NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3918, 14 March 1929, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

An interesting exhibit in the Southland museum is a glass case containing live ferns. , For ten years the_se ferns have been growing in the case. They are not embedded in soil, only a little moss being round their roots. Only occasionally are they watered. Nevertheless they are remarkably healthy and will soon overtop the case. A putaweta seed, which for many years must have been lying dormant amid the fern roots, has recently germinated and a handsolirue little tree is growing up. In 1909, when excavations were made iwith a view to widening the Trent bridge at Nottingham, two old piles were discovered in the river. Records were consulted, for 1000 years back, and it was surmised that these piles represented the remains of a Roman bridge. Edward the Elder built a bridge at this point about 920, but Deering states that it had stone piers. The father ■of an Invercargill resident was the discoverer of the old wooden piles, and from one of these relics of the Roman occupation he had a handsome walking stick made. This stick has been sent out to the Invercargill man (says the Southland Times). It is a beautiful piece of oak, and it seems hard to realise that it had been in the river for many centuries.

A plucky and successful resistance against the combined savage attack of two hawks was made by the eleven-year-old son of Mr. Joseph iSlmith, oif Maromaku, North Auckland, on a recent afternoon. The boy was passing through some fern iwhen he disturbed a pair of hawks feeding on something they had killed. They attacked him simultaneously, one at his neck and the other at a leg. He was fortunate in having a knife with him and he used it to good effect to beat thelm off, at the same time calling for help. He also managed to wound and secure them by beating them with a stick he picked up, after which lie took the birds home, where they were found to have a Wing-spread of over 4ft. each. The boy’s face and arms were badly marked by the claws and beaks of the birds and he had to be treated when he arrived home.

With two months to elapse before ■the close, of the current financial year, the revenue of the New Zealand railways for the period, as shown by the latest available working account figures, amount to £6,~ 683, 425, ias compared with £6,573,876 at the corresponding stage last financial year, and the expenditure £5,748,304, as against £5,619,492 for last year. This represents a surplus of revenue over expenditure of £935;031 for the ten months of 1928-29, and £954,384 for the corresponding period of 1927-28. A decline is shown of .96,566 firstclass and 309,400 second-class passengers carried, whlie road motor sengers carried, while road motor 1,818,702 more passengers than during the preceding corresponding ten months. 'Season tickets increased by 25,122.