NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3919, 16 March 1929, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

The Prime Minister announced this week that Oaibinet had approved of a grant of £9500 for the provision of a refectory at Massey : Ooilege. “The present position of Palmerston from the fire protection point of view is not only dangerous—it is positively alarming,” said Mr. T. T. Hugo, Dominion inspector of Hire Brigades. 'S. Lay, the Australasian champion javelin thrower, at the Dannevirke Athletic 'Olu'b’s meeting yesterday made a throw of 213 feet 22 inches, which exceeds the present record iby 7ft 3iin. The throw was made against a light southerly wind and measured with a steel tape by the county engineer.

There are 13,500 crates of cheese in store in the grading stores at Wanganui awaiting shipment. The New Plymouth Borough Council has accepted a tender for a new waterworks dam at £35,310. Only local labour will he employed. The Minister of Education stated at Napier that he hoped to make an announcement within the next month or so concerning post-pri-mary education. When a “Wanganui Herald’’ reporter was on a visit to the Hospital the other afternoon he noticed that one of the “Bing Boys,” Charlie, is an inmate. “Charlie” is bright and cheerful, and has made many friends in the institution. He had the unique experience of beingwashed overboard from a troopship in the Indian Ocean and washed back on the deck again.

The visitor to Poverty Bay cannot but be surprised at the desperate competition which prevails among the motor service cars. One firm offers to take Gisborne people to Wellington and back for £4. Another quotes £2 for the trip from Gisborne to Napier and back. The established services, which charge more, complain that although they maintain the v passenger services throughout the year “pirate” cars rob them of business in the summer, ar.d go off the road in the winter. "

“I shall be glad to get hack,” writes a New Zealander from America. “The buildings here in New York! I never saw the like, and the traffic! Start in a car for Bronx from the Battery a distance of nine miles. It must take motor ears three hours to get there. The beggars here are using Fords and Cadillacs to ibeg in. They are forming a union nolw not to accept anything ■less than a dollar. Everyone here seems to be a bootlegger, and so they won’t intake a mistake in selling to each other, they are wearing* badges.”

“If my information is correct, the swordfish is a very valuable article of food, and the people of New Zealand are foolish to let it go to waste,” states Mr. Charles Roger, who returned to Auckland on Tuesday from the northern big-gaime fishing grounds. “I must admit that I never saimpled swordfish myself, but an English friend whdm I met at Russell declared that it was equal in flavour to the best Atlantic salmon, than which no (finer Ash exists. New Zealanders should further test the possibiliites of the angler’s camp as a source of food supplies.” “Motor-cars have become a feature of our national life,” said Mr. F. PI. Levien, S.M., in the Police Court recently, when a charge of unlawful conversion of a car was being heard. “In cases of this kind I have no compunction in sending the offender to gaol for the full term unless there are some redeeming features. An inexperienced man in a ear may easily come to grief, and he touches it at his own peril. The only way the conversion of horses was put down was by inflicting the maximum penalty in each case. In 12 months such thefts were completely stamped out in the North.”

Where do all the old coins go to? Each year there is a wastage of thousands of pounds. More goes back into the ground than 'one would expect. Sometimes they are hoarded and forgotten; sometimes they are lost. A resident of Ponsonby, Auckland, digging in his garden, has at various times turned up coins which evidently once belonged to a collection. A German mark, a small Swiss coin, and a United States coin are among his finds. The latest find is a token of some metal resembling brass. On one side are the initials (evidently of the issuing firm) “O.G. and Co.” in a. diamond; and oil the 'other is a large “3d” with a place at the bottom for a nulmiber instead of the year, as is usual.

Some months ago a dispute developed between the British and Norwegian Governments over the ownership of a place called iß'ouvet Island, in the« South Atlantic. The Norwegian Government communicated with the Foreign Office to t'he eff'tct, that although the British claimed it, they had never occupied it, that it had been used by Norwegian whalers from time immemorial, and on these grounds should be ceded to Norway. The matter was brought up in the House of Commons, and Sir Austen Chamberlain announced, amid some applause, that Bouvet* Island would remain nothin the Empire. Having taken this firm stand, he later graciously told the Norwegian Government that it could have the place. A Norwegian expedition was despatched to take formal possession of Bouvet Island, but, in the words of a London weekly, it “failed to find a local habitation for the name.” A search of the navigation records has shotjui that the island, like that of other controversial myth, Mrs. ’Arris, has no existence in fact. The supposition -is that the original discoverer was deceived by an iceberg.