NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2770, 12 August 1924, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

“It is as still as dangerous to be a baby in New Zealand during the first month of life as it is to he a soldier in the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces.” —Dr. C. E. Herons at the annual meeting of the Plnnkot Society in Dunedin.

The gunnels are reported (o lie returning to Cape Kidnappers in great numbers. Rigid precautions to prevent (lie birds being disturbed this year will be taken by several persons, one or two of whom have visited the rookery recently. They found the beach to he in good order, though the winter frosts have brought down heavy falls of rock at several places. It may not he generally known that the Chief Justice, sir Robert Stout, was a Rugby football player in his early days. The fact transpired while flie All Blacks were going aboard the R emu era at Wellington flic oilier week, prior to sailing for England. Sir Robert remarked to n friend that it was just. 50 years the previous Saturday since lie i.ivcd his last game of Rugby. Ho was then an official of the 1 nion Cluli, Dunedin, and the club turned up a plaver short on that occasion. He donned the jersey and tilled the vacancv, and had never played sin-

Wliitebnit have commenced their ran in the Apa'rima River (Southland) and the small gulls are busy .feedino 1 on them. Owingt" tlie discoloured state of the river very few have been obtaiiled by netters.

A gramaplione in every school in tin* province is one of the aims of the Christchurch Music in Schools Association.

Many tokens of an early spring have been claimed by various residents <if the south. A Mataura Island farmer, however, boasts of a pair of starlings which have reared their'first brood. The parent birds are now busily engaged foraging for the voracious appetites of their young.

A peculiar freak of nature has come into (In l possession ot Mr C. Thomas, a. farmer of Takinini. It lakes the form of a five legged and six-footed calf, which is quite lively and active in spite of its superfluous limb. When only a day old if performed a rather ambitious feat of jumping over a drain two feet wide, and lias-since been conducting itself just like a normal cal!'.

Professor -T. Arthur Thompson, M.A., LL.D., who recently visited Niagara, says, in the Pond on Star: The open secret of Niagara Falls is* that Lake Ontario is some 300 feet below the level of Lake Erie, and that the river, instead of flowing seawards on an inclined plane or a series of rapids ,has eaten into the 'relatively soft rock of the six miles of gorge, making a cliff which has gradually receded up the current. Additions are being made to the Gisborne Post Office estimated to cost upwards of £20,000.

The steamer Karroo, which is loading at New York for New Zealand ports, including Wanganui, will be the largest steamer to berth at Castlecliff, says the Herald, her dimensions being 430 feet between perpendiculars, and 54 foot beam. Her net tonnage is 6,127. The record is now held by the Scottish Monarch, ' of 5,658 tons, but the Karroo is 469 tons larger and ten feet; longer. At the present rate of, progress the railway line to Opunake will be opened in about‘lß months’ time. * A pinus insignis tree recently felled at Pakowhai, and milled, cut 4,300 feet, valued at £1 per hundred, and 300 fencing battens. In addition (slates the Hawke’s Bay Tribune)

il i-iif six cords of lirewood, which brought the total value of the tree up to £55. A strange accident involving the death of a midshipman from the United States fleet at Tor Bay. occurred on June 21. The midshipman, •J. Duncan, of New York, who had been in London with a party of 590 men to visit AVemblcy and see the sights, left Paddington An the six o’clock train to retain to Torquay. When the express was passing through Hungerford, Berks., at 55 miles an hour, a postman’s little daughter saw a man standing upright on the fop of a carriage near the engine. The train then passed under a bridge, and the midshipman was decapitated.

The Greymouth Star is indignant over a cable heading which appeared in the Labour paper, the Grey River Argus, over the report of a mishap to the British Air Force in India. “Our morning contemporary,” says the Star, “makes little attempt to disguise its anti-British proelivites, anything opposing the Empire being fairly sure of its blessing. The limit of such unpatriotic attitude was surely reached when it hailed the news of a mishap W a British aerial force with “Good Enough for Them.” The crows of two machines were killed. An interesting visitor to New Zealand is Mr G. Ramsay, of Nninfmi Once a month the Tofua passes this tiny islet in the Pacific and as there is no anchorage, she simply passes close in and drops the mat in a scaled tin into the ocean. Mi Ramsay, accompanied bv a native, swims out and brings the mail ashore. In a similar manner the outward mail for New Zealand is taken out by the swimmers and handed up to a member of the Tofua’s c-rew mi the end of a pole. Mr Ramsay slnted that he has never been troubled by the sharks which inlVfd these waters and was able the journey out to the steamer’s route j, ini back iu about three-quarters of an hour.