NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2077, 13 January 1920, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

It is said that among the Ainus the -price of a wife'is a bear ham. The Kaffir figure varies from four to eight oxen, aceordingHo the competition for the 1 particular bride. A score of cartridges buys a wife in Uganda, while the Tartars in Turk'estan gel as many wives as they want, at the rate of a box of matches each. Down in the Madras district of India there are lilies that grow leaves of phenomenal size. Indeed, thesh leaves are several feet in diametei;, and have turned-up edges, to form a shallow bowl > which floats on the water. The buoyancy of the leaves is such that they will readily carry the weight of a small child. This veriety is known as the Victoria Regia. A phonograph,has been put to a novel use by seal hunters .of the Pacific. A large instrument, is employed, and it is set up near the rendexvous of the animals, and soon its music attracts their attention, and they lift their heads well above the water. A hunter reports that he has been able to shoot large numbers of them while they arc under the .spoil of the sounds so strange to their oars. The lints in a Musgo village, in the Cameroons , are sugar-inn fshaped structures made of thin layers of mud, placed over ribs of timber to give tensile strength; the powerful African sun soon dries the mud info luugl crust, and though the huts are about thirty feet high, one eldom hears of a collapse. The interiors of these extraordinary bouses are adorned with cilrious native frescoes. The most of oceanflyers are the butterflies which cross the ocean in the spring. Naturalists fell us that one of the most amazing sights in the world is to see millions of these delicate creatures, like a cloud of tiny pieces of paper, Hying across.the Channel, from the Continent to English shores, when the wind is favourable. Their stamina and endurance are extraordinary, and although some fall exhausted into the ea, the hulk made a successful crossing. Earth is eaten as a food in various places in Europe, as, for instance, in the Treviso, in Upper Italy, Styria, in Austria, and , certain parts of Germany and around the famous Kyffhauser, ami in the heath of Lunehurg.. Here the working-men spread their bread with tine clay, nick-named by them “stone-butter.” Also, in the northern-most parts of Sweden, and on the peninsula of Kola, in the government of Archangel, a fine clay, cleaned of mud. and pulverised,” is mixed with flour to make bread tasty. The direct descendant -of the snake made famous by Eve in the Garden of Eden, was recently found at Brownsville, south of tVayuesborough, U.S.A., when a copperheaded snake with two well-formed feet was killed, by Ira L. Katzel. The reptile measured 2ft. 4iu. The feet are -located about six inchesfrom the. tip of the tail. The legs are 3;{-in. in length, while the feet are round and about twice the .size of the legs, and are covered with a hard gristle. Many persons swarm to the home of Mr Katzel to see the freak. Poison gas was used in warfare centuries before the ride or shell were ever thought of. The first recorded instance, is in the AthenianPeloponnesian war, four centuries before Christ. During the siege of the welled city of Plataca by the Spartans, in 429, 8.C., the beseiging forces, after many fruitless .assaults, built large * mounds of earth close to the southern wall of the city, and on these lit fires of fagots soaked in pitch, on which they placed brimstone, in order that the prevalent southerly winds might carry the sulphurous fumes thus formed over the city walls. Five years later the poisonous fumes were successfully used in the siege of Delium, 424 B.C. . •