GENERAL NEWS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 283, 22 April 1911, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS

A remarkable case of deliberate selfdestruction by a horse was witnessed by a resident of' Hamilton on Sunday afternoon. A sorry-looking grey horse was seen standing with its fore-feet in the water, on the Hamilton East side of the Waikato river, gazing despondently into the stream. It occupied this position for about half an hour, when it suddenly jumped into the river and repeatedly immersed its head, slowly drifting down stream the while, until when about fiftyyards distant from the spot where the plunge wiis taken the beast was as dead as the proverbial doornail, the carcase drifting slowly down with the current.

An invention that, it is claimed, will prove the. salvation of the flax industry in New Zealand, is now in course of completion. The inventor has succeeded in developing a chemical process for bleaching the flax, and ho is now engaged in perfecting a machine for stripping the fibre. The advantages of the new system are said to be many, the principal features being the remarkably quick time in which the flax can be bleached, and the fact that the whole of- the natural strength of the fibre is retained. On a fine day the inventor says he is able to dress a leaf of flax in half an hour, and whilst in the Waikato recently he put his solution to the test, and ho says the manager of the. rope factory declared that the fibre was as strong as Manila. A remarkable display of fortitude in the face of shocking injuries' was given at Balmain, Sydney, last week by a lad. His arm had been torn off at the elbow, his leg had been fractured, and he was bruised and shaken about the body generally; yet he bore it all without a murmur, though perfectly conscious, and his ( stoicism astonished even the members of the Civil Ambulance who attended him. The lad was employed at Messrs Poole and Steele's ironworks, Balmain, as engineer's apprentice. When ho was engaged in placing a belt upon a revolving pulley his arm got- caught. The whirling wheel flung the lad round and round, and each time his legs were flung against a wall. He was not extricated until his arm gave way at the elbow, and he fell to the ground. The Civil Ambulance rendered first aid, the lad meanwhile remaining quite calm and watching th» steps taken to dress his injuries. The announcement that Dr. Douglas Mawson is bringing out a military type of two-seated Bleriot aeroplane as part of his equipment for the Australian Antarctic expedition is interesting and important, as this is absolutely the last word in scientific transport (says the Sydney Daily Telegraph). There is something audacious in the proposal to wrest from Nature her ages-old secret by means of a machine of yesterday' 3 invention. The mental vision conjures up a weird picture of that final dash for the Pole. We learn that the petrol capacity will enable a distance of ISO miles j to be covered without replenishing the tank; so that when within 90 miles of the goal the intrepid explorers will make their supreme effort under conditions absolutely without parallel. The vast fields of eternal snow, the appalling stillness and silence, broken only by the throb, throb of the motor, as the human birds wings its invasion into the Unknown; the gambling with death: the acute, pressure of the rarefied atmosphere on the lungs; the danger of the petrol freezing; without taking into account the possibility of accident to the mechanism, where a bad fall would mean almost certain death, as the victim would be frozen ere succor came —these are some of the handicaps with which the pioneers of Polar tlisht. will have to contend. On the reverse of the picture is thfl undying glory of achievement, should the fateful mission succeed and add one more item to the store of Knowledge. Hitherto aeroplane flights have been made over settled country, where the airman was never far from help if he needed it. It will indeed be the supreme test for the machine, and scientists and airmen the world over will await with intense interest the result of the forthcoming bold effort.