Untitled

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 221, 16 March 1912, Page 8

Rats are increasing with great rapidity in Ashburton, and some local business places are said to be literally alive with the rodents.' There are said to be about a score of life insurance agents operating in and around iMasterton at the present time. Lives in a "dry" area are apparently valuable. A recent letter from Home states that Worcestershire experienced 18in of snow during Christmas week. The downfall necessitated the employing of 300 men to clear the streets. Two small boys living at Fort George Island, Jacksonville, Florida, guided by an old chart, have unearthed, near an ancient Spanish hut, Spanish coins worth about £30,000,

It is reported that Bob Fitzsimmons is secretly training his 16-year-old son in order to make a world-beater of him. This boy is said to be 6ft high, and to ■ weigh 1601b . In addition, he possesses all the ringcraft and generalship which his father has been able to instil into him. In writing of the tomato as a food, a well-known doctor said that unquestionably it possessed a high dietetic value and had been especially recommended for use in cases of blood impoverishment, a suggestion which perhaps rests upon the fact that it contains a considerable of iron. 1 ■ 'ie papers report the death, at the a r "f 102 of Mrs. Cohen, of We»tmins . who appears to have been a remarkable and interesting personality. She had not needed the services of a doctor until she was 92 years of age, and when she was a hundred years of age she could see clearly without spectacles. She left 14 children, 21 grandchildren, and 18 great-grandchildren. It is believed in political circles that when the new Cabinet is reconstructed provision will be made for the creation of Ministerial Under-Secretaries a scheme that was for many years dear to the heart of Sir George Grey, but was never given effect to. It is a system that provides a training scheme for Ministerial aspirants, and would have been introduced some years ago hkd it not been for party dissention.—Eltham Argus.

Mr. T. P. O'Connor, writing of the future of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, says in Reynolds:—"As I surveyed him seated on the Treasury bench —so fresh, so virile, so youthful-looking amid an environment of so many worn and weary faces—-I felt that this was the man who, among all the public men of his time, had the greatest stying power, both physical and mental; and that, far as he has gone, he will probably go yet further. The question of the moment is not whether Lloyd George will be Prime Minister, but how soon." While army and navy ordnance experts are giving much time and thought to the best manner of attacking airships aloft, flying men themselves are asking if it would be possible to provide some means, chemical or otherwise, by which the aviator can at his pleasure produce some cloud-like vapor to envelop his machine and obscure it from the view of the enemy. The artificial cloud might be , visible, but would only form a large target, while the machine, the real objective point of the firing lines, would form only a small part of the target, decreasing in proportion to the size of the cloud the prospect of being struck by the projectiles. Buaine«« busk wanting billheads, letterheads, or any other description of print ing, cannot bo beiter served, in price, quality or despatch, than by the Daily News PHntPry. Try .u '\U. jvj or *Tit«.