NEAR AND FAR

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 16, 11 September 1931, Page 2

NEAR AND FAR

Self-help at Seatoun. - Since the self-help gardening and wood-ehopping scheme was inaugurated at Seatoun a few weeks ago over 1400 hours of voluntary labour have been given, and the workers have secpred free fuel for themselves and furnished supplies for many families in distress. A stock of wo'od has been accnmulated, and the local relief fund has benefited to the extent of £8 by the sale of a surplus. A section planted is now showing vegetables in good growth. A generous supply of potato seed was forwarded from a sympathiser at Levin, and local entertainments have yielded £17. Pulping of Resinous Pines. In view of the discussions that have arisen from time to time in New Zealand regarding the pnlping of resinous pines in New Zealand, the following extraet from the Newspaper World will be read with interest: — "Production of newsprint paper from southern pine has been aceomplished experimentally at the Forest Products Laboratory in the United States, The young pine has been foiind td contain practically no resin, this having been the chief bar to the use of mature southern pine in making newsprint, as resinous woods do not pulp satisfactorily." Praise for Newspapers. Praise for the newspapers in New Zealand was expressed by Mr. L. L. Leyshon, advertising manager for the Nicholas Proprietary, Ltd., Melbourne, parent company of the Aspro organisation. Mr. Leyshon had just completed an investigation of newspaper advertising in the Dominion. Before leaving for Sydney he said newspapers in New Zealand were well up to the standard prevailing in much larger overseas eities. 'The layout and general style appeal to me, and I think the papers are to be commended for the service they render to reader and advertiser," he said. Saving South Africa. The great gold-mining industry of the Rand is putting up fresh records in output, and even now has not reached its peak.' The £45,000,000 a year it puts into eirculation is undoubtedly saving South Africa from a very bad time indeed. True Prophesy. • A story of Mr. Gladstone's visit to Michael Faraday's laboratory was well told by Dr. C. Coleridge Farr in his centenary address at Christchurch. "One day a politician — shall we call him a statesman, I believe it was Mr. Gladstone, and so I suppose we must — visited the laboratory and asked Faraday what was the use and sense of all his research. Faraday replied, "Well, perhaps some day you may be able to tax it.' Truly they are, these politicians taxing the results of Faraday's labonrs enough to-day," commented Dr. Farr. Missing Child Found. ' The body of the two-yeai*-old child, Shirley Valda Eggers, who has been missing from her home since August 18, was found on Friday morning in j the Tomahawk Lagoon, near her father's house. Nearly 450 men as well as 43 police officers took part in a I search when the child was first report- ' ed missing. "A channel leading from ! the lagoon to the sea was deepened i by gangs of workers so that dragging j operations would be made easier, bnt J the dirtiness of the water, made sighting of objects on the bottoni impossible. The .eurrents in the sea at Tomahawk are notoriously dangerous. In November of last year a nurse from the Karitane Home went to the beach with another nurse to bathe, and disappeared. Her body has not yet been recovered. Radio Struck by Lightning. Despite the hundreds of radio aerials in every tewn in New Zealand, there are few, if any, cases on record in which the radio equipment of houses have been struck by lightning. During the heavy thunderstorm in Gisborne recently, however, lightning travelled down the aerial of the Atwater Kent Radio Service broadcasting station 2ZM, owned and operated by Mr. P. R. Stevens, Gladstone Road, and the equipment in the transmitting room was momentarily enveloped in blue electric flame. At that time the apparatus appeared to have suffered no damage, but when the station was about to commence its midday session the following day it was found that the motor-generator had been depolarised, and was out of commission, while minor damage had been caused to other parts of the transmitter. The damage was not of a very serious nature, and repairs were effected in less than an hour.

Gold in the South. First-hand information regarding the alluvial gold deposits along the bank of the Mataura River indicates that very satisfactory returns are still being obtained by a number of unemployed (states the Ensign) . One man at least who has spent six months prospecting the Mataura and many of its tributaries asserts that he has made upvrards of £1 a day using the most primitive appliances. "That's much better than working with the unemployed," he remarked, "and here's something to support my arguments' Unrolling a piece of newspaper, he displayed a substantial lump of retorted gold .which he was taking to the bank to convert into the more useful coin of the realm. He gave the reporter to understand that a reasonable return could be obtained with the cradle on any of the gravel bars in the river between Gore and Mataura, provided the goldseeker was in earnest and put plenty of energy into his work. Women's Advance in Industry. The opinion that in 50 years women would be occupying more positions than men in the manufacturing and commercial world was expressed by a Christchurch factory manager last week. Numbers of apprentices, he said, both boys and girls, passed through his factory in a year, and he had found that invariably the girls were more consistently satisfactory than the boys. He did.not think that women would supplant men as the heads of business .coneerns but they would certainly oust men from positions demanding punctuality and obedience. More work could be got out of a group of female apprentices than out of a group of nxales.