every newly born female baby has an expectation of life four-years Jonger than that of a male baby. There is less crime in the Aldershot Command than there is in any civil community of the same size. In the last 40 years the astronomers of Oxford and Greenwich have photographed more than 15,000,000 stars. English postmen must be at least sft. 4in. in height, to ensure their being able to reach all letter boxes. After spending 57 of his 77 years at Westminster Abbey, Mr. Thomas Wright, clerk of the works has retired. London had 614,183 telephones in uso at the end of 1928; this is an increase of 48,593 over the figure of 1927. There is a small South German bridge with an inscription stating that it cost 1,520,940,901,926,024 paper marks. Jn Morocco the face of a bride is painted white and red, and her hands and feet are dyed yellow with henna. Two thousand young pheasants were drowned last year in a flooded field a few miles from Keswick, England. Madrid, the capital oT Spain, has increased its population x from 746,000 to "nearly 1,000,000 in the last five years. Four eggs in a blackbird's nest were broken when a cricket ball fell into it during a match at Southborough, in Kent, It has been estimated that it requires the annual production of four rubber trees to provide rubber for ono motor-car tyre. A famous monastery at Qliva, where a peace treaty was signed in 1660. has become the historical museum of Danzig. The British soldier of to-day drinks very much less beer and reads very many more books than did his predecessor of 1914. The first woman industrial engineer in Spain is Senorita Maria Careaga, who recently took charge of a Madrid express train. A receiving set just sent to the. lonlv isle of Tristan Da Cuncha in the Atlantic, will keep the island in touch with the world. ' s • - The prize for the top score at a Romford whist drive—a drive home in a taxicab —ffas won by a man who lived four doors away. The organist at Creation Parish Church in Northamptonshire, Mrs. Dijnkley, has been playing the organ for 69 years, and plays it still at 91. A miner at Seaton, Dclaval. who was given notice of dismissal from East Holywell Colliery, shot his dog and then shot himself in an old quarry. On January 5 approximately 1.260,000 persons of all classes were in receipt of poor relief in Britain. The figure for January, 1913, was 794,227. When Queen Victoria came to tho " throne in 1837 there were 16W boys under 16 years of age awaiting transportation from England for petty crimes. The property belonging to the Salvation Army is valued at about £20,000,000. Of this £8,000,000 worth is in America and £2,000,000 worth m Great Britain. There arc more Englishmen in Glasgow to-day than there are Scots in London, while 30 per cent of the professors in Edinburgh University arc Englishmen. There will be 20 altars in the new Abbey Church of tho Benedictine Order at Woolhampton, Berks, England. The Church will be known as Douai Abbey. Although the sun is using itself up at. tho rate of 250,000,000 tons a minute, it is so large that it will not be reduced to the size of the earth for about 100,000,000 years. Although Scottish people arc slower to marry than either English or Welsh, they have, on the average, larger families and arc more frequent patrons of the divorce court. In a month a caterpillar will devour. 6000 times its own weight in food. It will take a man three mouths before he eats an amount of food equal to .his own weight. At the. present rate, the system of ■ marking cars now in uso in Great Britain will bo completely exhausted in less than two years' time. New systems are- being discussed. Sheffield had 16.000 back-to-back houses at the end of the war. Large numbers of them have now been altered into through houses and 6000 new houses have been built. Although the telephone staff has increased in size, London users of the phone took, on an average, 40.2 seconds to get through, the average time for 1927 being 37.8 seconds. "Wo are given ten times as much brain as we need," said Sir Arthur Keith in a recent lecture. "Very few people use 50 per cent, of their brains; many people but 10 per cent." Women, live longer than men, statistics proving that for every three- men aged between 75 and 80 there are four women, while for every four men over 85 there are seven women. A Littauer Foundation has been founded with £200,000 by Mr. Lucian Littauer, an American glove manufacturer, with the object of promoting " a better understanding amoug all mankind." Tho death-rate for infants in England and Wales during 1928 was 65 per 1000 births—the lowest on record. The birthrate throughout the country was 16.7 per 1000 of the population. A recipient of income, tax forms sent the following note to Mr. Churchill: "Dear Sir. —I .return your forms herewith, as 1 do not wish to join the income tax. 1 am already insured." The Dean and the five Canons of WestminsteV Abbey have not had any increases in their salaries since 1840. The dean receives a stipend of £2OOO a year, the canons getting £IOOO apiece. < There arc to be 27,000 Boy Scouts at the Great Jamboree to be held in August ;u the Wirral Peninsula. For obvious reasons ukuleles, banjos, whistles and • niouth-organs are to be banned. During r. recent cold spell in Britain Mr." A. J. Lee, of Radlett, found four goldfish frozen in a block of ice in his garden pond. The ice was melted and the goldfish began swimming again. The carat is a weight used for diamonds and other precious stones. The word is • derived from tho name of the seed of the carob or locust true, this seed in early days being used as a small weight. "A black retriever was taken to Southampton bv car from his homo at Codsall, near Wolverhampton. After 15 weeks' absence he .urued up at the old home, having walked the whole distance of 168 ■ miles. • The ancient church of St. Mary Magi dalen at Ripon, Yorkshire, has been : scheduled by the Office of/Works as an i ancient monument. For many years tho [ edifice has been a ruin and some years * ■ ago piggeries were erected at-the west K , end, the font being used as a pig trough. ■