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Lord DEVONPORT’S weekly bread allowance is regarded as extravagant by a lady correspondent, who writes, “In my own household we hardly eat any bread at all.  We practically live on toast.”

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An informative contemporary explains that the Chinese eggs now arriving are nearly all brown and resemble those laid in this country by the Cochin China fowl.  This, however, is not the only graceful concession to British prejudice, for the eggs, we notice, are of that oval design which is so popular in these islands.

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[Illustration:  Pro Patria.]

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An Evening News correspondent states that at one restaurant last week a man consumed “a large portion of beef, baked potatoes, brussels-sprouts, two big platefuls of bread, apple tart, a portion of cheese, a couple of pats of butter and a bottle of wine.”  We understand that he would also have ordered the last item on the menu but for the fact that the band was playing it.

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A Carmelite sleuth at a City restaurant reports that one “Food Hog” had for luncheon “half-a-dozen oysters, three slices of roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, two vegetables and a roll.”  The after-luncheon roll is of course the busy City man’s substitute for the leisured club-man’s after-luncheon nap.

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There is plenty of coal in London, the dealers announce, for those who are willing to fetch it themselves.  Purchasers of quantities of one ton or over should also bring their own paper and string.

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One of the rarest of British birds, the great bittern, is reported to have been seen in the Eastern counties during the recent cold spell.  In answer to a telephonic inquiry on the matter Mr. Pocock, of the Zoological Gardens, was heard to murmur, “Once bittern, twice shy.”

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A stoker, prosecuted at a London Police Court for carrying smoking materials into a munitions factory, explained in defence that no locker had been assigned to him.  The Bench thereupon placed one at his disposal for a period of one month.

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On the Somme, says The Times, the New Zealand Pioneers, consisting of Maoris, Pakehas and Raratongans, dug 13,163 yards of trenches, mostly under German fire.  The really thrilling fact about this is that we have enlisted the sympathy of the Pakehas (or “white men"), who, with the single exception of the Sahibs of India, are probably the fiercest tribe in our vast Imperial possessions.

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The announcement that the Scotland Yard examination will not be lowered for women taxicab drivers has elicited a number of inquiries as to whether “language” is a compulsory or an alternative subject.

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“The feathers are most quickly got rid of by removing them with the skin,” says the writer of a recently published letter on “Sparrows as Food.”  He forgets the very considerable economy which can be achieved by having them baked in their jackets.