NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 13 October 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

The female falcon is bigger, stronger, and can kill larger prey than the male. A 30-mile-an-hour wind, blowing across a road, exerts a 3001 b. side push on a car travelling a mile a minute.

An athlete with as much energy as an average car going a mile a minute could hurl a 161 b. shot nearly ten miles. If all the offspring of a single oyster lived until it had great-gnand-grandchil-dren their shells would make a pile eight times the size of the earth.

Still and movie caricatures are produced by a new auxiliary lens invented in England. It gives distorted images of races and figures. Crickets are used as watch dogs in Japan. Kept in cages, they stop chirping if a stranger enters during the night. The sudden silence wakes the master.

Air pilots are not always highly paid; in some cases men in charge of machines worth more than £BOOO apiece receive only £4 a week as wages. . Seagulls have a monument at Salt Lake City, erected because they- saved early settlers from a- grasshopper invasion.

The crawfish has an eye in its tail. Discovered by a Harvard scientist, it is sensitive to light, but sees much more slowly than the eyes in the creature’s head.

One of the first musical instruments in the world was a lion’s tooth. In Central Europe archaeologists have found a pipe fashioned from such a tooth 30,000 years old. London’s famous fortress, the Tower, has a regular resident population of 700 persons, men, women and children, including the detachments of Guards on duty. The “no-stocking” fashion has hit the hosiery makers so hard that they are now turning out specially fine seamless stockings that are almost invisible in wear.

It now costs £1 Os 9d a day to hire a policeman in London, with Is a day extra for plain clothes or 7s 6d extra for morning or evening dress. The fees go to the Metropolitan Police fund. The only producing oil-well in England is situated on the Duke of Devonshire’s estate, near Chesterfield. Since it was sunk, in 1919, it has supplied over 2600. tons. An international record collector’s club has been formed, .with headquarters in Bridgeport, Conn., to foster the hobby of collecting old phonograph records. A New York City supply house specialises in early records for such collections. What, it is claimed, will be the world’s finest road is being planned to cover the 2204 miles between British Columbia and Alaska, at a cost of £2,800,000. Already 1000 miles of this mighty thoroughfare have been built. " Our efficiency may be at its peak any time between ten in the morning and midnight—it depends on the individual. But, according to a scientist’s calculations, it is no higher first thing in the morning than it is at bedtime. After studying 2000 candidates for the R.A.F. a medical officer now states that overweight is better than underweight; heavier men can stand prolonged physical and mental stress and are less liable to disease than their slimmer colleagues.

Two Diesel engines driving air screws provide the motive power for a novel ■_ boat made by a young Soviet engineer. It is made; of pulped paper moulded un- - der great pressure, and is said to be strong enough to carry one hundred passengers.

Members of Parliament in Great Britain now pay a “levy” of one penny on all meals, except teas,•-served in the members’ and stranger’s dining-rooms.. The money is devoted to a pensions fund for the staff of the refreshment department. The Canadian Government has sfet aside for the birds, another sanctuary at Aero Lake, near Moncton, New Brunswick. It covers nearly 200 acres, and will serve the thousands of waterfowl visiting Aero Lake during the migration season.

It is now illegal to sell sixty-seven different types of British birds, including blackbirds, i cuckoos, jackdaws, larks, magpies, ravens, robins, sparrows, starlings, swallows and thrushes, save in cases where birds have been bom in captivity. Fungus is fighting fungus in a New Jersey experiment station where scientists are trying to overcome plant diseases caused by parasite growths. Trichoderma, microscopic fungi, are being employed to eat up the destructive growths. Only two of the thirty or so varieties of whales are likely to survive the modem methods of whale-hunting. The Greenland or white whale is now protected throughout the world, and the lesser rorqual, which seldom exceeds thirty-two feet in length, is too small to be worth killing.

Coalfields all over Britain showed a good return for the first three months of this year. The most‘profitable of all, in South Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire, registered a gain of over 2s 6a a ton. Durham was lowest, with a profit of one-tenth of a penny per ton. The biggest output came from York- ! shire.

The misdeeds of the great skua have led the Secretary for Scotland to place this bird on the “black list” It assassinates gulls, swooping down on them and forcing them beneath the water until they drown,, picks the eyes out of Shetland sheep, and thrives on the tender flesh of their lambs. It is a real murderer of the skies.

While droving in Queensland the dogs were chained in selected positions at night to check any movements of the flock, or give the alarm if anything ■’ untoward occurred. One morning a dog disappeared. The chain was discovered protruding from the mouth of a python or carpet snake. The dog had been swallowed. The snake-was decapitated in the vain hope of saving the dog. This specimen measured 20ft. 6in. One of the first men to cast a commercial eye over Torres Strait and see more than pearlshell, trochus, and beche-de-mer was John Bruce, who landed on Mer (Murray Island) about 50 years ago as a trader, and later became the island school teacher. Bruce • visualised a lucrative industry in desiccated coconut, and set up windmills amid the palms at a cost of £2OOO. Then coconut cake slumped in popularity, and the south-east monsoon breeze was na longer likely to blow in big profits to the Scotsman. He is said to have sold his windmills for “a tenner.” After 33 years on Mer “Baba” Bruce left morg than memories of a hard, but just,-sup-erintendant. When the natives speak in the white man’s language many of than do so with a pronounced trace of Scotch accent V/. \ •‘'.S'pr . ■ ■