NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1090, 6 January 1912, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

It may not be generally known (says an exchange) that chimney soot is valuable as a manure and as an insecticide. Its fertilising properties are particularly noted in gardens and meadows. In connection with the vinyard industry in Southern France, it is stated that it kills the phylloxera with the rapidity of a stroke of lightning, and at the same time endows the vines with extraordinary energy of growth. Moral: Save your soot.

A curious action was heard in the American courts. A plaintiff sought damages for the bite of a dog, which bit him after he had tramped on its tail. The claim was for ,£goo. The judge held that a dog has a right to bite a man who steps on its tail. It was not shown that the dog was vicious. The animal itself occupied a prominent position in a corner of the courtroom and aided in the defence by allowing people to walk round him without offering to bite.

A remarkakle new safe lock has been invented. It is provided with a phonographic mechanism, so that it can be opened only by the voice ol the owner. A mouthpiece like that of a telephone takes the place of a knob on the door, and this is provided with the usual style of needle, which travels in a groove in the sound record of the phonograph cylinder. Before the safe can be unlocked the password must be spoken into the original record.

A Berlin shoplifter named Starke, with two companions, planned a midnight raid on a large butchering establishment. Starke clambered into the building through a window, but just as hi-» two companions were about to 10II0W they perceived that they were under the observation of a street watchman, and decamped. Warned by the disappearance ot his comrades that something unexpected had occurred, Starke threw off his jacket, donned a blood-stained butcher’s apron and cap, switched on the electric light, and, seizing a butcher’s knife, began to work furiously at the meat. When the watchman appeared and asked the supposed butcher whether he had not observed the suspicious behaviour of two men outside, Starke replied nonchalantly that he had seen the rascals, but that they had run off on catching sight of him, whereupon the watchman withdrew, satisfied that everything was in order. Then Starke robbed the cash till, packed up some choice pieces of meat in a parcel and, opening the door with a key which he found on the premises, quietly let himself out and departed.