NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 May 1921, Page 1

NEWS BY MAIL.

SCIENTIST’S SUNSPOT THEORY PARIS, March 16.

The Abbe Moreux, a leading Frecih scientist and director of Borages Observatory predicts that the next 14 years will be dry. He says that dry and wet periods alternate each lasting about 17 years in Western Europe. The wet and dry periods—he considers correspond to the average number number of spots on the sun, and by means of diagrams he shows that ihe sunspot curve and rain curve at Pans for the last 100 years seems to bear some relation to each other.

Since the beginning of the 19th. century there have been 4 wet periods and 3 dry periods—the fourth dry beginning in 1918. The wet periods were 1806 to 1825, 1841 to 1855, 1870 to 1885, and 1901 to 1918. For the next 14 years he predicts colder winters and hotter sums, with drier weather, good for cereals and vines. OMNIBUS “SPOONING.” NEW YORK, March 16. An amusing correspondence between the Sheriff of New York City and an nonymous but indignant citizen, who insisted that policeman should travel on the tops of New York motor-omnibuse s to check love-making after dark, is published by New York newspapers. To the statement that couples, ‘‘if they must ‘spoon,’ should be compelled to do it in the privacy of their own homes,” the sheriff replies, “Have von no human sympathy? Have yon ever been out in the country in the springtime and watched the birds on the treetops bill and coo? “You must surely have observed that beautiful exemplification of ‘spooning’ where a fond mother holds her offspring in her arms and tho two exchange sweet, affectionate salutations. Such observation, my dear sir, should have triven von a more svmpathetic view of life.

“If you cannot stand the sight of young people on the tops of omnibuses you should travel in tho Subway (or Tube) where they aro thrown into much closer proximity than they ever are on omnibus-tops, and, instead of billing and cooing, you hear only bickering and cussing.” PERSECUTION OF A PRINCESS. BABY BORN IN A STABLE. WARSAW, March 10 A Russian woman, Princess Ivanidze, lias arrived here after a series of extras ordinary adventures. On the outbreak of war she went to the front as a nurse and there met her husband, who later was taken prisoner by the Germans. After the revolution she returned to her estate at Brailof. She and her mother were arrested by the Bolsheviks as “bourgeois” landowners, taken to Moscow, and imprisoned in separate cells by the Chrezveehajka (secret police). From the day of their imprisonment mother and daughter never met, and eveii now the Princess does not know if her mother is alive or dead.

Afterwards the Princess was removed from Moscow to Brailof, and there condemned to death and taken back to prison. There she met her husband, who on his return home from Germany had been thrown into prison. Fortunately husband and wife still had money, which enabled them to bribe their guards. When they had escaped some peasants helped them to hide. When Princess Tvanid'ze had first been arrested these peasants had taken possession of five of her horses and kept them in an underground stable. In this stable the Pryico and Princess lived with their horses for many months, and a baby was born to them.

When the terror grew worse they decided to get away. They wrapped their horses’ hoofs in rags to silence them, and during the night crossed the frontier into Poland. The Princess’s horses, were commandeered, and as they hftd nothing to live on,'she again worked as a nurse with one of the anti-Bolshevist armies. Now die is trying to recover the value of her horses in order to go to France with her husband and 6-months-old baby.

HEART ALIVE IN A BOTTLE. NEW YORK, March 12 Deep in the heart of a chicken, which was taken 8 years ago from a bird that never lived, works a strange dauntless force which apparently only needs a little artificial nourishment to keep it going for ever. The heart, which was taken from an embrvo'bird, lives in a glass i ar mi K ' laboratory of Dr Alexis Carrel head of the Rockefeller Research Institute of New York. It is surrounded by an antiseptic solution which seemingly satisfies all its needs in life, for the or can, after all these years, is still hk..l hearty. T„ fart, it times larscr than ll "? ,s " ' bottled and is continually throwing out fresh tissues. . After the 3rd year of the experiment Dr Carrel came to the conclusion that the connective tissue showed greater activity than ever and was no longer subject to the influence of time. - adopted the theory that, excluding accidents, connective tissue cel.propagate indefinitely. Luring the several years of Dr Carrel’s absence on war oreiVe h, rmnao the heart r«—l untended in its bottle. Careful ex ampliation now shows it still beats and adds continually to its tissues.