NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1028, 9 April 1912, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Mr Massey was told by a workman out at Whangamomona that he was lookiug fit, and that he Should take to the “banjo” lor a spell. The term was new to most of the visitors, as well as Mr Massey, but as a matter of fact, a “banjo” on the works is nothing more than a long-handled shovel. —Stratford Post.

At the banquet to Mr Massey at Inglewood on Thursday, Mr Vickers remarked that he had made a start at chopping out the forest foity-six yeais ago, and he had been in business many years since, and he really thought that chopping trees was more enjoyable than collecting debts. When you chopped trees in the day you could sleep soundly at night ; but when you were collecting debts, night brought all sorts of nightmares.

At the conference ol members of the Pharmacy Board of New Zealand. held in Wellington, relerence was made to the number of recent cases in which chemists were concerned in the opium traffic and sly grog selling, and to the need for vigorous actiou beihg taken. The Board resolved that the provisions of the Pharmacy Act enabling application to be made for the removal of chemists from the register lor certain olfeuces be enforced in every case where the circumstances call lor such action.

A somewhat unusual phenomenon was observed at Balclutha on Tuesday. An easterly rain fell more or less heavily all forenoon, and just about midday there was an extra heavy downpour of misty, thick rain, after which the ground was found to be in places thickly covered with a small jellyfish-like substance, the largest about the size and shape of the nail on the little finger. They gradually melted away, and disappeared in an hour or two. They were semitransparent, like blobs of jelly, and were evidently the lowest form of animal life, known scientifically as a protoplasmic form of amoeba. How they came to be in the air is a question for theorists. A possible theory is that they were caught up in a terrible storm, and sent up by a marine eruption.