LONDON NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2860, 6 January 1909, Page 40

LONDON NOTES.

(F*om Ova. Ottn CeaREs*oNDZNT.) LONDON. October 23. It is announced from New York that Mr W. J. Yv illenborg, a protege of MiThomas Edison, has invented a system of wireless telegraphy, the great virtue of which is claimed to be the impossibility of tapping it. It is stated that an English syndicate has made an offer to purchase the invention, but Mr Willenborg has refused it, though the purchase price is understood to have been very large. A Home Office Blue-book shows that the total value of the minerals raised in the United Kingdom during 1907 amounted to £135.279,088, an increase of £29,436,099 as compared with 1906. This increase is accounted for by the increased output of coal and a rise in the average price of coal — viz., from 7s 3d per ton in 1906 to 9s in 1907. The total output of coal, 267,830.962 tons, which was the highest hitherto recorded, and the value, £120.527.378, shows increases of 16,763,334 tons and £28,998,112 respectively on the figures for 1906. The quantity of coal exported, exclusive of coke and patent fuel and of coal shipped for the use of steamers engaged in foreign trade, was 63,600.947 tons, an increase of more than 8,000,000 tons on the exports of 1906. France received over 10,666,666 tons, Germany over 10,000,000 tons, Italy over 8,250,000 tons, the Netherlands over 3,750,000 tons, Sweden over 3.666.666 tons, and Russia, Spain, Denmark. Egypt, and the Argentine each over 2,000,000 tons. Adding the 2,968,501 tons exported in the form of coke and patent fuel, and the 18,618,828 tons shipped for the use of British and foreign steamers engaged in foreign trade, the total quantity of coal which left the country was 85,188,276 tons. The amount of coal remaining for home consumption was 182,642,686 tons, or 4.142 tons per head of the population; 21,119.547 tons were used in the blast furnaces for the manufacture of pig iron, as against 20.836.795 tons in the previous year. During the past 35 years (1873-1907) the total value of the mineral raised amounts to £2.731,688.000, and of this sum coal accounts for £2,245,103,000, or 82 per cent; 6.331.104.000 tons of coal have been raised in that period, and of this amount 1.404.654.000 tons, or ' 22 per cent, of the total production have been shipped abroad as exports in the form of coal, coke, and patent fuel, and as coal used for steamers engaged in foreign trade. The percentages shipped abroad in each quinquennial period since 1873 are as follow :— 1873-77. 13.8 per cent. ; 1878-82, 16.1 per cent. : 1883-87. 19.0 per cent. ; 1888-92. 21.2 per cent. ; 1893-97. 23.0 per rent. ; 1898-02, 25.7 per cent. : 1903-07, 29.5 per cent.

Mr Rockefeller still enjoy.-- -p^rdid health, which ho attributes largely to daily trips around die golf links and lv* refuel, ai he humorously [tut a it, to worry aboiil mere money affairs. — A peculiar cu«tom obtain* in the ]2th Lancers — the piajing of the Vesper Hymn, the Spanish Chant, and ih<? Ru.^ian National Hymn e\ery night of the .year afipithe "Last Post" has =our:docl. It i« «aid thpt the pltmug of the* Yc«nor fl\nm o i-ri-nated in on-i of llie officer- wive- presenting the regiment with a new ~er of iu-tru-menU on condition that the hymn was played every night after the "La-t Pom.' 1 The playing of the Spani-h Chant is declared to be a penance foi the racking of a cement during the Peninsular war. No reason, is as-sgned for the plaj ing of the Russian National Anthem.