NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1811, 9 April 1918, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

The palm for a schoolgirl's essay on a cow, written recently in one of the Hawke’s Bay schools, must be awarded to the following;—“The cow has two long legs and two short legs, and has cloven hoofs so she can climb banks. The cow has four ‘sturamicks,! and she swallows it without chewing it, and when she is lying down she swallows it up again, and she can eat it when she is lying down.”

Whilst engaged erecting a dam in a creek that runs near his homestead at Te Tua, Southland, a farm-: er observed a clucking duck in a. greatly perturbed state a few yards distant from where he was working. Knowing that the duck had. recently lost several of her brood, he searched in the grassy bank, under the water-line, and found that a crayfish, about Tin. long had pulled one of the young ducklings into a hole.

The latest excitement ;in Waihi (says the Auckland Star) is the appearance of.a “ghost,” whose advent is causing much terror a-: mongst children and women. It is described as being' clothed in the orthodox white wrappings, and having the nasty knack of springing up suddenly and seizing its victim in an “iron grip.” One young fellow arrived home the other evening in a state of collapse, and said the “ghost” had held him from behind. The police are now seeking the alleged apparition, but in the meantime the originator of the so-called joke is in much danger of stopping a very hard knock, for the results of such senseless pranks often prove serious.

Alfred Heller, the record bonebreaker of Australia, has not yet got out of his habit of breaking limbs. One night last week, whilst walking home at Gilgandra (N.S.W.), he tripped and fell, resulting in a broken leg. He was immediately ■taken to the hospital, laid up for repairs. It is only a little over a month ago since he was discharged from the hospital with a broken leg, just before Christmas. He, takes the breaks as if they were an everyday occurrence. One thing he cannot understand (says a Sydney paper) is that he has not broken his neck, as it is the only part that has never broken. His total to date, without counting fingers, toes, and a few minor affairs, is 41 breaks to his bones.

In welcoming the delegates to the biennial conference of the New Zealand branch, Manchester Unity, Independent Order of Oddfellows, the Mayor of Wellington said the importance of the society . was shown by the fact that it had a membership of 1,518,000, and a capital of £17,069,000, the annual income being £2,286,000. The benefifs extended to its membership by the society amounted to £1,918,000, and the receipts over expenditure to £358,000. In New Zealand the membership of the branch numbered 14,500, with a capital of over £500,000. The Order, speaking generally, had on active service 200,000 of its members. Out of that number some 8,000 had made the supremo sacrifice. From New Zealand 2,000 of their young members had gone to the front, and 200 had laid down their lives for their country.

The school of 25 whales which came ashore on the west coast of the Northern Peninsula last week is not the largest number of whales that has been stranded at one time on this coast. A writer, in',the Northland Age states that on a previous occasion about 150 blackfish, a medium-sized member of the whale family, were stranded on the Ninety-mile Beach, their length varying from about 15ft. to 30ft. and upwards. The fish were all lying within a radius of about three miles from Te Arai Bluff. The discovery was made by a Maori boy, and a number of natives with primitive appliances obtained a considerable quantity of oil from the whales. The inaccessible nature of the locality made the taking of a good trying-out plant to the spot impracticable.