NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1159, 16 October 1913, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Penny wise and pound foolish was thus lately illustrated. —An Auckland resident who admitted that on two occasions he gave a receipt for rent to the amount of £3 15s without stamping it, and that he divided the amount into two parts in order to evade the stamp duty of a penny, was fined 203 and costs on each of three informations, making a total penalty of and 21s costs.

Enormous success has been achieved by Hawkes’ Baud Instruments at the Crystal Palace World’s Championship Contest. The Irwell Spring Band are now the World’s champions, having won the the thousand guinea trophy. The Buffs’ Regimental Band won the Military Championship and the Poplar School Band won the Buffs Championship, all playing Hawkes instruments.

A prominent Gisborne pastoralist gave it as his opinion the other day that the present would prove a record year for fat lambs. The extremely mild season had been good to the little strangers who had thriven remarkably well. The lambing season had been an exceptionally successful one, and he was convinced that fat lambs would be coming to the freezing works by Christmas time.

There has been much discussion concerning the origin of the ward “ Mephistopheles ” in the past, which has moreover, as yet ended in no very satisfactory conclusion. Some very bizarre explanations have been propounded before the time of Goethe, who was himself forced to own to the musician Zelter in a letter of 20th November, 1829: “ I cannot give any definite answer to the question Whence comes the name Mephistopheles ?” According to one theory, it was a hybrid Greco-Hebraic formation of mephis and tophel (the liar); according to another, its etymology was entirely Greek —very dubious Greek—-mephostophilos, “ he who does not love the light.” Though this derivation is hardly acceptable, it appears that this was the original form of the name, the second vowel being replaced by “i” at first in England, whence it was taken into the popular German mysteries.