Local & General

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 66, 23 December 1946, Page 5

Local & General

Xmas Publications of Beacon Owing to Christmas and New Year Statutory holiday periods intervening, the Beacon will ’ not be published on 25th (Xmas Day) nor 27th (Friday). The paper will appear as usual on. Monday 30th, but will not be published on Wednesday, January Ist (New Year’s Day).

Poland’s Trade Revival Restored Polish industries are now exporting cement to Sweden, Malta, Brazil and the Soviet Union. In three months, exports reached 217,691 tons and bigger exports are planned. Under a new trade agreement with France, Poland will export to France paper, cotton textiles, zinc, coal and other commodities. In return, France will send electrical installations, phosphates and iron.

This Might Be Whakatane

' Noel Coward tells of the time he disobeyed doctor’s orders to uphold the tradition that “the show must go on.” “Just before Christmas, I suddenly ran a 102 degrees temperature. The doctor forbade me to play —bqt, fired with a never-say-die spirit, and secretly confident that I had only a bacl cold, I insisted. The show went on. But so did the mumps, which I gave to 16 other members of the cast.”

Always a Golfer There once was an ardent golfer who. lived, ate, and dreamed golf. One day he entered into a furious argument with his partner about whether he should use a mashie or niblick for the next stroke, and solved it by brutally braining His partner with a brassie. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. Came the fateful day- of execution and he mounted the scaffold. Just before they tightened the noose about -his neck, the warden stepped up and asked: “Do you have any final request you wish to make?” “Sure,” replied the golfer. “May I please take a few practice swings?”

Unusual Cross > An animal believed to be a cross between a goat and a sheep has' been born to a Romney ewe on the Big Hill station at Kereru, Hawke’s Bay. Formerly it has been considered impossible for goats and sheep to inter-breed. The lamb, or kid, has a sheep’s body, but the long, smooth hair of a goat. It has the long tail of a sheep but the horns of a goat are growing rapidly. The strange animal was found running with its mother when a large draft of sheep was brought in from the rough country at the foot x)f the ranges for docking. Large numbers of goats infest the country in which sheep were running during the winter.

Wire Scarce

■ “Every effort is being made to ..obtain wire from overseas, not only by the Government but by importing concerns in New Zealand,” said the -Minister of' Rehabilitation, the Hon. C. F. Skinner, at the monthly meeting of the Rehabilitation Board. The Minister was replying to comments by the Under-secretary of Lands, Mr D. M. Greig, on how the shortage of fencing wire was holding up development of land for servicemen settlement. “The position is very difficult,” said Mr Skinner. “For steel wire used for nail-mak-ing we are really living from hand to mouth. I would be surprised to hear that even import licences issued in 1944 for wire and piping had been fulfilled. With thousands more soft-coal miners out of work in the United States, the position will not be improved.”

Wing Thistle In a letter to the Whakatane County Council the Department of • Agriculture referring to the council’s letter relative to the presence of Wing thistle in Perennal ryegrass seed, stated that certification of seeds had reference only to the type of the seed and not to either the purity or the germination. Certain minimum standards of purity were imposed but these were only adopted as a means of ensuring " that the seed had been reasonably machine dressed before being finally sealed and tagged. Attention was drav.n by a statement on the re verse side of each tag to the necessity of inspecting the official purity and germination certificate covering the particular parcel of seed. v This certificate gave full particulars of the impurities found in an officially drawn sample of the line.