A Dangerous Pool.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8036, 24 January 1906, Page 4

A Dangerous Pool.

The moon has a curious trick of changing objects into something quite unlike themselves in appearance. In one instance such a transformation nearly cost the life of a British soldier. He thus relates the incident:— "My company had been ordered into the Deshur district to break up the dacoits, who had become very troublesome. We arrived there in the night, stormed a band of robbers by moonlight, killed or captured a round dozen of them, and chased the rest into the jungle. Some o! us followed on foot among the reeds and hushes, but soon got tired of this useless business, and were quite willing to stop and turn back at the sound of the recall. Our hospital steward, a native, and a good one, was by my side. My canteen had been emptied on the march, audi was parched with the thirst that follows fighting. " Something among the bushes, glistening on the ground like water, caught my eye. ' It's a stagnant pool left by the rains/but it will serve to wet my throat,' I said, and was for throwing myself on the ground to drink, but the steward pulled me back. ' Nay, sahib, stay ! Lend me your sword for a moment,' ho said. He took the sword, and lightly stirred the pool with the point. From the middle of the pool a cobra's hooded head arose, and there came the sound of its hateful hiss. With asweep of the sword the steward cut the reptile's head off, and at once what had seemed to me a water pool became the writhing coils of a serpent that had been fully six feet in length, ' That was your pool, sahib,' the staward gravely said. ' It's well that you paused before attempting to drink it.' "

Japanese Farmers are Always Busy. One of the secrets of the prosperity of Japanese farmers is that the diversified character of their crops enables them to keep busy throughout the year. When not in the fields sowing, cultivating, or reaping, the farmer is to be found in his warehouse stripning bark from his paper plants, rolling lealeaves, rearing cocoons, reeling silk, or engaged in some one of many other phases of his multiform industry. Nearly every farmhouse has a room or two devoted to the manufacture of silk. K forty-million AngloSaxons were crowded into the insignificant tillable area of Japan, and forced to subsist on what they could make a few overworked acres yield, they would not be living in comfort, paying large sums into the national treasury, and raising products sufficient for export as well as for home cdnsumption. In its agricultural achievements, Japan has solved the most pressing problem of existence. At the close of this war, its leaders are confident that it will assume at least industrial pos3essson of some of the fertile areas of the Eastern continent. The Japanese predict that this alone would make a turning point in Japanese history, for when these marvellous millions of island farmers have room to harvest with machinery instead of feails and heckles, and when Japan draws sustenance from great farms, instead of pitiable acre-fractions, the empire, its leaders predict, will astonish the world with its new-found strength. Big Pay For English Judges. It is considered an essential condition of the English court system that the judges shall be absolutely independent financially; that their salaries shall be so large and provision for their future shall upon their retirement be so ample they need at no time of their services have any monetary anxiety. There are now no fewer than eight ex-judges in receipt of total pensions amounting°to £-25,000. A judge who continues on the bench after completing fifteen years' service really does his work for £1,500 a year, the difference between his salary and pension. The Lord chancellor is entitled to a pension of £5,000 a year for life, however short his tenure of the chancellorship. Tombstones. Many have been the tombstones erected to the memory of a favourite dog, horse, or cat, but it may be doubted whether a memorialstone has ever before been placed over the grave of a pig. Such a tablet has, however, been placed by the landlady of the Cock Hotel, Worslcy, near Manchester, over the dead body of her favourite sow, "l'olly," which was fifteen and a half years old, and had had a progeny of over 200,