NEWS ITEMS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12488, 15 March 1909, Page 1

NEWS ITEMS.

A dry dock largo enough for the battleships now being built in England .for. Brazil is to be construcbed at Cobras Island, Brazil. A Chicago" firm is closing its branch . at Capetown "because South Africa has learned to supply Herself with her own . meat. The total cost of deporting the! Kanakas from Queensland was £31.- j 155. The tota* number deported was 4227.- ■■"■ ■ ' ■ | Mysterious "manifestations" having appeared in a house situated near :au electric lighting generating sta- [ tion in St " .Petersburg, the police i made an investigation. The neighbourhood had already got into an excited state of awe at > tiie stories ;of bandboxes flying about ' the room, descending from ; the walls, and other manifestations 'of the "house devil's" occult power. It 1 was discovered that the house was | haunted by considerable leakages of electric power from the neighbouring station. : An American paper divides old men into four catagorics: The old ( men into four categories : The old ] old man with strong body and weak- ! cning mind; the old man with frail " body and sturdy mind ; and the old ] man whose mind and body are alike ] young. The classification is a scienti- | fio one, and could not readily be iin« ' proved. ; A shipwreck is, after all, a mere in--1 cident in the lives of the men who-go-to sea for their livelihood (says the "Times). No Jess than four survivors of the Penguin disaster are .now back : in their old calling on the Te Anau._ * which has succeeded the Penguin. The I men are, Messrs C. Jones, Hull and |-W. Rees, stewards, and the cook, Mr Dan Lynn. ' - • ■

I It was stated at the Middlesex Sessions that the only work Ernest Pike, aged 25, had ever been known to do . was to walk round with an unemployed procession, carrying a banner. He | was sentenced to five years' penal sorLvitude for burglary. ,

A new weekly paper, entitled "Mlodanec": (bachelor); has been started -at Prague, Bohemia, with the object of protecting unmarried men from the snares of the "over-designing female" Among the subjects dealt with in the first number arc "The mother-in-law, and her pretensions," and "What happens when the servant gives notice." *■■;■•.•■■■

The whole of France, from Dunkirk to Toulon, from Brest to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to Nice, was swept by a great storm and was under a blanket of snow in December last. Home, was the duly place to be in in Paris, but it was very difficult to get there. Eight hundred': horses were killed in Paris in one day after having broken their ie.gs by falling • in the street: Tho streets are so slippery that walking is difficult, and horse traffic is now impossible. Fifteen tramps were found frozen to' death in various parts of the suburbs.

Mr John Loder, whoso death occurred at Rpmford (England) a few weeks ago, lived^riext the Roraford cricket and football ground. He established .a toll of sixpence on behalf of the London "Hospital for every ball that came into his garden, and the hospital benefiatted for years from this source. ;

A deaf and jdumb woman - named Racksworthy informed the Southwark caroner at an inquest that her father and mother had'been deaf and dumb, and that she had married three husbands, all of whom were also deaf and dumb. She added that one of her children was deaf and dumb, and another dumb, and that her brother and his wife were both deaf and dumb.

In Holland potatoes arc not received in the parcel post, Denmark, will riot receive almanacs, and Egypt will not permit sausages to be posted. Germany refuses anything of American origin, and has some clauses directed against Japan while air-guns, maps, wax matches rosaries, relics, and jewellery are barred by Spain." 7 '

The princesses of si:v.n are taught to cook, wasli and iron, bake, and perform other household duties. At theage of fifteen they have' completed their studies in the lines indicated,, and are ready for matrimony. .

No matter l>ow carefully. a pipe. is used it is bound to get foul at = times: In such cases you should pack" the bowl tight with grass or :hay , and lay the pipe aside for a few days, and you will have it as sweet as when it was new. ■ -.•,:'..

A "Pyjama Party" has been given in a famous restaurant in New York. The guests included members of the most fashionable families of New York and Philadelphia, who vied with their actress guests n devising amazing dances. One young woman stuck her boots full of dinner knives, and danoed with a young Englishman what is "described as a "wigley dance."

Lord Malmesbury kept, a memorandum of every shot he fired for forty years, ending with the year 1840. He fired 54,987 shots, killed 38,454 head of game, and missed 16,533 ..times; besides that, he calculated the distance which he walked, which would do credit to a hard worked postman. He was out, taking one day with another, four hours. a day for ninety days in the year,, and walked about two and a half miles an hour so that in the forty seasons he covered some 36,200 miles.

Johannesburg has -about the best car system of South Africa, and the lines belong to, the municipality. They pay well, and leave a big profit every year in the city treasury. The street cars are all double deckers. There is a covered compartment on the roof, and for a "ticket"— that is. threepence- L -you can go to any part of the city or its suburbs.

Sailors have their own way_ of pronouncing the names of their ships. 11. M.5. Bellerophon, associated with the captivity of Napoleon, was known in the service as the Belly Rough'un. Prince Louis of Batenburg, a vice-ad-miral in the navy, has published a.book — now in its second edition— on meri-'o-war's names. He sympathises with the bluejacket in the difficulty he has with classical names. No sooner has he learnt to pronounce the word Pactolus, for example, than he is required to give an entirety different name to the iEolus. He is not, however, in those : days' always devoid of some slight, however delusive, classical inkI ling. Not many years ago a naval chaplain was -asked by a bluejacket how to pronounce the name Andromache. "We have got a bet on it," he said, "on the lower deck. Is ii Andrew Mash or Andrew Mack ?" The

chaplain gave: him the correct intonation. "Well," he said, I wasn't quite right, but I was nearer right than the other fellows, for I've always heard that the Chi in Greek was hard and

not soft." Nevertheless Andrew Mack held the field until the ship went to the scrap heap, and the Terpsichore is still the Terpiscor.