NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1105, 5 June 1913, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Since the negroes in America were freed they have increased in numbers from four millions to ten millions, and they own to-day more than worth of property. They have decreased in illiteracy 47 per cent., they have over two million children in the schools, and among them are several thousand ministers, including some of the ablest preachers in the United States. Scientists, poets, authors, musicians, artists and inventors are all to be found in the ranks of the negroes. There were in 1900 some 40,000 members of the race in the professions.

New Zealand journalists were not rude enough to comment on the personal appearance of the British Trade Commission that recently took evidence in New Zealand, but “Hori,” in the Sydney Bulletin, has no such compunction, and criticises them with embarrassing freedom. Referring to Sir Rider Haggard’s unmentionables, he says: “Haggard’s trousers are a sculptural nightmare. They resemble the trousers to be found on statues of suburban mayors. He can put them on to face either way, and it makes no difference.”

The design of the medal to commemorate the visit of the battleship cruiser New Zealand to the shores of this country has now been definitely approved, and the medals are to be made at once. The medals are to be of silver. On the obverse side of the medal will be the armorial bearings of New Zealand, and on the reverse side a representation ot the battle cruiser, both in relief. The inscription is: “Dominion of New Zealand to the officers and crew of H.M.S. New Zealand, 1913-” Every officer and man on the ship will receive one.

“ A note of warning has been given by Mr McConnell, of the Raukura Farm of Instruction, that even when advantage is taken of the tabulated yield, to cull the unprofitable cows, farmers must remember that constitution has also to be considered. Some cows are highly-strung, nervous animals, and if milk only is to be the test, breeders may fall into the mistake Lincoln sheep breeders made when they bred for wool alone and constitution was not kept up ; or the Shorthorn breeders in Great Britain, who breed for fashionable blood alone, much to the detriment of the breed.” —President Wilson, at Farmers’ Union Conference.

Mr Del-Pan, a visitor ffom the Philippines, informed the Otago Daily Times that he was rather surprised to notice the quantity of cigars bearing the impress oi “Manilla” on sale in the shops in Australia, and those he had so far seen in New Zealand. “I am sure I am within the mark when I state that 60 per cent, of the tobacco so branded has never seen Manilla,” he laughingly remarked.

A little girl from Providence, Rhode Island, who is only ten years of age, is said to be possessed of remarkable powers of vision. Doctors who have examined her declare that she has “X-ray sight.” For some the child puzzled and interested her friends by apparently seeing through opaque objects, and the extraordinary nature of her powers led to her being examined by New York doctors. She was submitted to a thorough test, in which she told the contents of the pockets of those in the room, gave the numbers of folded bank notes, and described objects she had not previously seen when they were put between opaque substances. Some of the leading specialists of

the city, after prolonged examination, declared that there was no possibility of fraud and that [the child possessed wonderful mental powers and certainly had an “X----ray vision.”

Mr Norman Angell, the author of “The Great Illusion,” was invited recently on behalf ot the Peace Society, to visit Australia. In a reply received last week Mr Angell said that he was afraid that a visit to Australia was out of the question. “ The situation in Europe,” he wrote, “has been very acute, and there is an immense deal of work to be done in England, Germany and France, which has kept and is keeping me appallingly busy. To take six months away from this would be to stop all sorts of currents which it would take an indefinite time later to re-start. Mr Angell added that he thought it would be possible for one of the men associated with him in his work, familiar with the conscription, and other international problems, as well as with the thesis of “The Great Illusion,” to pay a visit. The man he bad in mind would be familiar with the organisations that had been started and were now working in England, Germany and France, among the schools and colleges, and he might be able to suggest a similar movement in Australia.

The celebrations of the tercentenary of the reigning Romanoff house, which took place on March 6th and the two following days, were prefaced by a very curious incident. Following the AustroHungarian precedent on the occasion of the diamond jubilee of the Emperor Francis Joseph, a new series of postage stamps were issued, bearing the effigies of the chief Czars of the Romanoff dynasty, including that of Nicholas 11. The stamps had been in circulation for some time when M. Sabler, the Procurator ot the Holy Synod, suddenly discovered the danger which the dynasty runs in having the portraits of the Czars struck and effaced by the official postage stamp. Accordingly he entered a formal protest against the degradation of the majesty of the Czars, and, by the Czar’s ukase, the stamps were withdrawn from circulation.

A high school for matrimonial sciences, or, to give it its sonorous Teutouic title, “Hochschule der Heiratswissenschaften,” has been founded at Munich by Professor Dr. Walter Hassell. Dr. Hassall hopes that within a little more time the academy will number five hundred students of both sexes. These, on completing their course, will be awarded dsplomas as teachers of love, the Express explains, and will be expected to travel the length and breadth of Germany in order to make an active propaganda in favour of marriage. The curriculum at the high school will include lectures by specialists on the dangers of flirtation and the beauties of “allsacrificing love.” Experts in zoology and biology will illustrate their instruction by means of cinematographic displays, and will explain the interesting laws of affinity and soul attraction and repulsion. Special courses will be held at which the ideas of love will be instilled into the souls of rebellious subjects ; while the problem of preventing the flight of love after the disillusionment of matrimony will receive great attention.

Several “Endless chains of prayer” are reported to be in circulation in Christchurch. One letter received by a lady recently with a request “to pass it on” contained a “prayer” for blessings on “us and all people,” and added that, if the recipient sent it on to nine other people in nine days, “on the ninth day a great blessing would be received.” Clergy and postal officials state that this practice is very common among credulous women, and it causes much annoyance through wrong addresses. One minister stated that he considered the practice the means of causing much harm among many otherwise sensible women.

Grubbing and planting of flax is beipg in the swampg at Kopntaroa by Mr E- Porter, says the Eevfn paper. He is having much of the toi toi and other things that are of no use grubbed out to clear his swamp. Wherever the flax is a bit scanty the men plant more, and in this way Mr Porter hopes, in a few years, to have areas of flax that in quality will be second to none.