NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21520, 17 June 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

It takes about four years to grow a good ash-plant suitable for mating into a first-class walking-stick. The London Corporation is to consider the erection of a flower market near Spitalfields, to cost £65,610. A new ring is added every year to the scales of'a herring. Scientists can therefore tell the exact age of a fish. Physical training facilities are as good in the British Army as in the majority of universities ana big schools. The maintenance of education and public health costs Britain £1 5s 6d per head of the population every year. Four hundred boxes of matches were found undamaged in the debris of a shop destroyed by fire at Bury St. Edmunds. A woman beggar arrested in Prague told the police that her collections brought her an income of about £I2OO a year. Japan has 768 trade unions, 101 of which are in the transport industry. The total number of trade unionists is 370,123. Calves in Holland are baptised before they are sent out to graze, in the belief that the sprinkling is an antidote against anthrax. The first of this year's English peaches were sold in Covent Garden for £2 14s a dozen. They were sent from Lancing, Sussex. English women have the best complexions, with Irishwomen second, acs cording to a research made by a Continental newspaper. The health authorities of Paris estimate that there are 3,000,000 rats in the city. They destroy £2,000,000 worth of food every year. An American bandit who held up and robbed three women in Baltimore. Maryland, within half an hour secured a total of ia loot. Miss Harriet Hodgman, of Golders Green, aged 82, who has suddenly lost her hearing, is learning lip-reading at a deaf-and-dumb school. Cowboys from the Texas ranges are now going regularly to the beauty parlours of Kansas. City for face massage and manicure treatment. A bull-frog kept by the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, has eaten a live alligator. Its victim was a baby, measuring 11 inches. Some of the Scottish parliamentary divisions are so large that it takes the member representing them a fortnight to tour the constituency. If each of Britain's 40,000,000 beds had their mattresses remade once in ten years, it would find work for every bed-maker in the country. Electric motors now being turned out by British manufacturers are larger and have a greater power output than those made in any other country. Two ancient lead quoits have been dug up by men working on the site of the old bowling-green of Gwvdyr Castle, near Llanrwst, Carnarvonshire. Contrary to the general opinion, recruiting for the army does not show any increase in those parts of the country where employment is scarce. Eggs are accepted by the publisher of a newspaper in Holly, Michigan, United States, in payment for subscriptions. One year's subscription is 40 eggs. Mr. Herbert Sumner, of Soperton, Georgia, United States, when undress- ' ing for bed, pulled his necktie so violently that he broke his wrist. St. Augustine's Church, Plymouth, which has been completed after 34 years' interrupted building, has been dedicated by the Bishop of Exeter. . Vipers are caught in New Forest in England, at the rate of 200 a year by Mr. John Waterson, who is official trapper of vipers to the London Zoo. Unemployed men in some parts of America are doing a day's work for farmers in return for a sackful of food —potatoes, vegetables, or fruit. The total number of vehicles passing Hyde Park Corner, London, between the hours of eight a.m. and eight p.m. rose from 37,000 in 1912 to 63,000 in 1931. Ten thousand schoolchildren in France are being given geography lessons in aeroplanes this year. The' object is to make young France " airminded." A German experiment has prove! that when minute quantities of potassium are fed to hens in their daily ration egg production is increased by 10 per cent. It is estimated that Britain has spent £75,000.000 on radio in less than ten years. 'The total yorld expenditure for the same period is placed at £500,000,000. Wokingham, in Berkshire, has borne no fewer than 32 different variations of its name; but on the oldest documents extant the spelling is the same as that in use to-day. An organisation has been formed in Vienna to provide timorous citizens with personal bodyguards. These private guards are all skilled boxers or jiu-jitsu wrestlers. A spinster at Bayswatcr, England, keeps lizards, instead of cats, as pets. Her favourite is a lively green specimen which she takes to church and on shopping expeditions. Peasants digging up the roots of old oak trees near Mashitcha, Bosnia, lately found a pot filled with ancient Greek and Roman gold and silver coins of great value. The pot weighted 201b. A Chicago woman lately applied for divorce because her husband beat her when she spent her weekly domestic allowance oil jig-saw puzzles, which are now tho popular craze in America. After signalling that he had finished tho job, James Sutherland, aged 31, a diver working on the Kirkwall, Orkney, harbour extension, collapsed and died at the foot of a ladder before ho could bo hauled up. A thief walked into a coal merchant's stablo at Harringav, North London, recently and led away by the main road the most valuable of three horses, passers-by thinking he was merely taking it out for exercise. Finger print tests in Munich have established the fact that several disputed pictures aro genuine " old masters" painted by l)urer. This artist, who used his thumb to help out his brush-work, died in 1528. * When George Jarrett, aged .35, was fined £5 or a month's imprisonment at Leeds in April for keeping an office for readv-mouey betting it was stated that the police found an eiglit-year-old girl and a boy of 14 making bets. The gizzard of a dead ostrich at tho London Zoo was found to contain throa gloves, two handkerchiefs, a comb, a tyro valve, a film spool, a pencil, a key, part of a necklace, two collar studs, tlireo pennies and a Belgian franc. When a schoolmaster in Leipsiz, Genmany, caned a schoolboy 38 years ago the boy's eye was injured. Two years ago the eye became troublesome, and it had to bo removed. The former schoolboy has been awarded £IOO damage* , against the master. Prohibition agents seized the illicit still of a hootlegger ;it York. Pennsylvania. The Board of Tax Appeals ia Washington has permitted him to deduct £2500 from his income tax return, on the grtiund that the seizure of the still constituted a business loss^