GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2303, 16 July 1921, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

General indignation has been aroused in the town of Ried, in the province of Upper Austria, by the action of George Erlacher, a well-to-do butcher, who sold in an inn his four-year-old son to a horse dealer for 10,000 crowns (now equal to about £6). In another inn Erlacher publicly offered his other children for snie, asking the same sum for each.

Reports of having encountered icebergs during her voyage are made by the Canard liner Saxonia, from New York, which called 'at Cherbourg. While off the Newfoundland Bank-the Saxonia not only reduced speed, but at times was compelled to stop owing to the presence of huge bergs. Some were almost 100 yards high, while one icefield was calculated to be some 30 miles long.

A flight of.locusts swept down on the railway between Saragossa and Eseartron, Spain, covering the track to such a depth that a utail train was unable to proceed until

the'driver, stoker and ‘ guards had strewn several hundredweights of sand along the rails to provide a grip for the wheels. Locusts arc destroying'erops which already had suffered from the long drought. The authorities are sending large quantities of gasoline to the stricken districts in order to exterminate the pests. Over,a million birds’ eggs, said to have been the largest trade collection known, and the work of a lifetime, were destroyed by fire at the establishment of a Hampton Wick (Middlesix) naturalist and taxidermist. Other treasures lost included 3,000 bird skins <>f rare variety, mammal skins (English and foreign), stuffed fish, and a preserved specimen of that rara avis, the albino penguin, which was believed to be the only specimen in existence. Altogether the damage is estimated at £2,000. A thirteen-year-old hoy named Casse, charged with haying committed more than a dozen thefts, ranging from raiding larders to robbing old women on the high road, is being searched for by the Bordeaux police. Arrested three times since January last, he has always managed, after lighting desperately, to regain his liberty. Recently lm was taken into the woods. Mounted police caught sight of him recently, and were running him to ground, when he made a bound for a stream passing through a steep ravine. Lhe horsemen had to give up pursuit.