GENERAL ITEMS

Gisborne Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1383, 18 February 1905, Page 3

GENERAL ITEMS

This is how a sympathetic Taranaki paper condoles with a resident in the loss of a little daughter : “It will be a sad blow to Mr and Mrs Blank, for their bright little daughter used to milk eleven cows night and morning.” The fallowing quaint advertistment appeared in a Northern paper recently :

" Wanted, a useful youth as waiter.; one used to pigs.” A compliment to the dinners 1 v

An excited lady from tho country wildly waved-an ancient brolly, and brought an electric car up “ all standing ” on the Wellington Quay. She desired to ask the moiorman what time the boat left for Day’s Bay. ’ In Russia, if a man marries an heiress, he does not get the control of -her money. There is a marriage settlement, and the wife controls her property as absolutely as the spinster. King Dick has made a disoovery. He has come to the conclusion that the Government has not been doing the fair .thing by the goldmmiog industry, and he is going to put matters right. Speaking at HurchesoD.'on the West Coast, a few days ago, Richard announced a new goldfields policy. The Government, he said, has secured a very able geologist in Canada, whose business it would be, at the expense of the State, to discover what gold was loft below tho surface, the scratching of which has, up to the present moment, constituted what we call mining. It seems curious that it should have taken so enlightened a man so many years to reach a conclusion that most ordinary persons interested in the development of our goldfields arrived at in a fraction of the time. King Richard ha 3 been a Minister for something like fourteen consecutive years, Prime Minister for twelve of that fourteen, and Minister of Mines in name or in substance all the time. Xet it is only now that hi 3 eyes are fully opened. —Observer. On the Paris Circle Railway a train had to pull up to avoid runniog over a lunatic who was warming his hands at a bonfire he had lighted, between the metals. it is a curious faot that in nearly every street of the cities of Japan there is a public oven, where for a small fee people may have their dinners cooked.

IFor selling margarine as butter, George Jackson, trading as the Kiel and Danish Butter Association at Radcliffe, Lancashire, was fined JSXSO, or nine months’ imprisonment.

A Cheshire rector has arranged for a cycle-house to be erected near his church, for the convenience of cyclists, whom ho thus hopes to encourage to attend the services there.

General CroDjo has told an interviewer that the lesson of the Boer war is the importance of universal military training as distinguished from mere rifle shooting. Messages by wireless telegraphy were exchanged without using relays between Kansas City and Cleveland (Ohio), a distance of 725 miles, which is said to be a lund record.

The modern bullet will pierce the carcases of three horses in succession at 550 yards, of four at half the distance, and hsU a man after passing through the trunk of a thick tree.

Cats can smell even during sleep. Xf a piece of meat be placed immediately in front of a sleeping cat’s nose the nostrils will begin to work as the scent is received, and an instant later the cat will wake ,up. Telephone systems in tho United States absorb nearly 5,000,000 miles of single wire.

The mignonette is flower of Spain.

An old woman who lives on tho slopes of the Parfcry Mountains, Mayo, and whoso name is Anne Staunton, is IX3 years of ago, and is believed to bo the oldest woman in Ireland. She is still in full possession of all her faculties. The old woman has not yet seen a train, bofc this is not surprising, as there are hundreds of people within a radius of 30 miles ’of Ballina (Ireland) who are equally ignorant of what a railway is. Some, indeed, have never seen a bicycle.