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Evening Star, Issue 23695, 1 October 1940, Page 4

The secretary of the Chamber of Commerce has received from the Associated Chambers of Commerce a copy of a letter from the Minister of Customs (Hon. W. Nash) concerning the admission under second period licenses of cargo carried hy the steamer Armadale. Tho Minister states that upon a review of all the circumstances and in light of tho representations which have been made to him as to tho hardship caused to importers as a result of. tho original decision, it has been decided to modify the procedure previously laid down in so far as it affects goods loaded on the vessel at New York. Where such goods have been endorsed against a third or fourth period license held hy an importer, a special fourth period license will be issued to tho value of tile goods so endorsed if the importer considers that the balance remaining on his existing licenses is insufficient to rover bis requirements lor the remainder of ]9-10. In other eases, whore the importer held no license in respect of the third or fourth period under which the goods could he entered and a special fourth period license has accordingly been issued to cover the goods, on condition that the amount involved would ho deducted from the importer’s allocation for the fifth or a subsequent period, the license will not now be regarded as a charge against the allocation for a later period. Importers who are affected should make application accordingly to the Customs Department. Recollection of half-penny tram fares in Glasgow during tho last war prompted one New Zealander to ask a Glasgow boy who arrived at Wellington with the first official party of British children to New Zealand if .the half-penny fare still operated. “ No,” tho boy replied, “ it stopped at the beginning of the war. It is a penny now. The workers wore very annoyed about it and they walk to work now. Those who eonld get them rorlo bicycles, hut hieveles are not easy to hnv non-.” The independent Scottish spirit is apparently as strong as ever.

Opossums are not strangers to Dunedin; they frequent Jubilee Park, tho Town Dolt, and other treed areas in comparatively largo numbers. They arc, however, strangers to such places as the Queen’s Gardens, and a healthy black specimen which sported in the limbs of a hawthorn treo on the Hattray street side of the reserve yesterday afternoon attracted considerable attention, and many pseudo-naturalists could be heard giving something of the life history' of this interesting animal. The creature quite enjoyed itself among the leafy branches and took no interest in the upturned circle of laces below although it did view with some trepidation the attempts of small boys to invade its sanctuary. These attempts came to nothing, however, because the bulk o£ the onlookers were opposed to any interference with the which was doing no damage beyond eating the tender green loaves. The opossum, it appears, reached town by illegal means, it being presumed that it stowed away in a truck of timber coming from the Gatlins district, escaping at Dunedin without paying its fare and seeking refuge in the nearest sheltering tree. It remained there most of the afternoon, but was missing this morning, so apparently during the night it joined forces with some of its distant relatives in other parts of the city. The City Fire Brigade responded to two calls to deal with chimney lires last evening. The first was at 7.10 from Queen street, and this was followed 3o minutes later by a call to Grandview Crescent, Qpoho. At the annual meeting of the South Island Motor Union, held in Christchurch, it was unanimously resolved to forward the sum of £250 sterling to Loudon for the relief of distress fund. The Minister of Finance (Mr Nash) announced yesterday that the aeroplane fund now totalled £71,996, including the following amounts: —Marlborough, Patriotic Council, £1,100; ‘Press, Christchurch (third and fourth instalments), £1,777; New Zealand Co-opera-tive Dairy Company, Waikato, £7,500. The facilities of the R.S.A. Club in Moray Place, through the courtesy of the Dunedin Returned Soldiers’ Association, will he available to Territorials attending the camps at Forbury Park and at Wingatui while they are on leave in Dunedin. The club is ordinarily closed on Sundays, but while the men are in camp it will bo opened on Sunday afternoons and evenings. “ It does not matter whether we contribute £IOO or £I,OOO, the Royal Air Force will still get all the aeroplanes that can bo turned out,” said Mr J. S. Roberts, at the meeting of delegates to the Canterbury Lawn Tennis Association last evening. “I think it _is better for the money to go to the relief of distress in London and other parts which have been bombed—provided the money can be got out of the country.” The association had before it a suggestion by the New Zealand Association that the 33,000 tennis players of the Dominion should contribute to the fighter fund. Delegates pointed out that the response of the people of New Zealand had been so uniformly good that there would be overlapping in the appeals because many tennis iplayers must already have contributed. It was decided to make an appeal to clubs to assist in the London relief funds.

A loud and sudden noise, whicji appeared to some to be a distant or muffled detonation, was heard by many residents of Kaiapoi on Sunday evening (says the ‘Press ’). The noise was heard by everyone attending a service in a Kaiapoi church at exactly 7.30. They felt a concussion in the air. A resident living about a mile and a-half from the sea said that the noise seemed to come from the coast, though ho would not be sure. He felt his house shake. A friend had suggested that it was caused by the explosion of a mine. Another description of the noise _ was “ like a bomb going off in the talkies.” and many other persons thought it might have been caused by a meteorite striking the earth. 'A number of Herman fighter a.ircraft arc believed t-o bo now fitted with* a spring under the pilot’s seat to assist parachute escapes, states the Loudon correspondent of the Wellington ‘ Post.’ The spring is apparently released hy a button or lever at the side of the pilot's compartment, and is so strong that it hurls the pilot straight out of the cockpit like a jack-in-the-box. throwing him clear of the plane. A Hurricane pilot who attacked a Messerschmitt 109 watched his bullets entering the fuselage, and was surprised to see the pilot spring into the air like a man standing at attention and then make a parachute landing. Encumbered by their heavy parachutes, many of the German pilots have experienced great difficulty in climbing out of the cockpit before their smitten machines have lost too much height to make a parachute landing possible. The objection raised by the United States to the inspection of correspondence by the British authorities was touched on hy Professor (R. O. M'Geehan, of Victoria University College, in an address on legal rights in the war at sea to a meeting of the Wellington branch of the League of Nations Union. He said that America had admitted that only genuine postal correspondence—which excluded parcels—could be sent to Germany, and with that admission had virtually given away the right to object to interference with correspondence, as the contents of mails could not bo ascertained without inspection. He admitted that Contraband could be taken from correspondence. One would not suppose that much contraband could be sent by letter mail, but in the last war a great quantity of sausage skins was posted in that way and was used in the making of Zeppelins. A marked falling off in the quality of knitting wool, possibly due to the big demand for first-class wool for military uniforms, is a source of exasperation to women who like to ply their needles (says the Christchurch ‘Star-Sun’). After paying a stiff price for some khaki wool with which to make mittens and scarves for soldiers going overseas, one Christchurch woman found, when she came to knit it, that it was full of piripiri barbs, impossible to pull out. Trying out a small piece knitted up, she decided that unless the _ troops developed the hide of a rhinoceros, the irritation of the piri-piri barbs would in five minutes drive crazy any soldier who tried to wear cither scarf or mittens made of such wool. The problem of what use to put it tp is still exorcising the purchaser’s mind. The creation of a capital fund of £2,400, to bo known as the Centennial Festival Music Scholarship Fund, which would be under the control of Auckland University College, was decided on at a meeting of the metropolitan executive of the Auckland Provincial Centennial Council, It was suggested that this sum would give a return sufficient to maintain two scholarships annually of about £4O each. There was no business to engage the attention of the magistrate in the Police Court this morning.

The Railway Department advertises in this i=sno partirnlars of altered running of P.O a.m. ijnnedin-Oainaru train on Thursday, October 3.