NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 April 1924, Page 4

NEWS BY MAIL.

“TIPPERARY.” LONDON, Feb. 27. The death at Coventry of Mr Henry James Williams, aged of), one of the nut hors of the famous marching song, “It's a long way to Tipperary,” is announced. A bachelor, he went recently In live at Ueer End, Kenilworth. He was horn, a cripple, at Birmingham, and started composing at an early age. Mis last popular song was "Eileen.” It was “ r i ipperarv” that made him and iis eo-antnor. Mr Jack Judge, famous. "Tipperary” was hawked by Mr Judge from publisher to publisher without rseult. Finallv, Mr itort Feldman saw possibilities in it. hut even then musichall singers would not look at it. At last Miss Florrio Fordo sang it in ihe Isle of .Man on July 21, 1913. As a special correspondent <>i I In* Daily Mail recorded, when men of the British Expeditionary Force landed at Boulogne in August 191-1, they swung up the hill to the groat camp singing blithely, "It's a long, long way To Tipperary.” Heneelorih it was famous. The song was translated into almost every European language (even German) and into 11 nidii.M aui. Japanese. and Chinese. Mr B. Feldman estimated yesterday that mure than a million copies ol “Tipperary"’ had been sold in Great Britain— about four times the sale of most “popular” songs. WOMAN fit) YEARS A RECLUSE LONDON, Feb. 26.A I\u-nett, Staffordshire, woman—..iixs Emily Mountl’urd—who has been admitted to the Wnrdsb-y Infirmary is stated to have been a recluse for fill years owing to losing her beauty through small-pox. She was one of lire daughters of a former licensee ui the Album Inn. Pi'll snot t. All the girls were pretty. The household was stricken with smallpox, and Emily was the worst siiflY-c-r.

her la ce being badly marked. (.‘uumienis on her changed appearance al’fec-ted her, and, declaring Mini, she would never be seen in public again, she went to live with a sister at Corbyn Hall. Rumours of her decision to live in seclusion led to some people watching the windows oi the house to got a glimpse of her, but to no purpose. Acquaintances who went to the house were never able to see her.

Subsequently she and her sister moved to another place. Here her only outdoor exercise was taken at night, her face hidden by a dark shav. I. As sometimes she wandered towards ( orbyn Hall she became known as “The Ghost of Corbyn Hall.”

Failing health has now led to.- her admission to the l infirmary. £I,OOO EGGS. LONDON, Feb. 27 The news that the American .Museum of Natural History has sold for £I,OOO one of its dinosaur eggs which were found in the Gobi Desert reminds one that to-day the popular interest in natural history is so great that enormous pains are being taken to reconstruct the history ot the; least from the marvellous remains which are to be found buried in the skin of this planet of ours, says Christopher Beel; in the Dailv Mail.

Of past epochs none has proved more intensely interesting than the .Mesozoic, that age when the world was inhabited liv a prodigious reptilian fauna, and it is a very curious fact that the finest collections of remains of these Water-loving creatures are found in what to-day are almost waterless deserts.

The Gobi Desert is one of the driest places known, and most of it lies at a great height above the sea. Yet it is fairly. certain that it is actually the bed of an ancient ocean, and it is also believed that man first came into existence on the shores of this sea.

Another enormous graveyard ot monster lizards exists in the North American State of Wyoming, a desert country. Bone Cabin, Wyoming, is known to palaeontologists all the world over by reason of the amazing discoveries made there of giganticfossil bones, most of them being fragments of the brontosaurus, perhaps the largest land animal that ever existed. .

A reconstruction of the brontosaur shows it to have been from sixty to seventy feet in length. Ms thigh hone alone weighed six hundred pounds and its whole weight in life could hardly have been short of twenty-five tons. Lizards of various sorts—some herbivorous, some flesli-eating—croco-diles of giant size, and mammoth turtles were also discovered, as well as bones of the ancestor of our present horse.

In the Libyan Desert of Africa the sand waves cover huge skeletons, including those of elephants twice the size of any known to-dav. In Texas, too, there are great deposits of fossiled hones.

Finding prehistoric skeletons is one thing; securing and packing them another. They are not- only Inigo and

cumbersome but also brittle. It is usually necessary to fill the cracks in a bone with liquid plaster before it is crated. Often the whole piece must be covered with plaster before it can be packed and carted away. TOO COLD TO PREACH. LONDON, February 25. Mounting his pulpit during yesterday morning’s service at St. John’s Church, Holland-road, Kensington, W., the vicar, the Rev. Lester Pinchard, surprised a crowded congregation with the announcement: “It is very cold and miserable in here and I shall not preach. As you have no doubt discovered for yourselves, thieve is no heating in the elnirch—the boiler has burst.’’ Although the congregation had remained in their overcoats and furs, they had not expected any curtailment of ttie service.

“I had not prepared a sermon,” the vicar told a reporter afterwards. “The boiler burst last Monday and it could not Ire repaired because there was no money to pay for it. The church was very cold, and I thought it was fairer to tho congregation to let them go homo instead of shivering in tlier seats.

“For the congregaton’s sake, I am hoping that next Sunday the weather will be warmer.” IDLE SHIPS. LONDON, February 21. The year 1923 saw shipping still in the trough of one of tho worst depressions through which it has passed, states the annual report of the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom to bo submitted at the annual meeting of that body in London to-morrow. Tho world is -"doing much less trade than before the war, but there exists much more tonnage, v.ith the result that there has been, a great volume of tonnage always ready to put to sea when freights have shown signs of rising, thus preventing any effective rceovorv of the market.

Although passenger ships have fared .somewhat better than general cargo carriers, international ocean-home trade r.s a whole has been transported not only without profit to the shipowner but also at a heavy lost'.

A great deal of tonnage is idlemore than at any pre-war period. This is estimated to bo 0,000.000 tons under foreign (lags and 750,000 tons British. Operating charges, such ns fuel, stores, repairs, wages, port charges, and expenses, are still high, and one of the heaviest items of lost is the wage hill.

70 LAWS IN 11 WEEKS. BERLIN, February 20. That the Marx Government, without consulting tho Reichstag, has put 70 new laws on the Statute Book in the last 11 weeks by the use of the Empowering La\v >s a proud boast, although it has had to admit, under pressure of criticism Lorn Social Democrats, that many of these measures “could very well he improved.”

Among the laws chiefly attacked by the Socialists are a number relating to new conditions of labour and a second category dealing with tile reform of judicial procedure in the law courts. Both of these the Marx Cabinet declares to have been vitally urgent to prevent a catastrophe to tho State, and that it i a mint under any circumstances con. sent to the measmos being repealed. The fact that the number of unemployed lias been greatly reduced, that the curre'icv is stable, and that the fear of an armed rising has been banished are the best proofs, says the spokesman of the Government, of tho efficacy °l those measures. To disarm the criticism of the Socialists the Cabinet has declared that it will consent to the appointment of a Committee to re'eommend improvements in the decrees passed so hurriedly, and will riifunn their roionns as quickly as can ho. All this skirmishing is really in preparation for the coming Reichstag elections. The Marx Cabinet says that it will oarrv on till the present lleichstag expires, but if the .Socialists do engineer its defeat, will ask President Ebert for an immediate dissolution.