NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2774, 21 August 1924, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Spurious half-crowns are being passed in Christchurch. The Gibbons-Bloomtield light lasted seven minutes, during which Gibbons won £10,000! The King has granted a Royal Charter of Incorporation to the Royal Life-saving Society. It will cost £15,000 just to bring the English Association team to Australia and New Zealand next winter. Whitebait is now coining into Taranaki streams more freely and during the past week fair quantities were secured. TJie Napier Harbour Board is applying lo the Government for a loan of £25,000 for the erection of workers’ dwellings. Jack Johnson will have a chance to prove if he can “come back” as he is booked to light in Chicago in the near future.

Arrangements are being made to bring out a lirst class Canadian Association football team to Australia and New Zealand two years hence. Educating 750,000 London school children cost last year £207,000 in furniture, ajud nearly £IO,OOO in the purchase and upkeep of pianos. The largest building stones ever used are found, not in Egypt, but at Baalbee, in Syria. They measure 00 feet long and 20 feet square. Owing to an epidemic of measles, two schools have closed down in the Wairarapa district, says the Standard. “Wherever 1 went in the Old Country,” said Air Edward Alien, of Cambridge, to an Independent reporter, "1 saw New Zealand lamb and mutton prominently displayed and placarded by butchers, several oi whom assured me there was nothing better m the world.” A minister finished up a strong sermon on the liquor question with the following admonition: “if I lmd anything to do with intoxicating drinks, 1 should have them all put over into the river.” Then he gave out the final hymn: “Shall we Gather at the River?” A dairy farmer, residing not 100

miles away, (says the Oliakuno Times) had'a cow sick and sent Idled to the house for a bottle and a drench. The. lad, under a misapprehension evidently, caused a little discomfortune to the farmer's wife l,v stating he wanted the dope quickly as the boss looked so very white and ill. “The law in England dm s not allow one crime to he raised in order to prove that another crime may have been committed by (lie same person,” remarked Mr T. M. W'ilford in legal argument at the Supreme Court in Wellington. “That is one. particular in which English law differs from French law. They go into the whole history in France.

With a view to the cheeking of goitre, practical steps are being taken by the Health. Department, and an order has been placed for the supply of a large quantify of iodine tablets, amounting to some hundreds of thousands, for the use in schools where this malady is most prevalent. A new use for the bagpipes has been found. A Highlander who owns a sheep farm in a mounlaini us district of California has a habit of playing his pipes all over his property in order to frighten away eagles. These birds of prey had formerly done much damage by carrying off lambs and sometimes full-grown slice]), blit the pipes have proved too much for them. “We had proposed to hold a mock harbour board meeting as a numerous attraction," reported Mr H. W. Thompson at the Shopping Week executive meeting at Napier, “and the idea took on very well. The only trouble has been that it has proved difficult to secure men to sit on the hoard.” (La tighter.) A correspondent if the Now Zealand Times asks fh.e question: “Why does not Wellington Harbour Board keep a lug in I lie harbour which can go out in all weathers, as is done al Auckland, Lyttelton and Dunedinf” The writer suggests I hat had such a vessel been available some of the lives lost ill the wreck of the Ripple might have lii en saved.

Here is a yarn fold about Mike Gibbons, the famous St. Paul’s phantom, and brother of 'Tom Gibbons, who out-pointed Carpentior. of a means he used to ourblnff a formidable opponent Sailor Weldon. This man was more than two sione heavier than himself. Gibbon’s hands were so sme with constant fighting that he thought of a scheme to end the bout quickly. After a whirlwind first round . in which Gibbons outclassed him. someone said, .so the big fellow could hear, “Mike’s mad. and when lie’s mad, lie’s terribly dangerous. Before half the minute’s vest wav up Mike leaped from bis seat, and rushed across the ring, poising himself and waiting fur the big man lo rise at the bell’s call. This proceeding so shocked and astonished the big man that he was afraid to come up at all, and was counted out Pi his seat. Gibbon s blufl was brazen, but it. worked.