NEWS AND NOTES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3631, 28 April 1927, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES

In a Mexican home the sofa is the seat of honour. A guest does not take a seat upon it until requested to do so. A school teacher, Matilda O’Brien, who has died at Old Brompton, aged 87, had among her pupils six Victoria Cross winners.

The chances of death by lightning are less than one in a million. Only 19 persons were killed by bolts from the clouds in five years. VVTId horses which roam the plains of Mongolia are regarded as quite untameable. Two of these animals are now on show in the London Zoo.

Women are just as generous as men with their tips in English restaurants, but they do not eat as much, according to an expert’s opinion.

So delicate is a new instrument now being made to measure heat in the more distant stars that fly wings are used in parts of its construction.

The “beginning of the end” of kiwis, which the late Professor W. K. Parker proclaimed to be “one of the proudest possessions of the colony of New Zealand,” began in the early gold-digging days on the West Coast, -nearly 70 years ago (writes Mr W. W. Smith, of New Plymouth, to the Wellington Post). The prospecting gold-miners on discovering an apparently payable “patch,” built their rude huts and settled in the vicinity. Many of them, as an almost necessity, became possessed of dogs which were trained to hunt kiwis and wekas as food for their masters. The kakapo, or ground parrot, was also killed in considerable numbers for food. With the irruption of the Norway and black rats, soon afetr the advent of the gold-miners to the West Coast, began the disappearance of many species of bush birds. Later, the coming of the stoat and weasel had proved extremely disastrous % to the well-being of New Zealand’s ground-feeding and other species of birds. Kakas and pigeons were also shot in great numbers in the early gold-mining days to replenish the miners’ humble table. Cats frequently became wi’d, and thus could only prey on the. comparatively tame native bii ds.