NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3528, 24 August 1926, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

An important arrest was made at Cambridge on Thursday, when a man named Frederick Bancke was apprehended on a series of charges of fraud, allegedly obtaining collections of stamps by ingenious methods of advertising in different parts of the Dominion. By accidentally coming into contact with a 66,000-volt line at Grant’s Hill sub-station, Timaru, on Thursday, John Day, aged 20, suffered injuries necessitating his removal to the hospital. He is severely burned about the chest and arms, but is expected to make a good recovery.

Four persons had a narrow escape from death in Christchurch on Wednesday when, after bursting a back tire,. the car in which they were travelling- swerved across the main south road, and crashing into the fence of the Riecartion churchyard, overturned, and they were thrown violently from their seats. The two men and two women who were the occujmnts of the cai received a severe shaking, but, apait from shock and sundry bruises, nobody was hurt. The front axle of the car was broken, and the lefthand front mudguard was severely damaged. Remarkable figures in connection with value of fish destroyed by shags were given by Mr. C. A. Whitney, president of the Auckland Acclimatisation Society, at a meeting of the society at Morrinsville. He said that estimating the number of shags on the coast of Scotland at 20,000 —there would probably be many thousands more the value of fish eaten by them was £5,000,000. In New Zealand he estimated the number of shags at 2,000,000, and calculating on the English value of fish, which was lower than the New Zealand value, the -shags in New Zealand consumed £102,000,000 worth of fish each year. . The Wairarapa Lake is now pouring out to the sea through an opening some chains wide., volume of water is sufficient to keep the sea breakers under control (says the Wairarapa Times), but m the end the sea always wins, and as the water in the lake becomes less the sea encroaches and a southerly gale eventually comes and sweeps the sand from the spit into the opening, gradually closing it. Then men and horse scoops have to be brought into operation to open the lake again—and so the process has gone on for 50 years or more, and will continue until man discovers some means of defeating the relentless sea.