GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2228, 18 January 1921, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

An exceptionally fine performance was recorded at Mangadhane recently by a team of Maori shearers (reports the King Country Chronicle). The 21,000 sheep on the station were shorn by nine men in 84 hours, the highest aggregate being 2,550, or about 283 per man. The highest individual daily tally was 323, this being the number recorded by a Native named Broughton. A contributor to the M.D. Times says: —“You referred to a*Taranaki toil gate being responsible for good, roads in that vicinity. There is an instance of this result nearer home. Kangihaeata, the associate of the redoubtable Kauparaha, established the first toll gale in New Zealand at ltangiuru,-near Otaki, in IS4I. It was on the only track from Wellington to liangitikei, and the charge was one sheep or cow for every ten which passed through. Settlement was so impeded that Sir George Grey visited the rebel and engaged his followers at a high rate of pay to construct the present excellent main road, which ct.vends through Otaki. in this instance a toll gate with an entirely different object attained the same useful end.” Professor J. Mcmiltair Brown, who has devoted many years of patient study and of investigation to the question of the origin of the Polynesians, is (fuitc in accord with Sir A. Conan Doyle’s conviction that the Maoris are of European descent. “Sir Conan Doyle is quite right, and Andrew Lang, who said Homer’s Greeks were people similar to the Maoris of the present day, was quite right,” the Professor said, “it has been objected, But how did the Polynesians get from Europe to the Pacific? I don’t care how they got, but they got from Europe al! right, as 1 can show, and will show, in the book on which 1 am at present working.” A Palmerston Native who does not believe in what he calls the tho-ught-healing of Taint Katana, gives an instance of the more practical means of healing used by the Maori of the days gone by, and now almost forgotten, says the M.D. Times. Several weeks ago a lad was severely burned across the shoulders, and treatment at the hospital failed to give relief or to produce a fresh skin covering. He was taken to Katana, but seemingly grew worse, until an old Maori woman kneaded clay to the consistency of soft putty* and applied it to the sores. This she did daily for a week, giving immediate relief each day. Six applications completely healed the burns.