Local & General

Chronicle (Levin), 5 September 1949, Page 4

Local & General

Missed The Investiture. j After completing his term of I duty as a pilot in the Berlin air ; Jift, Flight-Lfeutenant ... D. J. | Phillips, of Weedons, left Germany last month to return to New. Zea- | land, hoping to be in. Christchurch | for the investiture, when he was ' to receive the Distinguished Flying | Cross. He arrived honie this week, jpfter his 12,000-mile journey.-but was unable to attend the invesI ti ture becaiise of an indisposition. |A Family Afifair. Two -brothers are serving on the personal staff of the GovernorGeneral. They are LieutengntColonel E. A. McPhaiV D.S.O., M.C. and bar, honorary aide-de-camp, of Invercargill, and Surgeon Cantara E. S. McPhail, V.R.D., | R.N.Z.N., of Auckland, honorary ! physician. This is probably the first time in New Zealand's viceregal history that twp brothers have served on the personal staff of a Go vernor-General. Safe With Magistrate. Boxes of the latest model ballpointed pens and refills, not yet on the New Zealand . market because of import licensing, attracted qonsiderable attention when proj duce'd during the hearihg of a j Customs Department prosecution in the Mag'istrate's Coixrt, Auckland. With a significant smile, counsel for the Department, Mr. Rosen, said he would not produce the pens as evidence. He hapded them to witnesses to identify. Mr. J. Moriing, S.M., asked to be shown a pen, commenting that "it would be quite sgfe with me," At the conclusion of the case the magistrate, who had been writing noles with' the- pen, made sure that it was retufned to counsel. Pens and refills had* been confiiscated by the Customs Department. Raihvay Executive Salaries. The general manager of railways at ope time received' a salary of £3500 a year; in January Jast the salary for the sa.me pogition was £1775. This is stated ip the latest issue of the offieiaj joprnal of the Railway Officers' Institute in an articie endorsing the plea of the Public Service Oommission for increases in the salaries of the heads of State departments. "There is no camparison," says the journal, "between the increased responsibihties of today and those which existed in the railways' palmy days of monopoly." "Furdiennore," it says, "the increased cost of living imperativeiy demands corieideration for administrative ofhcers as well as for the lower-paid sections of the service." A Rare Tortoise. The possibility of a recent find by Mr. J. T. Taaffe, of Kaitaia, on the Nine&y-Miie Beach^ being identified as a rare species of tortoise is.. mentipne'd by the secretary of the Auckland Zoological Society (Mr. H. El. Rist) in a letter to Mr. Taaffe. Finding what he presumed to be it young turtle on the beach on August 4, Mr. Taaffe later preserved it in spirits for identification. . Its length was less than 5in. overall. Should this discovery be idenfified as Tortilius coccolis, a rare species .believed until 1931 to have been extinct, it would he of the utmost importance, Mr. Rist says in his letter. Tortilius coccolis was' formerly considered to have perished as a species in the Pklaezoic era of the Meiocene Age, but a specimen was discovered in the Cook Islands in 1931. This was a male. No female had been secdred by the scientific World and the bio-ogical history of the female was unknown. 4