NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2779, 2 September 1924, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

In March Mr P. Meßreaty sent a pigeon to Ruakura Jnnetion to train for the New Zealand Derby, says Ihe Eeilding Star. The bird did not return and was given up for lost. On Sunday lie was surprised to see the home baek in his loft, with the tail feathers out and only three flight Leathers left in one wing, the remainder being cut. Endurance driving has been succeeded by automobile driving “grinds.” Recently Allan Fisher, of Topeca (Kansas) took in his car a doctor and a nurse, and when they got tired of being driven, he slowed down long enough to allow two others to take their places. In the finish he had a continuous period of 135 hours at the steering wheel.

An English paper states that -nine of the old-fashioned town cri-ers-are employed at Wembley to announce certain events in the good old-fashioned way by commencing “Oli yez!” At certain periods of the day when juveniles congregate they gel no further with their announcements, for the youngsters follow up the “’("Hi yo/.!" in chorus with “We l-«ve no jazz garters to-day."

Thirty per cent, of the negro phy-j-icians in the United States were i nee Pullman porters and a considerable proportion are studying for the profession. The Pullman company endeavours to obtain a high class of employee as porters and every summer employs 3,000 to 4.000 additional men, nil coloured, most of them students in colleges and secondnrv schools.

An amusing interlude occurred during the hearing of a compensation claim before the Arbitration Court at New Pdlymouth. Plaintiff a painter by trade, was being questioned by defending counsel as to his knowledge of his trade, and had just stated that he had read hooks on the, subject. “Did yon read any of Buskin’s remarks on painting?” queried counsel, “No, T read the dinkum stuff.” replied plaintiff. ■ The possibility of converting the vast quantities of powdered coal that are at present wasted into a marketable commodity was recent - lv indicated by Sir Trevor Dawson, of Vicker’s International Combustion Engineering Co,. Ltd. He further stated that at the present time fully 25 per cent, of the coal mined in (treat Britain is never brought to the surface, because under existing conditions it is too fine to bo of anv use.

“We cannot lay sufficient stress on tin 1 importance of physical drill and organised games in the playgrounds of our schools to-day,” said the Headmaster of the South School, Invercargill (Mr .T. Ha in). “This work,” he continued, “is not. undertaken for the purpose of giving children an extra, five minutes, or anything of that sort, hut solely )-> make them healthy citizens, good animals, which is .a crude way of putting it, but it is true nevertheless.”

Porpoises gambolling in the Humber distracted the attention of a Grimshv angler, who put down, his rod to watch them. He suddenly became aware that the rod was careering along flic bank and dashed after it. When he seized the rod lie found that the bait had been seized by an eight foot porpoise, which wits dashing through the water parallel with the bank. The porpoise released the hook when it felt the line run taut, and rejoined the “school.”

M. Herriot is the most un-French of Frenchmen (says the Maucliester Guardian). It is hard to say whether it is in physical appearance or in philosophic outlook that he is the more un-French. The massive head and broad shoulders, snub nose, rough trimmed moustache, loose tweed clothes, and heavily soled hoots, and his general disregard for the elegancies of attire would mark him out, say, on the promenade deck of a trans-Atlantic linei as a successful business man from the North of England or the Middle West.. His mental make-up is a typically modern compound. His culture is exquisitely French, fox his high scholarship is acknowledged. His ideals and sympathies are characteristically Anglo-Saxon.”