NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20300, 6 July 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Londondere spend £30,0CX),000 every year on travelling to and from their work.

Visitors to the London Zoological Qarden3 during 1928 totalled 2,225,662, r. record.

There are 1,752,719 bachelors in England and Wales, of whom 213,202 live in London.

Tho recent rise in the price of petrol means an extra cost to the British Air Force of £640 a week.

The Bishop of Scuthwark has raised £IOO,OOO for building 20 new churches and enlarging five old ones.

Since 1918, 1,250,030 houses have been built in England, providing homes for five or six million people.

Twelve thousand pythons' skins wero imported intc Great Britain in 1927 from Java for making women's shoes.

The bulbs of some daffodils exhibited at the Horticultural Hall, London, recently arc valued at from £2O to £3O each.

Tho banyan tree, which grows in India, spreads itself out over a great area. One tree was said to have sheltered 7000 men. The British National Trust in 1927 acquired more places of historic interest and natural beauty than in any other year of its existence.

Over £40,000.000.000 was paid by cheque in Britain last year. On 15 occasions the daily total exceeded £200.000,000.

On the London-Paris air services aeroplanes with three motors carry 18 passengers and a crew of threo—pilot, wireless operator, and steward. American boys have chartered a liner to take them to the great coming-of-ago jamboree of the Boy Scouts, to be held in England in July and August. Britain has spent on doles, poor relief, and unemployment insurance nearly twice what France has spent on the reconstruction of her war-devastated areas. An Oxford Rhodes scholar receives £4OO a year, but on that sum has to keep himself during vacations, which consist of 28 weeks as against only ?A of term. During the recent egg shortage in England there was not one egg to bo sold on several days in Tooley Street, London the centre of the egg trade. " Jumping beans " are one of the curiosities of Mexico. Each contains the pupa of an insect whose spasmodic movements cause the bean to hop and roll about. There are 65 bus companies in England. Wales, and a largo part of Scotland, which carry an average of 10.000,000 passengers a day in their 12.000 buses. Cntidy people are soon cured Munich. If a policeman sees a pedestrian throw naner or fruitskins on the pavements ho fines him one shilling on the spot.

The original designs from which Great Britain's coinage is struck aro tn largo plaster casts. Small steel models aro made from these casts by an automatic device.

Sir George Gr.erson, who has made an exhaustive study of the languages and dialects of India, has reduced no fewer than 179 languages and 554 dialects to writing.

"Mind your ' p's and ' q's ' " probably originated in Shropshire and Herefordshire where "to be 'p ' and ' q meant to bo of prime quality or on one's beiiaviour

A new railway which tho French aro building across the Sahara will probably run through a steel tube. This will save the rails from being constantly blocked bv wind-tlrifted sand.

Men's pockets are happy hunting grounds for influenza and other germs, according to a doctor, who says the pockets should be turned inside out, brushed, and disinfected regularly.

If only one oyster were left alona until it had great-great-grandchildren it is estimated there would he so many oysters that their shells would mako a pile eight times the size of the earth.

Passengers to the number of 50,000.000 a year can be handled at the newly rebuilt Charing Oioss Station on London's Underground Railway. It has a booking hall, 10,000 square feet in airea. Although the sun is lessening its 6izs at the rate of 250,000,000 tons a minute, it is so large that it is calculated that it will not be reduced to the size of the earth for about 100,000,000 years.

Racing a quarter of a mile through the dark, Robert Turner reached the signal box at Morley, England, just in time to say the tunnel had fallen in and to save a crowded train from wreck. Great Britain is the world's gj-eatest exporter of leather footgear. Last vear British exports had a value of more £5,000.000, double that of American boot and shoe exports during the same period.

An Ainericanr scientist has exploded tho " busy bee " fallacy. The bee, he says, after investigation, is really laziy. It makes only from six to ten trips for honey, and then rests for tho remainder of the day.

A fleet of flying boats, constructed entirely of metal, and each containing bunks for a crew of five, is nearing completion in a Yorkshire factory. They will ba able to flv from England to Gibraltar without a Y»alt.

A Shorthorn cow belonging to Mr. JW. Barker, of Lazcnby Hull, England, has recently beaten all records for that breed by giving as much as eight and ahalf gallons of milk daily, and 2000 gallons in less than a year.

Budgerigars, the lovely birds which were first imported into England from Japan, aro becoming more reasonable in price. A pair, which would have cost £l6O a sort time ago, may now be purchased for £6 10s. The mystery food which is supplied to tho growing queen bee by the workers, and which enables her to grow to greater stature and live several years longer than her subjects, is now being investigated bv some eminent scientists in Canada. The wealth of tho United States is calculated to bo over £IOO per head of the population. There is £43 in the Savings Bank to every man, woman and child in tho country. Over 4.000,000 Americans have an income of £6OO a year or more.

Under the Young Farmers' Club movement. British farmers' children under the age of 18 are supplied with animals—a calf, a pig, a sheep, or chickens—which they must roar themselves, keeping a careful " record of expenses, etc. There ara clubs all over Britain.

Such big catches have been made by builfrog hunters in the marshes of Louisiana that there are more frogs now than there arc people who enjoy the delicacy of their fried hindqgaTter3. Louisiana supplies the rest of the world with somo two million frogs a year.

Lapwings are the only British larnj birds known to fly right across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. A flight numbering nearly a thousand arrived not long a<*o. It is estimated that even -wrth a strong following wind the birds mnst have been on the wing for on fewer than 22 hours. Electricity is befng nsed to catch fish in parts of Germany. One copper cable is laid at the bottom of the water to bo fished and the other held near tho surfaco bv floats. An electric current passes through the cshles, and all the fish m their neighbourhood are painlessly electrocuted. An edible fish lays anything from. 250,000 to 7,000,000 eggs a year, yet there are seasons when some fish are a.most extinct. One year it may be the herring, the next the haddock, the place, the cod, or tfte hake. Ono good herring family will be reflectea for g year* in the catcher.