NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

There are over 4500 lodges of British Freem&sonry, of which more than 1000 are in London.

Foreigners to the number of 2,891,000 live in France, half a-million of them being residents in Paris.

Licensed premises in London nember 5,531; this is a decrease of 1,983 in tho last twenty-seven years. London's oldest shop is in Havmarkst. Snuff has been sold there ever since tho shop was opened centuries ago. Telegraph forms, which are supplied free in British post offices, are wasted to the number of 26,000,000 every year. Only thirty whisky distilleries wero working in Scotland last season, compared with ninety-four twelve months previously* Emeralds were credited by the ancients with the power of strengthening the eyesight of those wearing the beautiful stones. Turbine-engines driven by steam are being tested in model aeroplanes in America. The boiler is heated by furnace oil.

Among the clergy of the Church of England, 6260 receive less than £4Ol u year. Of this number, 96 receive £2OO or less.

Passengers travelling to America by British liners last year numbered 132,000 —a decrease of 139,000 on the previous year.

The Prince of Wales is a proficienfl speaker in French, Spanish, Italian, Ger* man and Danish; he can also speak in Welsh. I

The wine crop in France in 1930 wag the smallest since 1920. It worked ou.fe at two quarts per head of the total population.

Large enough to deal -with 100 coaches an hour, the largest motor-coach station in the world is being built at Victoria* London.

Recruits for the London Metropolitan Police must be at least sft. lOin. in height and between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. Rabbits are proving so destructive in the cemetery at Stanford-le-Hope, Esse:?, that permission has been given to a local man to shoot them.

Each pupil in an elementary school in England and Wales now costs the State no less than £255 during the years of compulsory education.

There are in Britain only twelve fulltime schools for training girls in household duties, and fewer than 600 girls are being trained in them.

Women are sometimes hired to weep, or even to faint, at funerals in South American cities, as a " compliment " to the importance of the deceased person.

Milk which is supplied in British schools to 80,000 children at the rate of one-third of a pint each day is sold to the schools at 2s a gallon.

Telegraph boys in London, of whom there are 17,000, walk twelve miles a day, or cycle twenty a day, in the course of their forty-eight hours of duty each week* There are only about 150 workers in the British silk hat industry, many of them being about seventy years of age. Young men show no inclination to learn the work.

London is growing so rapidly that some experts estimate that its population will grow to 20,000,000 in a radius of fifteen miles of Charing Cross within the next) ten years.

Weather warnings can now be by wireless to aeroplanes flying 3000 ft- . London. They are sent out by ft low-power station at Heston Aerodrome# Middlesex.

"When a specimen has been accepted for exhibition in the British Museum-by, the trustees, it cannot afterwards be takeß out of the building without an Act df Parliament.

Germany's population is decreasing s<J fast that the authorities are alarmed* Of all the couples married in Germany; during the past seven years 43 per cent* are childless.

Clyde shipbuilding had its worst year on record in 1931. the drop representing a 70 per cent, fall from 1930 and 80 per cent, from 1913, which was the best year on record.

A railway season ticket covering a distance of 175 miles was recently issued in England to a dog so that it could accompany its mistress, a Plymouth commercial traveller, on her journeys. }

In British bonded warehouses is stored whisky to the amount of over 150,000,000 gallons. This is sufficient to supply demands, at the present rate of consump* tion, for the next twenty years.

The newest radio invention is a device which connects a wireless set with any piano, and causes the latter to play in complete synchronisation with the broadcasting, if this has also the same attachment.

Mr. James Lockwood, of Plymouth, England, while eating oysters at an oyster counter, felt something hard in his mouth, which proved to be a pear-shaped pearl of splendid lustre, weighing about two grains.

The French Government has given 4 donation of over £SOO to Harvard Uni« versity for strengthening the friendship between the United States and France by spreading the knowledge of the trench: Language.

So many commercial firms have opened offices in the West End of London that trains formerly running to the city, are being diverted to Charing Gross. 30.000 more passengers are dealt with dailv than there were in 1926.

Foot passengers who are caught, in a road traffic ' stream should stand still* Mr. Inglebv Oddie, a London coroner, recently gave this advice, adding: Then the dri%'er knows what he has to do, and the onus is upon him to avoid you.

Repairing the famous tapestries in Hampton Court Palace has been going on for nearly twenty years. It may take four or five skilled "workers two or tlueo years, at a cost of about £2OOO in wages, to mend one piece twenty-five feet bjj sixteen feet.

Money estimated to amount to £260 000.000 is being hoarded by Americans' in the United States. President Hoover, in a recent appeal for the release of this money, stated that every dollar thus hoarded "was equal,to "the destruction of from five to ten dollars in ciedit.

Candidates for the post of announcer in one American broadcasting company had to pass a test, one phrase of which is " The seething sea ceaseth, and thus the seething sea sufficeth ns." Only ten of the 2500 tested in the last two years received appointments.

Wood is made of millions of tinv cells filled with air, water, oil, resin, etc. Under heat all these substances expand. The crackling of burning wood is a series of tiny explosions caused by the energy they exert in the effort to free themselves from the limited space of the cell.

The early kilt was not a separate garment, but the lower part of the p'a'd arranged in folds under the belt. As the were no pockets in the Highlander s dress the sporran, a purse case came into us. It was originally a simple bag of goat or badger skin hung round the waist.

So many licences are needed nowadays in Britain, that one Huntingdon man holds ten—for shooting game, selling game, employing men, keeping a dofi carrying a gun, slaughtering horses, drying a car, owning a wireless set, runnllH a car on the road, and piloting a plsw.