NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2362, 1 December 1921, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF

Wasps, at Hickman, Kentucky, saved the lives of two women, who were awakened by the stings of the insects barely in time to escape from their burning home. The wasps had built a nest in the attic. Not. only has Mr Augustus J. Spencer “angled” from Eastbourne Pier jetty for 45 years, but he has for 18 years been present on the jetty six hours daily, six days a week, without the break of one single hour. For five years a woman’s conscience has troubled her because she travelled from New York to Chicago with a six-year-old child fof whom she paid no fare. She has just sent £2 7s BJd to the Erie Railways “conscience fund.” In the next ten years astronomers have but 20 minutes in which to test Einstein’s theory. During the fleeting moments of the solar eclipse they will work strenuously in an attempt to discover any deflection in the rays of light that pass the sun. The Mulford Biological expedition is already accomplishing good work in the Amazon basin, and has made one important shipment of botanical specimens, among them three edible fruits, the pepino, the tumbo and the acchoeln, and a turnip-like root, fhacache, of delicious flavour.

One hundred Russian refugees recently answered an advertisement of a vineyard owner at Montpellier, France, offering temporary work at grape picking. Fifty-.oneXSt them were engaged, among whom the owned was astounded to find three former generals of the Russian Ihperial Army. “Talking of hens,” remarked the American visitor, “reminds me of an old hen my dild once had. She would hatch oiit anything from a tennis ball to a lemon. Why, one day she sat on a piece of ice, and hatched out two quarts of hot water. “That doesn’t come up to a club-foot hen my mother once had,” remarked the Irishman. “They had been feeding her by mistake on sawdust instead of oatmeal. Well, sir, she laid twelve cjrjjs, and sat on them, and when they hatched eleven of the chickens had wooden legs, and the twelfth was a wood- ( pecker.” It is the opinion of Mr E. 11. Crabb, president of the Mangahao Hydro-electric Vigilance League, that power will be available from Mangahao before Christinas, .1923, which is the date promised by the Minister of Public Works. In conversation with tt Standard reporter Mr Cralth referred to the fears which were frequently expressed in some quarters that power would not |,e obtainable till a considerable time after the date promised. From his personal observations of the progress being made at the works, he was, by virtue of his oflice as president of the league, enabled to slate that these fears were groundless, and that the plant would he operating on schedule time.

Women’s hats will be no cheaper this year, although millinery materin]s lias fallen considerably in pride. Salaries almost as large as those of cinema actors are being ottered to really clever and inventive hat designers, on whose efforts the reputation of a firm may depend. One of tlie leading millinery houses in Paris has offered a salary of £SOOO and a contract to their premiere, who received alluring oilers from outside. Another firm of high repute, beaten in the golden competition, is now mooring the loss of a woman who i> irreplaceable. With salaries pushed it)) in this way, the chances of finding millinery hills lower are indeed remote.