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Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 September 1938, Page 4

Bananas Plentiful in Samoa. The crop of bananas in Samoa this season has been good, according to Mr Thornton Jackson, who returned by the Matua, after spending two months in the Islands. Mr Jackson said that although bananas were plentiful at Apia little or no copra was being produced, as the oversea market prices had collapsed and the natives found the return was uneconomic. At Nukualofa hurricanes had razed the banana crops, and very few were being sent from there to New Zealand. Unusual Fish. A blind numb-fish, found inside a ling, has been sent to the Canterbury Museum. It is a fairly rare fish, and is one of the electric rays, which are capable of giving electric .shocks, especially if touched at two points. It is by this means that it disables its prey, which it would find difficult to secure by any other method, as it is of a sluggisfl habit and clumsy in its movements.” Whether the ling received a shock when swallowing it is a matter for speculation, according to the curator of the Museum, Mr R. A. Falla. White Sunday. Reference to snow falling in Auckland on September 2, years ago—reminds many old colonists that on the date mentioned New Zealand had its heaviest coat of snow ever known, writes a correspondent of the “Auckland Star.” The whole of the southern portion of the North Island was covered that Sunday with snow, in some places several feet deep. Snowballing was indulged in everywhere, even sedate ministers of religion putting down their Bibles on the way to church and indulging in a pastime many of them had often taken part in when they were young in the cold northern regions. Stock suffered severely, and young lambs died by the hundreds. Bushmen living in tents had a hard, cold time, as the heavy fall of snow crushed down their canvas dwellings. It took two or three days for the snow to thaw and finally melt away.