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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 3788, 13 February 1908, Page 4

In connection with a statement sometimes made that geniuses are rarely first-born children, an extract from the Providence “Journal ” sets forth the contrary view ; “ They were discussing the law of entail-—the English law bequeathing the bulk of the family property to the eldest son. ‘ There is 50 per cent of logic in that law,’ said a physician, ‘and if the family property went to,the first-born, whether son or daughter, the law would contain 100 per cent of logic. For the first-born child is practically always the best—best in brain, in build, in beauty, in everything. Why is this so ? It is so because married people love one another more profoundly at the beginning than afterwards: for love, like all things, grows old, grows . weak, often dies.- Mrs Craigie—John Oliver Hobbes—was a first-born child. So was Marie Corelli. So was Richard Mansfield. So were Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Kitchener, Max Muller, Henry Irving, George Meredith. Eook back into the past and we will see again the preeminence of the first-born, among them Mohammed, Confucius, Raphael, Milton, Dante, Goethe, Byron, Shelley and Heine.’”

An immense meteor fell at Bellefontaine, San. Francisco, on December 22, demolishing a house and causing the death of Mr C. E. Beckett, who belonged to London. A great ball of fire was seen flashing across the sky soon after midnight. It struck the earth with the sound of a terrific explosion near a boarding-house occupied by Mr W. Westhaven. The meteor sank deeply, a!nd a blaze from the opening inhthe ground set the house on fire. A.horse which was being driven aiding the road by Mr Beckett bolted, aad Mr Beckett, who was hurled from the buggy, sustained such injuries that he died shortly afterwards. The meteor is being dug out of the ground, and will be preserved as a curiosity. It is twelve feet in diameter. The hole which it made in the ground is twenty-five feet deep.

To Fi.axmiij.EßS. —We are prepared to print the new tin and leather regulation tags for hemp bales, and would request millers to inspect samples of leather before placing orders for same. Inferior leather will be condemned by the department. We hold samples and invite inspection.—The Heraed Printery.