NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2636, 22 September 1923, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

An Imperial campaign is to be organised for the control of leprosy in the Empire. “A little push and monetary backing,” states Sir Leonard Rogers, the well-known expert on tropical diseases, “and the scourge could be practically wiped out in three decades,” Ten thousand flowering plants and ferns of various kinds are required every year for the public rooms of the White Star liner Majestic. A heated greenhouse is provided on the upper deck from which renewals are drawn during a voyage, and a trained gardener is a permanent member of the ship’s staff.

£lO5 was paid recently for an interesting curio in the shape of a pea pod carved out of pear wood. About two and a-half inches long, and an inch and a-half wide, the

“pod” opens on a hinge to disclose two wonderful sixlcenth-century carvings. One repre.-.ents Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, and the other Judgment of Paris. During the visit of the King and Queen to the hospital at Stratford, England, the King asked a beribboned 70-year-old patient where his medals w'ere. He replied, sobbing, that all eight medals had been pawned, and he had no money to get them out. A word from the King to the chairman of the hospiial set matters right. A nonagenarian’s rivalry with a centenarian has been brought to a close by the retirement of Robert Joseph, aged 91, from the service of a firm of brewers in Burt on- onTrent. For 30 years his employers tried to persuade him to retire. They always met with a refusal, but at last he saw there was no hope of vanquishing his centenarian rival, who is still working in the South of England. There is much alarm in Scotland, from Forfarshire north to Rossshire, at the havoc being wrought among horses by a deadly and mysterious disease known as grass sickness. About 50 valuable animals have died and several farmers have each lost two hoi'ses. Suffering animals have been destroyed for experimental purposes. The disease is of a virulent type and is spreading rapidly.