GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2116, 17 April 1920, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

A number of householders in Paris have been fined £4O each for not having indicated that Hats wore vacant. A French law compels the immediate notification of vacant premises. “It is a form of cruelly, and 1 shall grant a summons,” said the Willesden magistrate when, a wife complained to him that her husband had such a loud, gruff voice that when lie shouted at her it caused her to collapse. History does not furnish any precedent for the sale of a British port; but it is possible that (lie omission will bo made good very shortly. It is understood that- the Disposals Board have in contemplation (lie public sale of the famous “mystery” port of Riehborough, as a going concern. Richhorough was brought into existence during the war for the purpose of providing a sendingoff place for the huge stocks of war material to France.

There is quite a Herodotiau flavour about a story that comes from Seattle of two boys recently discovered on an island in Cedar River, in the backwoods of Washington State. Though 12 and 10 years of age, they have not yet learned to talk, hut communicate with each other by signs and cries like those of wild animals. Their mother died while they were infants, and their father, who works in the woods, left them to be brought up by an eider sister, who happens to be a unite. From her they learnt a sign language. As they never talked, (heir father, on his rare visits home, concluded that they, 100, were deaf and dumb. Only lately lie found that they were not. The lads are delighted by the discovery that their wants and emotions can be expressed in spoken words.

Bulls have been known to attack, after a lime, keepers who cruelly used them. The following is an instance in the opposite direction, writes a correspondent. A bull was with,some cattle in an open field in Orkney in charge of a boy. A companion of the lad happened to pass that way, and after a chat the youths commenced to wrestle, for mere fun. The hull, however, look a. serious view of the situation, and evidently thought they wore in earnest. Straightaway he separated the combatants, devoting his attention specially to the stranger, whom he followed with a threatening attitude, nor would he leave him until both were a considerable distance from the other lad. Thereupon the hull quietly returned to where his keeper and the other cattle were.