GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2545, 20 February 1923, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

A picture of St. Appolonia, who in the 3rd century had all her teeth pulled out at Alexandria, and is regarded as the patron saint of dentistry, was unveiled at the offices of the London Medical Society recently by Mrs Kendall, the actress. Long-legged birds have short tails. A bird’s tail serves- as a rudder during flight. When birds are provided with long legs, these are stretched directly behind them when the bird is flying and so act as a rudder.

fusing to pay his fare. His defence was that on boarding the car he found five persons standing on the upstairs platform of the car, the inside being crowded. He alighted next stopping place, having travelled (10 yards. It was held by the Bench that not being able to travel in reasonable comfort, Mr Addison took the earliest opportunity to alight and dismissed the case.

An ingenious ruse was revealed in the Bradford Children’s Court recently, when two boys were charged with travelling on the railway from Hull to Bradford without paying their fare, and their grandmother was charged with aiding and abetting them. The grandmother travels the local fairs selling brandy-snaps, and it was stated that on a recent dale she consigned her . van from Hull to Bradford, paying the necessary charges, and herself travelling in the ordinary way. At Leeds, however, the curtains of the van were seen to move and the two little boys were found endeavouring to hide under the stock. The elder boy was fined TOs and the younger bound over, and the grandmother was lined 20. s in respect of each boy. Sir Sidney F. Hornier, in a lecture in London, said the whaling industry had survived from the time of Alfred the Great, but if the killing of whales continued at the present rfit-e he believed there would soon be no more whales left. The Greenland variety was already thought to be extinct. A fair-sized Greenland whale had a ton of whalebone in its mouth, alone worth £2,000. It also produced, roughly, thirty tons of oil, which realised about £2O a ton. Whale meat was excellent to eat, and resembled tender beefsteak. The principal whales caught nowadays were of the species of rorquals, or fin-whales, the blue whale, which smetimes measured 100 ft. in length, and the sperm whale. The latter not only gave S7>erm oil, as distinct from whale or train oil, but often contained the ambergris, which sold at £4 an ounce, and was used in the perfumery trade. Two months imprisonment and 100 francs fine was the sentence passed by the Lille Courts on Alphonse Tliys who, while motoring ran down a mail named Leroi in the streets of Lille and caused him injuries which necessitated the amputation of an arm. Tliys, Who was described as a man of means, was ordered to pay the injured man 125000 francs compensation (about £2,000 at present exchange rates). Among the victims of motor ear accidents in Paris on a recent day were three infants who were taken to hospital in a critical condition, and three adults, who were killed.