ODDS AND ENDS.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16414, 7 January 1919, Page 8

ODDS AND ENDS.

The suggestion that war memorials should take tho form of beautiful gardens, instead of stone and marble monuments, has been generally approved by the Royal Horticultural Society. Tho suggestion is for the gardens to be under tho caro of tho various regiments, | and to be the property of tho different counties. Those who have lost relatives in tho war would have free passes to the gardens. Sir Thomas Beecham has offeredy»An a letter to the Lord Mayor of Blsfnchester, to build an opera house that shall bo of size and I importance not less,than those of any other opera' lionse in London or any Continental toivns with the exception jof Paris and , Petrograd. He also offers to maintain and manage it for a period of ten years, and then to resent it as a gift to the city. He requires the corporation to provide a site of not less than 45,000 square feet. ' i There was sold at Sotheby's, London, on November oth, from the Pittar library, a fine 'copy of the rare first issue of the first edition of Gray's "Elegy wrote in a Churchyard," 1751, for which bidding started at £100. At £655 (the English "record" price) the slender quarto fell to Mr Suckling, the bookseller. It is about Jin taller and wider than tho Hoe copy, which realised £900 in New York seven years ago. . Mr Birrell once picked up a copy in a London auction, room for half-a-crown. Captain Arthur Maughan HumbleCrofts, the husband of one of London's most popular public entertainers, Miss" Margaret Cooper, died on November 18th. The captain was in the R.A.F., and died from influenza at the Military Hospital, Dover. Ho first met Miss Cooper at a concert at the school where he was a master, and they married not long afterwards. Then Captain Humble-Crofts gave up teaching and assisted his wife in her work. He was a fine, accomplished man. A story by the Marquis Albert Theadoli, speaking for Italy at the American Luncheon Club in London, recently. The "King of Prussia" —the Kaiser— standing on a height and seeing the immense force of American soldiers, exclaimed: "What a great fleet it must have taken to bring all these men over the Atlantic!" "No; only one ship— the Lusitania," was the answor. Mr A. Conan Doyle, son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, died early in Novewbor at St. Thomas's Hospital, London, from pneumonia following .influenza, aged 25. Mr Conan. Doylo enlisted in the R.A.M.C. from St. Mary's Hospital, but in May last, on . medical students being permitted to resume their studies, he entered St. Thomas's, where he was regarded as very brilliant, keen, and hard working. An extraordinary seaplane accident occurred off the East Coast of England. When flying low a machine caught the mast and sail of a shrimp-boat engaged in fishing. Attempting to rise, the seaplane lifted the sailing craft out of the water, but the mast and shroud plate broke, and the boat settled again on her keel. The owner, the only man aboard, escaped injury. The pilot of the seaplane, which was disabled, was rescued by another shrimper. The Canada Food Board requested that October 31st be observed as National Fish Day, and learned from reports that tho consumption of fish that clay overtopped any Good Friday, normally the heaviest day in tho year, by r,O to <)0 per cent. Toronto sold 222,40f)1b of fish, of which 127,0001b was fiea fish, and 95,4001b frosh fish. Montreal excelled all records by selling 3.15,0001b of sea and lake fish. Ottawa sold 30,0001b. In all, probably, tho of the Food Board, that 3.000 orolb0 r olb would be sold was quite correct. At an inquest held recently at Grimsby on George Quickfall. 30, Dr. Burnett said the nian had an enormous heart. It weighed more than 21b, as against the normal lloz.