GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3675, 6 August 1927, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

China last year bought 4,142,000 Bibles, nearly half the number issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society in that period. Whalebone, once used so much in the making of corsets, is now mainly employed as bristles in hair and other brushes.

Hospitals and charities benefit to the extent of £30,000 under the will of Mr. S. €. Stanley, of Leeds, who left £160,328.

Tea passes through the London market, Mincing Lane, every week at the rate of 80,000 chests; it is worth about £500,000. A baby found on a doorstep in Barkham Terrace, Lambeth Road, has been named George Barkham by Southwark Guardians. Under the ideal weather prevailing, whitebait is beginning to make its appearance in the West Coast rivers (says the Greymouth paper). In the opinion of Mr. F. Crawley, one of Canada’s clever backs, the bes't Soccer team in the province is Wellington, and the best New Zealand rep. team was that which met them in the second Test on July 2.

It is quite probable that the Burwood murder trial will not take place at the forthcoming sessions of the Supreme Court at Christchurch, but will be taken at the November sessions.

Auckland’s sixth Winter Exhibition closed last Saturday night, after a run of nine days. It was attended by 200,000 people, aggregated £3780 15s 6d in gate receipts, and gave employment to workers to the extent of £2OOO in wages.

“Money you were done_ out of years ago,” was the wording of a letter received by a well known New Plymouth resident a day or two ago. Enclosed were two £1 notes. The recipient has no definite idea as. to the identity of the person remitting the money.

As a result of the interest aroused of late in the matter of old coins, several residents of the Stratford .district have had some very old specimens examined. One of the oldest is a .shilling found by the daughter of Mr C. -J. Sehumaker, of Ngaere, when her father was carting shingle from a deposit on the farm. The coin is well preserved, and bears the clear impression of the date, 1707. The bust relief seems to be that of Queen Anne, and the milled edges, ,istead of being at right angles to the plane of the coin, are set at an angle of about 30 deg. An adventurous little Woodville boy, not three years of age, requested his father to take him to Palmerston to buy a Hudson car, but the father jokingly replied: “Go yourself.” Some considerable time later the small boy was missed and it was not till a telephone message was received to the effect that a small boy on a tricycle, who stated lie was making for Palmerston had been intercepted near the entrance to the Gorge that the parents realised that the little chap had taken his parent’s remarks seriously. Apart from everything else it was a rather remarkabley feat. Pe,ter must have safely negotiated the traffic into the main street and to have covered the best part of four miles before being held up. The boy and the tricycle were recovered by car none the worse for the adventure (says the Pahiatua Her- , aid). “It would seem that Dr. Serge Voronoff is well on the way to proving that the ‘fountain of youth’ is, after all, merely a biological hypothesis,” remarks a writer in the August issue of the New Zealand Farmer in the course of an informative article on rejuvenating sheep by gland grafting. “Be it what it may,” continues the article, “there can be no question that during the last ten years this eminent surgeon has realised a definite effect from gland grafting—an effect which he believes can now be made permanent. Thus, ere long, Methuselah may be made a fact.” The subject is made topical in view of the experiments at present being conducted in Otago with the Voronoff treatment of rejuvenating sheep by gland grafting. The articles referred to is embellished with an interesting series of • illustrations of ■some of the actual subjects of Dr. Voronoff’s experiments, and these give point to the importance of the experiments now being carried out in New Zealand.

A guilty conscience must have moved the operator in charge of the lantern at Dr.Benham’s lecture on evolution to conceal the fact that on his way to the meeting he had broken one of the slides to be used in the address, and it was unfortunate that it should be the very first, says a Dunedin paper. Dr. Benham’s idea had been to contrast the manly grace of Adonis with the uncouth repulsiveness of the gorilla. Tie signalled the operator to commence, and, trusting impliedly in his assistant’s reliability he proceeded to enlarge on the godlike comeliness. “Look at this lovely creature,” he said. “Behold his erect posture, his noble forehead, his straight nose, and all those attributes which- poets and the Victorian women novelists refer to as godlike.” Uncontrolled laughter stopped him, and in consternation he glanced at the screen to find the vision of: an abhorrent gorilla confronting him instead of the picture ofithe handsome young Greek. Then it all came out. The reproduction of Adonis had been dropped in the nuddiy rain-soaked street and ruined.