NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2823, 13 December 1924, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

So far the State has spent about £700,000 on afforestation. The total area of State plantations is 44,040 acres, of which 30,023 acres are in the Rotorua district. Since 1898 the nursery at Rotorua has

raised 82,064, 027 trees for State plantations and distribution. A stoppage of work occurred on a new building in the main street of Hamilton on Thursday afternoon when it large swarm of heCs settled on a part of the scaffolding. The workmen did not wait for orders but promptly “downed tools" and made for the ground. An apiarist was summoned, and on his arrival the swarm was dislodged into a box. Work was interrupted for about half an hour. When the chimney of an old house, in Levin was being demolished recently it was found that, instead of mortar, day had been used in building the chimney for Inhaling the bricks. At the present day this seems a rather remarkable procedure, hut at the time this house was built', 35 years ago, if was a fairly common practice, more especially in the South Island, where on the Canterbury Plains most of the chimneys in old houses were lntill in tit is way. If was suggested at the Highgate Police Court lately that a husband spent £1 a week on eau-de-Cologne to “make himself beautiful.” Tickets weighing 28cwt. are used every day by (lie London General Omnibus Company. This amounts to over 500 (ons in the year. A site in the Strand, London, which cost 8/- a foot in l!)IO. is now 14 a foot, so great is the increase n West End ground rents. Poisonous berries of the Brutish countryside grow on the laurustinus yew. laburnum, the deadly night shade and even the popular privet. Then* are about 40,000 forest fires n the United States and Canada •*ach year, and they destroy over C. 3. 000,000 worth of property.