NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2725, 26 April 1924, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

The British are at work in India on irrigation work twice as large as the Panama Canal and costing onesixth as much. A Treasury report on Navy accounts reveals that Britain paid £1,32(1,000 sterling in 1022-23 as compensation for the cancellation of warship contracts, consequent on the Washington agreement. A competition amoxig dye-makers is to be held in an effort to produce khaki cloth that will not fade. The dyes will be applied to khaki cloth, the cloth made into uniforms, and the uniforms worn two months in the tropics. The dye that best holds its olive drab will bo used exclusively .by the army in the future. With a killing capacity of two a minute, the Longburn works arc slaughtering and preparing live hundred pigs a day, says an exchange. The-works are the best in the Dominion, ft is now becoming

apparent that pigs will make np # lo (he farmer for the loss on beef.

For a week past a line 12-pointer stag has been running with the dairy herd on Mr Frank Raven’s farm near Honildwi. says the N.Z.

Times, Mr Raven noticed the stag coming in with the cows, but as they passed through a paddock it gracefully leapt over the fence. The animal disappeared as mysteriously as it had come. “Tliis was grown on tlie footpath outside my house,” said a resident of South Street, Foihling (down near the river) placing a well-grown niarroHSf on the counter. “And we alsp have on the same pathway cosmos and parsley, besides other things—excepting asphalt.” —Fcilding Star.

As a method of improving the musical education of the people of Great Britain, the Adult Education Committee has recommended that music-should he made a principal subject for the secondary school examination. It might then revert to the position it had in Tudor times as “an essential part of good breeding and good education." Each village ought to have a melody club,” the committee stated.

An instance of a farmer getting more for his stubble than for his wheat has come under the notice of the On mam Mail. He sowed I Of) acres, and, after threshing, his total return for the wheat was £lO. At that time feed was scarce, and an offer of nearly £1 per acre for the stubble was readily accepted. Even with this unexpected surprise his total return of £l4O is a poor compensation for his labour and outgoings on a hundred acre patch.

Several young men who were looking on while the man Melville was apparently drowning at the wharf must have felt, “small’’ when a young lady told them off in front of the public for not going to the rescue instead of Mr .Martin (says the North Auckland Times). The young lady knew these young lellows could swim, and she informed them that they were “no men” to allow an older man to do their work, and said she had a good mind to go to the rescue herself.

That interesting Auckland-built, craft of adventure, the 18-ton schooner yacht Vision, slipped quietly away to sea on Tuesday, bound on a holiday cruise to Nukualofa, in the Tongan Group, and thereafter to such other island ports as her owner and builder. Mr James Reid, may decide. Mr Reid is making this island cruise, accompanied by his wife and other members of his family, but with no paid hands. Long years ago, Mr-Reid entertained the hope that some day he might once again visit the islands, calling atf’any point he desired. Finally, being no longer tied to business, he built .singlehanded, his, vessel Vision, and now has begun ids ocean cruising. The date ol the yacht’s return is problematical. As Mr Reid has himself phrased it : “We may he away six months or six years.” Mr Reid is the skipper of the little packet and his daughter 1 Mix His will help him.

There ought to tie some choice pork somewhere on the Auckland market. On one of the trains held up on the Kaipara line during the flood (says an exchange) there was a truck of pigs, and when the train was marooned the piggies soon felt the pangs of hunger and made the night clamorous with their their cries. Some individuals with a bright idea remembered that in the guard’s van was a consignment of Kaipara flounder destined for the breakfast table of Auckland next morning. Tt was extremely doubtful when tlie train would be relieved, so the fish was sacrificed to allay the pangs of the pigs’ hunger. The meal was a great success. When the fish was finished, some kind-hearted individual went foraging among the orchards close to the station, and lie rounded up a whole lot of dessert apples which flu* pigs munched with audible satisfaction.