NEWS BY MAIL

Hokitika Guardian, 11 May 1923, Page 3

NEWS BY MAIL

BLOSSOMS FOR THE BRIDE. REGISTER OFFICE COMEDY. LONDON. .March 22. The austere and dismally businesslike furnishing of the ordinary register i.’fice led to considerable delay ill I lie icrt'ormnnee ol the wedding ceremony *n the West End of London yesterday. When the bride, Miss Alary Miliums, who lives in an hotel rear Chelsea, reached Ik register office she was horrified to find a plainly lurnished loom, with just a table, a lew prosaic chairs, and no bridal decorations at all. "You told me you had arranged to have flowers and ferns brought in,” she saitl reproachfully to the bridegroom, who followed her into the office. The bridegroom looked round in disinav and explained that ho had though* that ilmver.s were always supplied at weddings.

His answer did not satisfy the bride. Her attitude suggested that if there were no flowers in the place she would almost prefer to remain unmarried. Tim bridegroom was a man of resource. Demanding the aid ol his best man lie dashed out of tho office, made a inurieil tour of neighbouring florists’, and returned in about quarter of an hour, laden with sheaves of blossoms, which be arranged about the room.

The pacified bride consented to be .narried in her improvised bower, and the couple left the office smiling aftei the bridegroom had apologised to the registrar for the delay. MOTOR FUEL FROM RUBBISH. WASTE PAPER AND OLD HORN. LONDON. March 23.

,\ remarkably brilliant piece oT chemical work has boob aecomplishoii by two British chemists, Mr 11. Langwell and Mr H. Lloyd Hind, who have discovered a new microbe, by the agency of which some 12.000 tons of waste material can he dealll with annually to produce about half a million gallons of alcohol suitable for motor spirit and acetic acid. The raw material is the waste hops which at the present time brewers have to pay to have carted away, but the real value of the microbe process lies in the fact that it enables alcohol to be produced from sulphite pulp anrl thus from waste paper. The microbe is. stated to be a rodshaped bacillus, and it possesses the excellent: and convenient property of developing so much heat in its growth that other organisms which might interfere with the alcoholic fermentation are automatically killed.

Apart from' the motor spirit yielded, some 15,003 cubic feet of gas still able for internal combustion engines are evolved in the treatment of a ton of waste material.