GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2449, 4 July 1922, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Mr Alec Arey, who for 24 years has operated the lift in Greek Street Chambers, Leeds, is retiring. He was installed in the building almost before it was completed, and until twelve years ago a hydraulic lift served for all purposes. An electric lift was then substituted. "Mr Arey calculates that during his long service he must have travelled 30,000 to 40,000 miles by lift. Mrs Orford, who keeps the little sweet and bun kiosk near the Horse Guards Parade, is the proprietress of a business which has been in the family for 300 years, having descended from mother to daughter since the reign of James I. Originally the family .were engaged selling milk, and the last of" the “Mall milk-maids,’ 1 Mrs Emma Elizabeth Kitchen, mother of Mrs Orford, died in January, 1015. It was to save Mrs Kitchen from eviction that King Edward intervened when the original cowsheds were demolished as parr of the Mall improvements in 1005.

According to a report from Paris

a non biting flea has been produced in a scientific laboratory there. ■ A scientist confined a pair of fleas in a glass case and fed them on milk. The fourth generation of this flea family, nourished exclusively on sweetened milk, were filially introduced to the scientist’s naked arm, but they declined to bite. Even after three day’s fast the insects refused to take advantage of the arm of a woman laboratory assistant The entomologist suggests that the Ilea- is not bloodthirsty by nature but onlv bv force of circumstances.

For saving a eat from drowning the Lord Mayor of Liverpool has presented Joseph Warr, a ship’s apprentice, with the srh’er medal of the Royal Society'for the Prevention of Creulfy to Animals. While in the steamer Millais in the Alexandra dock at Liverpool, Warr heard the cat’s cries and saw it clinging.to a piece of timber. Although he was fully clothed he swam to the rescue and placed the cat on his shoulder. His refurn to the ship was made difficult by floating rubbish and timber, and he was in great danger of being drowned when rescued by some of the crew in a. boat.

Chief Probation Officer Henry Scull, of Atlantic City, N.J., has had before him a case of an Indian woman who is the mother of 24 children. She is 42_years old, and her husband is earning £3', a week. The woman is a descendant of the Mohawk Indians. When she was 15, according to the custom of Wr tribe, her husband wa's selected for her. He was her cousin, Deerfoot. She did not quite fancy Deerfoot for a life partner and lied camp, later marring again. As years passed, she became the mother of six sets of twins. Subsequently she had seven more children. The little ones were taken to Canada and reared by the Mohawks. The squaw later on married a widower with four children. Two sets of twins and another child was born. Several of her children have died.