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Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2681, 29 January 1916, Page 3

A returned soldier now in Auckland has just received sis large official envelopes containing 50 letters originally addressed to him from New Zealand and Australia, while he was on service at Gallipoli and in hospital 111 toypt and some of which seemed to have been following him round in random fashion for months. He states that some of the letters were oven sent to England, though he never was there. Others show, f r oni their postmarks, that they have beeu to the hospital at Pout do Koubbe'h, whore ho was a patient, but as no date is given it cannot be ascertained with certainty whether they arrived while lie was under treatment. In some cases, however, it is clear that the letters were in circuit while he was eithor in the hospital or the convalescent home. The point raised by tho addressee is why the New Zealand postal authorities in Egypt could not have from the hospital records that he had gone on from there to tho home, and have traced him. In the interests of comrades who are still on scrvicc, he hopes for ; more thorough and systematic search in the hospitals and homes before tho finest by tho post office is given up as hopeless, and correspondence for news-hungry soldiers is turned back io its place of origin. Among tho curious contents of packages opened at the English Dead Letter Office aro horned toads, centipedes, baby alligators, petrified frogs, and sets of false teeth. It is only nccessary to boil a cork for live minutes to make it fit any bottle. Machinery in motion deteriorates less quickly than machinery at a standstill. There are 110 paupors' and scarcely Lsjyj multi-millionaires in France.