NEW SIN BRIEF.

Waipukurau Press, Volume 11, Issue 39, 12 August 1920, Page 4

NEW SIN BRIEF.

Tin- Dogger Bank, covering several hundred s/iusie miles, is the most prolific fishing ground, and about 400,000 tons of fish of various kinds are taken there every year by European fishers. ‘•Hearts of Oak’’ has been chosen by the Admiralty as the sailors’ marching song on all ceremonial occasions, lhe Royal Marinos will retain “A Life on the Ocean Wave” as their marching time. The Mint is turning out £2,000 worrii of bronze coins every day, and vet there is always a shortage, although scarcely any of these pennies, halfpennies, ortarthings arc ever withdrawn from circulation. The amount of latent llofsmpower available through the moving air a mounts t obillions of horse-power annu ally ,and constitutes one of the greatest sources of energy of unharnessed power available to man. Some American milliners, having thought to please the wife of the French President with a hat costing £l. DoO, have received a letter from Mme Deschanel, saying that she could not wear a hat like that. The blue of the sky is due, in the main, to particles floating in the air. Those particles scatter and break up the blue rays of ligght, with the result that .while the sky becomes azure, the sun looks vellow.

The chirping of grasshoppers is caused by a thin, horny membrance stretch ed at lhe rear of one-wingcase, and against the extremity of -this case the insect rubs fTie finely-notched under edgge o fthc other wingcase. Black pearls were first, made fashionable by the Empress Eugenie, who in the days of her glory possessed a farm ous necklace, of them, which brought thousands of pounds when sold at auction after the overthrow of the Imperial dynasty. The most sensative instrument yet made is the bolometer, which is used far measuring variations in the radia tion of 'neat. The heart of it is a plafi mint wire so thin that it cannot be sven except when a ray of bright light is reflected from it. I’he old Turkish Emp?r<‘ included seven of the present capitals of Europe —Const an ti no [de. Buda-Pest h, A r liras. Belgrade. Sofia, Bucharest. Get I in,je To-day. aftei 600 years, the empire w brokfien in pieces, and has wasted to a province ami a capital.

The rich purple of olden limes was made by lhe Tyrians, and lhe purple i>f Tyre is probably still the most expensive dye in the world. 'lhe dye is obtained from a small vein in little shell-fish, looking like a periwinkle, ami enormous piles of their shells have been found near the ancient cities of the M oditorranea n. The bird’s eye combines telescopic ami miscroseopie properties. A kestrel Hying 200 feet high drops unerringly on a mouse or beetle in the grass. A vulture several thousand feel up descends like a bolt on carrion. Whether the vulture itself first sights the food, or watches the descent of birds flying lower down, is a disputed point. 'l’he sardine fishermen of Brittany are being harrassod by great schools of piratical purposes, whose attacks have greatly reduced the Tanksof the small n atket fish. The MinisHry of Marine has been petitioned to assign seaplanes ,h fishing ports, armed with bombs of 300-yard destructive area, for the purpose of exterminating the trespassers.