NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1794, 26 February 1918, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

The abnormal growth of grass this season was most favourable to farmers in the county who had set aside fields for the purpose of saving the grass seed, states the Ashburton Guardian. Reports indicate that in the majority of instances the grass seed has yielded exceptionally good returns, and has paid many farmers far better than wheatgrowing. Several large cheques have found their way into the Longbeach district this year as a result of the grass seed and cocksfoot harves|. The Dunedin Star, in an editorial tribute to the late Dr. Bedford, says; —“Others there are in the community who may equal him in' 5 intellectual richness, in mental erudition, in legal lore, in worldly wisdom; but we shall look in vain for one like Dr. Bedford, who had the licidity that could translate abstruse problems into the speech of common men, and the high moral passion which in the end of the day wins the war and is the justification of everything.” “The danger is not the extreme pacifist. I am not afraid of him. But I warn the nation to watch the man who thinks there is a half-way house between victory and defeat. There is no half-way house between victory and defeat. To end the war entered upon in order to enforce a treaty, without reparation for the infringement of that treaty, merely by entering into a more sweeping and more comprehensive treaty would indeed be a farce in the setting of a tragedy. There is nothing so fatal to character as half-finish-ed tasks.”- —Lloyd George. /When one of the big trees in California fell, a forestry expert counted 4,000 rings from the heart out. That means the tree was forty centuries old. Thus it was a strong young tree when Abraham went into Egypt; it was bearing seed when Sodom and Gommorrah were' destroyed; it was as old as America when Joseph was sold into Egypt, nearly a thousand years old when David slew Goliath, and older when Christ was born than the Christian religion to-day. —Paper Mill.

If the Paris Press is well-inform-ed, the Allied armies will .shortly be rendered invisible by means of a

method of “obliterative coloration” invented by a French officer the year before the Avar broke out. At that time the colour scheme Avas considered of no practical use, as the military experts were agreed that rival armies Avould fight each other at such extreme distances that they would rarely see each other. Now that the trenches are separated by only a feAv yards, the value of the invention has been recognised, and “invisible” troops and artillery are to be the next marvel of this marvellous war.