BRIEF MENTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10683, 1 February 1913, Page 1

BRIEF MENTION.

Evelyn Webb, a one-handed pianist, recently won silver and bronze medals ■. at the London College of Music exami- - . nation.' '-' v > .yW A man wlio has just died in a lonely - ', cottage at Aberywesyn, near Brecon;, always kept a policeman's helmet _ - hanging on a nail opposite the front' i" door to frighten tramps. - -*-j, Nearly 100,000 million tons of coal art) available in the coalfields of the United Kingdom, and at the present; " rate of consumption these will bo' ex«: liausted within the next 175 years. Saloinone, a notorious brigand, who ' has been sentenced at Aquila, Italy, to thirty years' imprisonment for murder and attempted murder, has written / several stories for newspapers, and has . also published a volume of poems. / < ' A restaurant run by the city has-for fifty years existed in Grenoble, France. Meals are supplied at cost, and the.: ' food is Excellent. For lid a customer " can fill himself with bread and soup,., and for 6d he is furnished with a four- " - course dinner. i 'i /, ; Shakespeare produced all his plays . . with about 15,000 different words; Mil-" ton's range comprised about 1000, and - the Old Testament's limit is 5642. A parson of good education seldom exceeds 4000, while many people aro limited to about 300. , - *> Among tli® exhibits at the Interna- * tional Cage Bird Show at the .Royal .* 1 i Horticultural Hall, Westminster, were " some white canaries. There were eight shown; four were spotless white with' A pink eyes; the others had faint strejlkp ' of £reen or yellow. The sum 'of £SO has been put on- the Government .Estimates of Western ■ ~ Australia to make a trial of Inter- , „ national Correspondence School training', ; with prisoners, uftder a system corresponding somewhat to that carried on by ' the Borstal Association. ... v /

• Mr Robert iGarside, an engine-driver" 1 in the servico of the London-and.North- ' Western* Railway, has just completed 1 forty years' service, in the course r of ' which ho has driven an aggregate disk . ! tance of 1,84-7.C00 miles. That is equal 1 to seventy-four circuits of the world. ! ; . -The first steel pen was made by Mr- ' Samuel Harrison for Dr Priestly i The-* ■ split-ring was another of Mr--Harr- s ■ son's inventions. Roughly, the world now consumes some four million, steel pens daily, and 800 tons'of steel are 1 used in England alone in their fecture. ; • ' , , v . M 1"-! \',j The age of an iceberg, is tical. The berg that sank the 'Titanic, may have been forming on .thsriwmsftys of Greenland when Columbus crossed ' the sea, or even before that. , The'uj again, it may have been reared byltlieelements since Peary's .firsj; expedition to the Pole, but probably it antedated steamships by many years. A man in Paris.- who bad part nf.hia face blown away by the explosion of. ; a shell, was recently, supplied with" an aluminium mask, which is held in position by an invisible piece of mechanism. The , mask was moulded into the exact ghapo. i of a face, even to the wrinkles,.-and ! painted flesh colour by l ® special process, "] It. extends from the eyebrows almost" to the chin. ' , . ' l'- A remarkablo bird which ■ acquired thfci " '! name of "Suffragette" was exhibited ' last November at the eleventh show "at I the Crystal Palace of the International Poultry, Pigeon ,-rand Rabbit- Clubs. The bird, which is a Wyandotte hen, and lias, laid a large number of. eggs, has developed spurs and a cock's; comb. 1 This curiosity of the poultry yard belongs to Mr R. Watson, of J3ut» i ton. ' j No one keeps so closely in touch with ! the world as King George. He has-a ! staff of . telegraphists and telephonists ! always near him, even when he goes'to a country house, .and the place, wher- . evfer it is, becomes a palace for. tho time being, and is guarded by metropolitan police. The telegraph forms , employed are of a special shape, such. as those to be found in the Foreign . Office-and the War Office. They are taken without cash payment at .tele; graph counters,, the Post Office sending : in its charges at intervals. There are various opinions about'the j origin of the Highland fling, but the j latest and -wost up-to-date theory is to ' Ibe found of all places in tlio world, ;in a student's text-book on zoology, j Professor Sedgwick has found out the 1 origin, and, as he is an Englishman, his opinion is naturally worth having. He writes regarding certain midges in this fashion: —Ceratopogon is the midge which causes much annoyance in Scotland, where its presence, in conjunction with that o.' the kilt. is said •to have given rise to the Highland fling I- > . Tlie " ruby " wedding recently .celebrated ';t Bedrorth, near Nuneaton, does not constitute a record for length .' of married life. In the churchyard of I a villige nen'- Denbigh are the graves !of John and EHer. Owen, who had been . j married eightv years before the parting i came,' and aho of another couple whoso | married life extended over., seventy; years. In both cases both husband and wife died in the same year. „ Ac* cording to a Notts paper of'lß79}''too, a conplp who had been married severity years before were still hale and hearty in the villa'ee of Cotgrave. i - A Yorkshire bee-keeper - is. said to have cured himself of rheumatism by allowing bees to sting him on the parts of ,his body affected. The idea is not altogether a new one, but the painful nature of the experiment does not make for its being very popular, and littlo hastbeen heard of it. The experimenter lives at Armley. a suburb of Leeds. His method is to take the bees by the wings and put them on the affected limb. The theory behind the , experiment is that the formic acid in the stings neutralises the uric acid which is ' supposed to cause rheumatism. The bee-keeper had previously tried the cures generally recommended, but without any success. _ , The peccary, or small wild hog of : Mexico, goes in droves of forty to sixty. Each drove has its own territory,' and never encroaches on that of its neighr bours.' In every case the drove posts sentinels before beginning to feed, and any injury inflicted upon one member of the herd is promptly resented by vail the rest. There is not a more formidable beast on earth than the peccary. Its tusks are tremendous, its courage superb. Not even the mountain lion or the great grizzly bear dares meddle with one of these small wild pigs. The bear knows well that, though he may kill eight or ten of his adversaries, in the long run he will be pulled down and literally torn to fragments. The island of Bernera, Lewis, in the, No- 'h-West-ern Hebrides, does not affora sufficient summer grazing for the croft rs' cattle. Consequently in the begi uiing of July each year they are sent to the mainland hills for a period of about two months. _ In order to get there they have to swim a sea channel about half a mile wide. On a. certain day the cattle, numbering about 700, are gathered together on the c eashore. Two or three of them are tethered a rowing boat, and when the remainder • see in the water they plunge in themselves and swim across. It occasionally happens that as the.time draws T, near lor returning to .the island again some of the cattle, especially the oldei ones, steal away in ,the dead"of night from the gyazings, travel a distance of about ten miles to the seashore,' and swim back to the island.