NEWS AND NOTES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1868, 24 August 1918, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES

Lightning struck a house during the height of a thunderstorm at Inglewood recently, the chimney being levelled at the roof, whilst the top of the stove and cooking utensils were scattered on the floor. A •woman who was in the kitchen was hit on the back by the metal covering of the switch of an electric iron. Pieces of the slab of the switch were found several yards outside the house. A farmer informs the Eltham Argus that there are hundreds of cows in that district that are next door to starving. The farmers, he says, having been favoured with mild winters in the past, quite naturally did not.prepare for a winter such as they are experiencing, consequently there is a great shortage of root crops and hay. The latter is now being purchased from outside the district at fancy prices to keep the stock alive. The various qualities of tar extracted from coal by carbonisation were referred to by Professor Eastertield in a lecture before the Philosophical Society at Wellington. The tar distilled in New Zealand, he said, was practically of no use as fuel. Apart from asphalting, there were few other uses for tar in New Zealand., Niney per cent, of (he tar was used in the preparation of asphalt and for road dressing. Instancing the value of the component parts of tar, the lecturer said that in England at the present time the manufacture of most of the high explosives depended largely on tar. The American military authorities have found themselves up agamst too big a man even for them to tackle. George Pell is his name, ebony in colour, and twenty-live stone in weight. But it is his height that is the bit too much. There is 7ft. llin. of him, which needs a couple of army cots for his adequate lying down; and he is entered as two men on the roll, in order to get the necessary two men’s rations for his continued standing up. Now the medical officers have rejected him, on the score, presumably, of ids being 100 much of a good thing.