NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2783, 11 September 1924, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Reuben Lovell, for nearly 40 vein's diver at Portsmouth dockyard, died recently. He brought up 200 bodies from the wreck of the training frigate Eurydiee, which foundered near Ventnor in a squall. Texas has a. wonderful pecan tree which yields £IOO worth of nuts every year. It is over seven feet aeross at the base and 100 ft. high. A hundred gallons of chemicals are required to spray its branches. A recent passenger in the Cunarder Saxonia took a small Noah’s Ark cargo to his Canadian farm. It: consisted of two geese, two ducks two owls, eight different kinds of cage birds in pairs, and a pair of white mice.

Animal breeders in East Africa have developed a new beast of burden which they call the zebrule. It is a cross between a horse and a zebra, stands about 14 hands high and is said to work just as hard as the mule.

The hare can see backwards as well as forwards, its large and prominent eyes being placed laterally. This faculty is very useful to the hare, during coursing for it can see when the dog is nearing it without looking round.

Some of the star names date back to remote antiquity and were given in honour of gods and mythological characters like Castor and Pollux. Others have been given in later times by the astronomers who discovered them or mapped them. The post office often has difficult problems to solve. A resident of Now Plymouth has just received a parcel addressed “New Plymouth, West Indies,” It apparently went to the Indies first, as it has the note “try England.” The parcel was posted on May 10, as some time was occupied in getting it on the right track. A tragedy which will convince fatalists of the soundness of their view, “what is to he will be,” was that in which one school teacher shot another a short time since in on English town. The victim was first shot in the chest but the bullet was stopped by a book he. was carrying in his breast pocket. Strangely enough the book was the Royal Life Saving Society’s Handbook. The affair might have been recorded as a marvellous escape, but when the man fell on his face from the shock bis assailant shot him in the back of the head and lulled him.

The painful story of a returned soldier’s distress was related at a meeting of the Marlborough Patriotic Association last week by Canon Quintrell. The man was said to be medically unlit for ordinary civilian pursuits, and he has a wife and live children, all existing in a state of abject misery in the Sounds. Canon Quintrell sifid the Pieton Charitable Aid Board would see that the family did not want for food, but he urged that the association should render assistance on humanitarian grounds. The association had already assisted the man to a considerable extent, and recently paid a debt for him. A person who says there is no place for art in human life is an animal —an elimentary canal, capable only of consuming food,” declared AH. A. J. C. fisher, the new-ly-appointed director of the Elam School of Art, at a social gathering at Auckland. “1 would divest such a person of everything' beautiful —of his house, his clothes, and bis body as well, for a person who expresses those vijews is not lit lo own them. 1 would impress upon all that art is of vital importance. No man can do anything unless he has material to handle and unless he is of a country which recognises that culture is worth while. And 1 would say, further, that culture aud art are not to be reckoued by the dollar bill or butterfat.”

Divers engaged on salvage work on Uie German warships scuttled by tlieir crews at Scapu Flow state that some of the ships are covered with growths 20ft. long and encrusted with barnacles and mussels of enormous size, in the battleship Ilindenburg the divers found that the engines and the interior was intact. There were champagne bottles and glasses in the officers’ quarters and the bunks were just as they had been left. The divers say the crabs and lobsters “are as thick as trees in the forest,” but there are no other hsh to be seen.