NEWS AND NOTES.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 October 1928, Page 7

NEWS AND NOTES.

WHALE COMES TO JONAH. A Scottish holiday maker, Jonah Perkins, camping on the foreshore of the Firth of Forth-, near Blackness, recently had an alarming experience when a 20ft. whale disturbed his slumbers with a loud bellowing and spouting water on his tent. Perkins was scared and cleared out, but the sea, monster disappeared with an angry snort. Whales are uncommon in the district.' NEW STONEHENGE OF TIMBER. Dis overies which may throw a new light on the age-long mystery of Stonehenge have been made on Salisbury Plain. Acting on a clue provided by photographs from the air, taken by Squadron -Leader Tnsall, V.C., excavators unearthed what was virtually a new Stonehenge in timber. “Woodhenge,’’ as it has been aptly called, consists of six great circles of huge vvooden pillars, planted in deep holes, while a labyrinth of trenches suggests the possiblity of the site being that of a Bronze Age city.

ELEPHANT WHICH HATED PARSONS There was at the London Zoo some time ago an elephant called Bob who had a great loathing of parsons, says William Blore in the “Sunday Chronicle. Quite a good number of clerical gentlemen visit the Zoo. Some of them are members, and others bring parties of school children, but Bob had an unspeakable loathing of the whole race of clerics 1 What had caused it I really can’t say; no one remembered any incident in his career that would account for his strange aversion, but there it was; the very sight of a clerica lcollar to Bob was almost worse than a red rag to a bull! WOMAN’S SWORD WOUND' “I took the sword from the wall and was waving it to frighten some men who had got into the house, when I accidentlly struck Margaret Goulburn,” said George McGinn, accused at Liverpool of wounding Goulburn in a house in Circus Street. McGinn was fined 20s. Police Constable Turner said he was called to the house and saw McGinn struggling with a crowd of people. He had a sword in his hand. Goulburn was lying at he foot of the stairs bleeding from a wound in the head. Goulburn, who said she was living with McGinn, persisted it was an accident.

*tlON BITES MAN. A young lion recently imported from Africa was being put through its paces by Captain Thomas Purchase in his menagerie at Mitcham Fair (Surrey) when it lashed out and with its claws tore the first finger of his left hand to the bone. Very few of the spectators were aw are that the loin tamer was hurt, as Captain Purchase was hurried from the show by an assistant and taken by motor car to a local doctor, w r ho stitched the wound. The captain had had no previous trouble with the lion. Captain Purchase next night entered the cage a number of times with only a heavy cudgel. He was handicapped by his heavily-bandaged hand. BIRD CASUALTIES. At Cape Province, the shepherds were engaged in shearing a heavily coated ram, when they came upon a curious lump in the wool which, being disentangled, turned out to be a living Gape guail. It is surmised that while the ram was lying down, the quail may have been feeding on the seeds which stick to the w r ool and, finding its head entangled, and struggling to be free, became at last entirely enwrapped in tbe long, clinging fleece. Starlings caught by their legs in the v-00l of living sheep have been known, but this is tbe first reference we have seen of a bird being entirely engulfed.

A FATAL FOXTROT. “Death from natural causes” was the verdict returned at an inquest at Ramgate on Mrs Madeleine Ada Sandeman 60, wife of a. stockbroker, of Sussex Gardens, Hyde Park, W., who died after taking part in a dance at a Ramgate hotel. Evidence showed that Mrs Sandeman, who had not been well during the day, ate a hearty meal before tbe dance. She was out of breath after two dances, and was advised by a friend to rest. She later danced a foxtrot, however, and died soon afterwards. The post-mortem examination showed that her heart weighed twentlive ounces instead of the usual nine to eleven ounces. SHOP WITHOUT STOPPING. The “Automarket,” a new way for speeding up shopping, is being tried for the first time in Louisville, Kentucky. The “Automarket” is a long building, with two narrow drives for motor cars. Down one of these the housewife drives (the track is so narrow that steering is dispensed with) and while she crawls along on low gear helps herself (from revolving shelves containing every variety of food, canned or otherwise. A turn table at the end of the runway shunts the motor car into a return track and payment for the goods collected is made at the exit from the building,#