NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1925, Page 4

NEWS BY MAIL.

AMiUAh STOWAWAY. MONTREAL. November Lb The lirst aeroplane stowaway yet known is reported from the liouyu gold-fields between which and Angliers the Laurentido Air Service maintains a regular schedule. Taking oil I rum iloiiyn the pilot, Caldwell, found the machine ” tailheavy.” On arrival at Angliers a search revealed a stowaway, who explained that a desire to see his wife and family had induced him to steal a ride.

Although his action might have resulted disastrously by making the machine unmanageable, the man will not l*e punished, ns it it the first ease of the kind recorded. LIGHT-GIVING PLANTS. LONDON. Nov. 7. fit certain weather conditions quite a number of common garden flowers glow or give out tiny flashes of flight (writes S. Leonard Kastin in “l.lt.’s and Cassell’s Weekly”). The first person to notice this interesting phenomenon was the daughter of a gieat Swedish naturalist. Linnaeus. One very close June evening, when there was a tendency to thunder, the child ran indoors to her father, saying that a large patch of nasturitiums seemed to he on fire. Linnaeus was not lung m going out to see something which even his observant eye had hitherto overlooked, and lost no time in communicating his observations to other botanists, who, as opportunity offered, investigated the fascinating problem. Some scientists were at first rather sceptical, thinking that the light which was thought to lie seen coining from the flowers was the result of an optical illusion. Eventually it was proved beyond all doubt that not only nasturtiums, but other plants as well, emit light from their blossoms.

The haopening appears to he most common in the case of plants with yellow or orange coloured flowers, such as the common marigold, the African marigold, and nearly all kinds of sunflowers. Luminous flowers, however, have been noticed by reliable observers in the ease of a number of plants which hear red. white, and mauve blossoms. Poppies, roses, geraniums, and verbenas are mentioned as having been seen to glow more or less intensely. V hen the° flowers have been luminous the state of the atmosphere has always been the same—very warm and dry. Only at such times is it of any use searching for light-giving flowers. Even to-day botanists are not unanimous as to the cause of the light given out by