NEWS AND NOTES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3637, 12 May 1927, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES

There are 40 accident insurance and 11 • life assurance companies operating in New Zealand.

The voraciousness of the shag was illustrated at Lake Kanieri, where one, was seen vaily trying to swallow an eel. The shag was shot and when examined it was found that the eel was some 18in. long and weighed lslbs. A few inches of the eel’s tail protruded from the shag’s mouth. Saturday was the 12th anniversary of one of the most diabolical acts ever committed by any nation. On May 7, 1915, while off the Old Head of Kinsale, .the Kinsa-le, the Cunard liner Lusitania was torpedoed without warning by a German submarine, and 1198 lives, including more than *IOO Americans, were lost.

According to a ’bus conductor, an infallible portent of wet weather is the softening o fthe indelible pencils which he and his colleagues use in making those notes which are, to the passenger, such a mysterious part of the job of conducting omnibuses. Rain is sometimes signalled in this way as much as 24 hours ahead, he says, and his view, justly or unjustly, was that the indelible pencil had a more accurate notion of things meteorological than the experts. A Morrinsville family is having the unpleasant experience of a swarm of bees on the premises, which so far has not been dislodged. The bees have hived behind the lining of one of the rooms, and evidently have settled down for the winter. After some study of the problem, the opinion has been rea-

died that it will be necessary to remove a good deal of the lining before the bees can lie induced to seek a new home.

Out of a total of 17,8(18 immigrants to New Zealand last year, there were 75G of foreign nationality. The remaining persons, 17,112 were British subjects. The influx of foreign nationals from the three Southern European countries of Jugo-Slavia, Italy and Greece, which was very marked during 1924, and 1925, has been maintained as far as Jugo-Slavia in concerned, but the number of Italian migrants have fallen from 262 to 88, and of Greeks from 22 to 16. During the last few years there has been a gradual decline in the numbers of Chinese and Indians who have come to this country. This can be ascribed, states the Government Statistician, to the Government’s recent restrictions in the matter of admitting face aliens. Although no permits for Chinese immigrants were issued during 1926, 50 Chinese arrived to take up residence, the majority of these being admitted on permits which had been issued in previous years. The Indians who arrived numbered 56. There is at least one sportsman in Dunedin who will not forget the opening of the 1927 season (states the Otago Daily Times). He was shooting over an East Taieri swamp on Monday and had wounded a swan, which immediately made for the middle of a lagoon nearby. He was about to give the bird the second barrel when he saw a man approaching, apparently after the same swan, and he accordingly held his fire. The other man, however, was not so accommodating, and blazed away, with the result that the first sportsman received several pellets through the shoulder of his coat. He called out to the careless one who, despite the warning, again fired, and this time sportsman No. 1 had his forehead grazed by one shot, and received another in the forefinger of the right hand. Somewhat alarmed, he approached the arrant gunman before he had time to reload, and gave vent to a few pit by remarks on the subject of careless shooting. The other man who, by this time, was almost as alarmed as the man he had unwittingly shot, excused himself on the plea that he was too excited to notion where he was firing, and his offer to pay the doctor’s expenses and make any amends within his power brought the affair to an amicable ’settlement.