NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1066, 20 February 1913, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

A man who has lately been tried in the Wellington Supreme Court had a girl, two angels, some hounds, a rabbit and a cat tattooed on his back. But the police identified him by finger prints, bless you.

“Money is tight because we are so beastly extravagant. Where we used to be satisfied with our trap, we now want a motor car.” Such was the opinion expressed by Mr F. V. Lethbridge at a smoke concert held in connection with the Feilding A. and P. Show. Ladies, he added, used to be satisfied with hats that cost ios 6d ; now they must have one costing two or three guineas, (Laughter).

“ The police are strictly prohibited from replying to any authorised inquiries made by individuals or societies seeking information as to the character, respectability or financial position of persons residing in their districts. If information of a general nature, or statistics, is applied for, instructions must be obtained from headquarters,” states the new police regulations.

“You’ve made a mistake in your paper,” said the indignant man, entering the editorial sanctum. “I was one of the competitors at the athletic match, and you have called me the well-known lightweight champion.” “Well, aren’t you?” said the editor. “No, I'm nothing of the kind, and it’s confoundedly awkward, because, you see, I’m a baker.”

In a few years time the Victorian aboriginal will, in all probability, have become extinct. In a paper read at the Science Congress, Mrs Robartes pointed out that one of the causes of the great mortality was the mistaken idea that the habits of the nomadic and wild people could be changed. The second cause was the contact of natives with unscrupulous whites. As was known, tuberculosis had also made great inroads amongst them. The aboriginal mode of dress did not please the white settlers, and so natives are compelled to conform to European fashion.

An American visitor (Mr E. A. Howe, editor of the Atchison Globe, Kanas), who arrived in Sydney by the Sonoma, referred incidentally to the racial problem In the United States, which, he said, was becoming keener every day, especially in the Southern portions and in the Mississippi. He had been told by one of the authorities prominently associated with the coloured people that the struggle for supremacy was far more dangerous and keener now than in the very early days of the Eastern States. The poloured races had been practically disfranchised in this portion, and although they were allowed to vote in the northern parts, the general policy seemed to be to disfranchise them everywhere.