HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 20041, 2 September 1920, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

> Before the war, 1,969,259 . tons of ; sugar were imported into the United Kingdom. Of this amount only 72,019* tons were obtained from the British Empire. Thus no less'than 1,290,401) tons of sugar were imported from Germany and Austria’, and 600,839 tons from other countries. Ninety per cent of tho worlds supply of cloves comes from two tinv is? lauds off tho east coast of Africa,— Zanzibar and Pemba. Last yearns clove harvest yielded roughly I4,000,l)00lb 1 weight of cloves representin'!;, £1,200,000. , Tho late Charles Qarvice left over £70,000. Far more famous authors/ have left much less. Charles Dickens \ however, left £BO,OOO, and Miss Brad- 1 dou £68,000; Edwin Arnold left £6400 ! Clement Scott £4480. the Poet Limreate, Alfred Austin, £2098. Julia! Frankan (known as "Frank Danby”L left £34.000. y J ■ Scores of raon, members of a Georgia lynching mob, fought recently to obtain as souvenirs scraps of the clothing of a, negro who had been shot to pieces 1 by repeated fusillades from rifles and revolvers. tragedy occurred near the town of Rincon. The negro was caught that day, and following his confession of tho murder of a young white girl, was chained to !V> tree and oil poured over him with tho idea of burning him alive. The doomed man, however, in a paroxysm of terror, broke the chain as an effort was made to apply a torch, and fled screaming down the read Ho fell riddled with bullets from a hundred firearms before he had got ten yards. ■ . Steps are being taken in Franco to deal with the epidemic of robberies ana other crimes which havo lately been committed with such frequency. The placing of additional motor-cars at the disposal of the pohco has also been found to be necessary, and tho number of motor-cars allotted to the force has recently been increased. A Bill lias now been introduced in the Ch/niber providing for the creation of a State police force in nil cities of 40,000 or more inhabitants, ( Up to tho present tho municipal police have done their best to cojkj with the increasing wave of crime, but, in Paris especially, is has not infrequently occurred that the police have been insufficient 4o deal with the organised bands of criminals. This has been evident on several occasions when tho police have attempted to arrest motor bandits and gangs of thieves occupied in' robbing goods yards. _ Although no less than a. thousand of the latter category are in prison, the problem of protecting Hie railway goods stations is a serious one, as the railwaly companies continue to report 'considerable losses. The Ministry of War is now studying tho creation ol a mobile force of gendarmes, who will bo available for immediate service in any district where their presence may bo necessary. Tho patriotic stupidities of French fathers and mothers having ■ been inflicted upon the children in the shape of war names, the French Government have agreed to grant facilities to provide for tho re-christening of tho “ vicWo nro sure there is room for a similar move bore. A boy with a. name like “ Gallipoli Gilhooley,” or a girl saddled with "Mesopotamia. ¥acpherson” will havo a, douce of a time at school. Some very valuable work is now in progress in the Cawthrou Institute (says tho Nelson "Mail”). Tho soil survey of the Waimoa Plains is already in progress, and experiments are also being made with insect pests and their natural enemies. Tho natural enemy of the woolly aphis, it ia understood, has actually been discovered, but tho institute is not prepared to ’ accept tho responsibility of letting tho ” enemy ” looso in New Zealand without the consent and approval of the Government. What the natural enemy of tho woolly aphis might do after it had exterminated its prey had to bo taken into consideration; and great care must bo exercised in such matters. One of tho most important industries of Newfoundland is seal fishing. In 1916, the Newfoundland sealers caught 241,302 seals. The net value of this haul was £128,500. The seal catch for this year is already in, and amounted to only 33,985 seals, having a value of £32,000. Back of this failure is the high cost entailed in fitting out the seal-fishing fleet. The statement is made that it cost £60,000 this year to fit out nine vessels, whereas in 1909 it coat only a little more than half as much to fit out twenty-two steamers. A Swiss multi-millionaire company promoter and financier, M. Jules Bloch; who made enormous profits during the war and declared only a portion for taxation, was fined by the Federal Commission at Berne the record sum of 16,000,000 francs, which, according to the present rate of exchange; amounts to more than £650,000. M. Bloch was given a fortnight iu which to appeal. Tho case has been pending since the armistice. Having in view the establishment o! a wireless station for the transmission of_ time signals, the International Science Bureau proposes to ignore all tho usual limits and to erect a station sufficiently powerful to send a timepulso over tho whole globe. The project has much to commend it, hut there aro practical difficulties looming ahead. Apart from tho technical troubles which will be encountered one is bound to feel that the utility of the scheme will suffer on account of that strong factor called tho “ human difficult, for instance, to conceive' Getmans agreeing to take their time from Belgian sources; Similarly, those nations who, like the French, have been pioneers in time-signalling may prefer lo listen to tho signals from their own stations. At tho armistice the American navy force was, as regards numbers, greater than our own, claiming over 497,001) men and women, as against 400,977 in tho British service. From various causes, including desertion, it had come down on June 1 to a total active personnel of 118,278. There wore 7471 regular and 1046 reserve officers, 1694 warrant officers, and 1795 midshipmen in the Naval Academy, a total for officers of 11,906; while the men numbered 103,372. Those are official figures. Yet only a year ago Mr Daniels assured the Naval Committee of tho House of Representatives that tho navy woufi bo greatly crippled if its personnel were reduced lo .150,000, and an ■ authorised strength of 170,000 was fixed, for enlisted men, as compared with which total there is now a shortage of nearly 64,000. The maximum numbers sanctioned for the British Navy this year arc 136,000, and the estimated average throughout tho year is 133,050. Speaking of the London Zoological Gardens, "Tho Times” says that tho bears are always a source of anxiety to the management. The animals appear to bo so friendly and playful that the public, and oven experienced keepers. aro sometimes inclined to be nish. But no bears aro over quite safe; they will turn ut a moment’s notice, without any apparent cause, on persons with whom they aro accustomed to bo fed. Not long before tho war a keeper feeding the Polar hears in their old den had his attention distracted for a moment by a visiter, and, turning round, left his. hand against the bar-. At olice one of the bears took' a finger off. Tho Australian newspapers report a fatal accident of a similar kind to an old keeper in. the Adelaide Gardens. Ho was hosing the bears through the bars, an operation in which they delighted. Ho turned round for a moment, and one of tho hears seized tho hosepipe, pulled it and tho keeper’s -.inn throuy'i the bars, and torn off Uu>. arm at th- #lbuw v Tha uufurittllitoi man ftLui, ' i