NEWS AND NOTES.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 April 1924, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

“Y’ou got married since 1921 —that costs money, I suppose ” asked counsel of a, witness in the Afasterton Court (states the local “Times”). “Yes,” was the reply. “Did you buy a ring?” “Yes.” “How much did it cost?” “Oil, about thirty bob,” was tlie reply, which caused a general smile.

“Members of Parliament are splendid fellows,” remarked a speaker at a recent luncheon to AL- Massey. “Where’s the brick?’” asked someone soto voice. “Yes,” continued the speaker, “a better class of fellows you couldn’t meet ,especially about electiontime.” Loud laughter, in which the sceptical one remarked: “I told you so.”—Southland Times.

Some of the early settlers brought out their houses in sections, and these buildings • compared very favourably with some of the rough and ready structures erected by the less fortunate people. There still stands in Christchurch to-day a pioneer house of numbered slate blocks fitted properly, tho building was taken down and transported to its present site. These houses were shipped from Delabole quarry, Cornwall, England.

Air J. Hopkin, the expert on bees, writes to the Auckland “Herald” with regard to a new item (from America) on stingless bees:—“Stingless bees are to ho found in different parts of the world, but for commercial purposes they are worthless. Two of tlie best known of the genera, melipona, and trigona, are natives of South America, and the-largest of them are sometimes cultivated by the natives in a primitive fashion in hollow logs for the little honey they store. Although they are not armed with a sting they can bite and worry a person worse than a stinging bee. Occasionally a colony of stingless bees has been taken from South America and exhibited at shows in the United States, and I have no doubt that was the case in Ibis instance. As for there being a heavy demand for the bee throughout the country, that is simply a figment of an inventive American pressman’s brain. No mention of the bees lias been made in the American Bee Journals, all of which I. receive monthly, so that it is likely wo shall hear no more of the estimable qualities of stingless bees.” “Wo shall soon have seen the last of the women street-cleaners of Paris,” writes a correspondent of the Sunday ‘‘Observer”. To many of us the bnla.lollßo always has been inseparable from . our ’‘mental picture of early morning, Paris, in which she was, perhaps, the most characteristic, if not tho most beautiful figure. She belonged to that picture as much as to tho enormous two-wheeled carts, piled mountain-high' with carrots, on their way to market at the ITalles Centrales. A knitted wool cap drawn over her ears and framing a face purple with cold, and about a dozen shawls tied round her body, made her look like ail enormous parcel clattering in sabots along the gutter, tvheic she bad just turned on a bubbling stream of clear water. Well, she kept the Paris streets very clean, and I am sorry she is going. I understand that the authorities have decided that the work is too hard for women. That is true enough; but women do so

much hard work in France that I wonder anyone noticed it. AVlien you have seen a Savoy peasant, calmly lighting his pipe, while his wife staggers along under a load of hay, you will cease to expect any work to he found too hard for women.”