NEWS AND NOTES

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3972, 18 July 1929, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES

Mr. John S. Ruark has resigned his employment as a postman in Baltimore after thirty-nine year's. The superintendent of the local general post office estimates that in that period Mr. Uuaiikl 'has walked more than 139,000 miles and carried more than 23,000,000 letters and packages. Thirty or forty years ago a pot of fragrant muslk was one- of the , commonest sights and scents in any cottage or house in New Zealand. Generally a -pot of it, trained up a tiny ladder (made of thin sticks, would be placed in a sunny'window, between the glass and the muslin curtain. To-day, as -the Auckland Star explains, -there isn’t such a thing in the world, and there is a standing lofifcjr of £IOOO for the man who finds -a plant. So it was stated at 'the conference of the Horticultural Institute. A ma* wrote from Wlhakatane saying that a noted London horticulturist had written out asking for information, as lie understood the musk grew wild in New Zealand. Mr. G. A. Green, 'the organiser of the institute, said he never saw a plant of mask by the roadside without getting down to smell it, just to see if there was -any of -the slcented variety. M|r. Horton, the noted nurseryman, said it was no use looking for it, as there was not a'plant lef t in the world. Oddly enough, although it was so -common years ago, there wasn’t -a scented piant to he found to-day. There was wild musk in any quantity in Nmv Zealand, but it had no scent. He mentioned that the Daily Mail had a standing offer of £IOOO for anyone who could Ifind a plant that gave off the fragrant scent -of the old-fashioned kind.