NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3849, 25 September 1928, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

Horses have no eyebrows, and fishes no eye-lids. There are now 521,147 boy scouts in the 'British Empire. Camels and pigs are said to he the only animals that cannot swim. There were 143,923 aliens in London when the last census was taken. . The longest railway run is from Riga to Vladivostok a total of 6,800 miles. The first lightning conductor was invented by a Bohemian monk in 1754. Natives of the Solomon Islands wear necklaces of beetles’ legs as love tokens. Flowering plants known in the British Isles include more than 250,000 varieties. Good horsemen make the best air pilots but expert racing motorists do not excel as airmen.

A black poplar felled at Littleton, Surrey, 116 ft. high and 36ft. in circumference, was believed to be the biggest in England. Something of a record has been established by a four-tooth threequarterbred ewe on Mr. C. E. Kerr’s farm at Kingsdown, near Timaru. The ewe is the mother of five healthy lambs. A much-tried recipe.—Take one reckless, natural born fool; two or three big drinks of had liquor; a fast, high-powered motor ear; soak the fool well in the liquor, place in the car, and let him go. After due time, remove from wreckage, place in black satin-lined box, and garnish with flowers. —Exchange.

Speaking at the Re-union of the Feilding Fire Brigade last week, Captain Watts, secretary of the United Fire Brigades’ Association of New Zealand, and Advisory Superintendent of Fire Brigades, stated that strong endeavours were being made to have instruction in Fire Prevention included in the school syllabus throughout New Zealand. He stated that it was considered by the Fire Chiefs of New Zealand, that by training the younger mind in Fire Prevention something would be accomplished, towards removing New Zealand from its unenviable position as top of the list with the greatest fire loss per annum of any country in the world. An experience reminiscent of his sojourn at the war befell a Methven farmer on Monday. While walking through his wheat paddocks near the main Ashburton Road, he was startled at the report of a pea-rifle and the whizz of a bullet too close to be pleasant. Several others followed in quick succession, and on rushing to investigate he found three youths enjoying rifle practice at a tin without considering where the bullets were finding billets. On being discovered they jumped into a motor-car and headed for Methven. One of them, it is stated, was recognised as a resident of Ashburton. Luckily no damage or injury was done. The abundance of seals round the West Coast Sounds and on the islands south of New Zealand has led many Southern fishermen to express the opinion that the sealing season should be opened again (says the “Otago Daily Times”). After every trip round the coast fishermen are able to report that seals are plentiful, while shepherds who recently returned from Campbell Island stated that the bays and headlands there were thick with them. A petition was sent to the Minister of Marine a year or two ago, but no move was made by the Government to declare an open season. The last stage, of the drama of the removal of the captured war trophies from the City Council reserves in Christchurch to portions of the river bank under the control of the Government took place at 6.30 a.m. last Friday, when the Boer pom-pom was dragged from its platform alongside the Queen Victoria statue to the concrete base that had been prepared for it in the grounds of the old Provincial Council Buildings. The removal was carried out without any fuss, and no warning was given of the council’s intentions. Observant citizens who passed through Victoria Square on the way into the city noticed that the gun was gone from the place it has occupied for the past quarter of a century, but its disappearance excited little comment. Just at present the guns controversy, which a few months ago was at almost fever heat, has been relegated to the limbo of forgotten things, the Tasman flight being uppermost in everybody’s mind.