NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3842, 8 September 1928, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

The installation of warning signals at level crossings is being pushed forward as rapidly as possible, says the Minister of Railways. iSpencer Stratton, the New Zealand cyclist, has been prominent on Ihe dirt tracks in England, recently establishing a mile record in 2.4Bsec. Although the Daffodil Day collection at Auckland last week was by. no means a record, the gratifying sum of £561 15s ltd was raised. Stealing plants from private gardens is growing into an annual nuisance, states a Christchurch paper. A falling-off in net customs an(l beer duty collected at the port of Wanganui is • shown in the returns for August. London is to have a new museum at some future date, the Chartered Insurance Institute having decided to establish an insurance museum. Britain’s taxation per head of the population is £ls 2/8, the next European figures being: France, £8 5/10, and Germany, £5 6/5. “Cherish” is to be substituted for the much-discussed word “obey” in the marriage service as used in the Episcopal Church on Scotland. Taranaki County has a total of 37 miles 54 chains of asphalt roads, 183 miles 32 chains of metalled roads and 52 miles 41 chains of unmetalled roads, making a total of 273 miles 47 chains of roads. -

After travelling 800 miles, a box of flowers was recently delivered to an Ashburton address from Whangarei a few minutes after the arrival of the express, and the contents opened up as fresh as when they were put in the closed box so far away.

There were 100 bankruptcies in Auckland in the first eight months of the present year, but this was a decrease of about one-third on the aggregate for the corresponding

period of 1927. The largest monthly total was 19, in July, the return for August being five less. A cow in a Hairini dairy herd has been occasioning its owner a good deal of concern lately by having a fit each day (says the Auckland Herald). The affliction is apparent for only a few minutes and during- its progress the animal remains standing: The milk production has not been affected.

A Maori saying was, “Marry your sister or your brother so that you may curse or ill-use one another without occasioning offence to anyone,” said Sir Apirana Ngata, M.P., last week, in his address to thi£ Wellington branch of the Historical Association. By “sister” or “brother,” he added, the Maori here meant first or second cousin. Wars were thus avoided, lands retained within the family circle, and chiefly rank maintained at a high level. A Dunedin paper tells this one: Two of the senior members of the local golf club were playing for the usual shilling a hole, and were accompanied by a junior lady player and a recruit of the game, whose ability is easily excelled by the force of his rhetoric. The game was halfway through, and the Scotsman of the party was stammering slightly, being five down. The lady hit the ball well over the hill and out of sight. The men played their shots, but the- lady’s ball could not be found until the Scotsman holed out and discovered the missing “pill” in the tin. The lady smiled sweetly, and remarked: “Dear me! Do you know, I thought I’d missed it!” Although bearing the battered appearance of a life of hard usage, and enclosed in a case gradually crumbling to pieces with old age, there is a grandfather clock in Timaru which to-day is declared to be just as reliable a chronometer as it was when it was made over 200 years ago. It was purchased recently in an auction room for a “mere song” by a resident of Timaru. The clock stands a good sft. in height, and was once enclosed by a handsome case of oak, though this now is fast falling to pieces; in fact, only ■ the shell remains. The dial is beaten out of solid brass, and there is only one hand to indicate both hours and minutes, the dial being specially subdivided for this purpose. The

great age of the clock is obvious from the fact that the weights are suspended by cords —which, by the way, also show signs of wear —instead of by chains, as has been the practice in recent years.