GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2457, 22 July 1922, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

The recent discovery of snakes on his farm has led an Isle of Wight farmer, Mr Oliver Hughes, to raise the question as to whether the heat of last summer is responsible for an'increase of these reptiles. “Notwithstanding the very cold and wet April,” he says, “we are having an epidemic of adders and ordinary snakes here. I think that during the last week or two we must have killed 40.” There are two snakes in Great Britain —one whose bite is poisonous and the other perfectly harmless. The former —the viper, or adder —is easily recognisable by the characteristic dark zig-zag markings which run along the back of the reptile from head to tail. The viper rarely exceeds 2ft. in length. The other British snake —the innocuous grass snake—grows as to 3ft., but in some cases up to 4ft. long, and in colour is greyish-green above and blue-black below, with a yellow collar behind the head. This snake may well have increased considerably last year, as the female lays her eggs in a warm place and leaves them to be hatched by the heat of the sun.

Another Greenland, far from Greenland’s icy mountains, is, according to the United States Weather Bureau, the hottest place, on earth. It is Greenland Ranch on Death Valley, California. Records of ten years show an average' extreme maximum temperature of 125 degrees, with a record of 134 degrees in the shade scored on July, 10, 1913. Greenland Ranch is 178 feet below sea level.

The frantic digging of a small white dog in its efforts to reach its little master who had been buried alive, led to the discovery at Topeka, U.S.A., of the bodies of three schoolboys, who had been killed when a Boy Scout tunnel in the banks of Ward Creek fell in. The dog was seen bv six men who a few hours before had talked with the boys while they were eating their lunch in the cave. i

; The body of Ben Cochrane, a trapper was found torn in pieces north of Fisher River, on Lake Winnipeg, having been attacked by a pack of timber wolves. His bones and pieces of his clothing, and a rifle broken at the stock, were also found near by. Cochrane, before succumbing to the pack shot seven wolves and clubbed four to death, the'ir bodies lying about his tattered remains being the only evidence of bis fight for life. Antiquarians are puzzled to account for the old coins found in the stomachs of bullocks slaughtered after grazing on the Sheppey Marshes. Mr Hann, an Eastchurcb, Kent, butcher, records the discovery oS < sevei'al more. Among the coins obtained from different animals during the past few days are a small coin dated 1795 bearing the name of Victor Amed of Sardinia, a Charles H. farthing dated 1674, a George 111. halfpenny dated 1806, and a Hamburg shilling dated 1727. A vessel to take a sailor’s eye has arrived in Ipswitch dock, is the four-masted schooner Plying Cloud, which has been acquired by a peer for conversion into a pleasure cruiser. She was built as an American trader, and the space foimerly devoted to cargo has been transformed into living quarters, with saloons and 30 cabins. Not only is she lighted by electricity , but oceiything that can be performed by electric power, from working her winches and driving the windlass to cooking is done by current. She came to Ipswitch to have installed two 20 h,p. oil engines. A white woman and her daughter have reported to the police that while in the {South Africa veldt on a lonely stretch of country they were attacked by a Kaffir, who suddenly sprang out on them from the scrub. The woman put up a plucky fight, and it appears that a desparate struggle ensued, but fortuntely at the critical moment the daughter Hung a. 'large stone, hitting the map on the head and temporarily knocking him out, so that escape was effected. The woman was much dishevelled and bleeding from several wounds when she reached the police station. The police at once started searching for the assailant.