AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 120, 23 May 1928, Page 11

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Mrs. Runciman, who has been returned to the British House of Commons for St. Ives, was on the first list of women magistrates, was the first woman member of the Newcastle-on-Tyne School Board, and has always taken an active interest in politics, besides being the first woman to sit in the House at the same time as her husband.

The Queen of Afghanistan, who has been touring in Europe, pioneered the movement for women's emancipation and education in her own country. Despite bitter antagonism from Mohammedan subjects, she founded a school where girls are brought up on European principles. Girls numbering 800 attend the school, which is directed by the Queen's mother.

The simpler the beauty treatment the better its effect. Judicious use of good face creams and intelligent use of make-up are* important aids to good looks, but a woman should study her type to be really attractive. The shingle is generally very becoming, but a woman with a long, thin neck should think twice before she sacrifices her long hair— a coil of hair at the back of the head would be more becoming to her than a short crop. Colour, too, is very important. By wearing the wrong shade a woman can spoil the effect of her complexion and deaden the apeparance of her hair. Colours often have a psychological effect which women do not realise. The use of creams and cosmetics is valuable in beauty treatment, but the use of one's brains is of paramount importance. • • • » A family in which the male tendency is so strong that for four generations not a daughter has been born has been discovered in San Pedro, California, from records reported to the Eugenics Records Office (states an American exchange). No daughters have been born in the four generations, although there have been 35 sons. The founder of the American branch of this family was born in Germany, the youngest of 19 boys. He, in turn, had 12 sons. Out of these, one married an Englishwoman in Canada. They had one son, who married and had three sons. Chance as the sole explanation of this continued production of male children "only is considered to be highly improbable, and Dr. C. B. Davenport, of the Eugenics Records Office, is making a study of such opersex families *m an effort to determine their cause.

The London "Evening News" says that black opals are the latest fashion in jewels. American millionaires and London society women are buying thousands of pounds' worth at Hatton Garden, London's big jewel centre. Big consignments have been sent under guard to the United States, and prices have trebled since the boom began. Black opal pendants, brooches and rings are adorning fashionable New York women. The old superstition that opals are unlucky has died as the result of the following story becoming known in the West End:—A man who was starving in Sydney in 1910 found a perfect black opal in the gutter. Some queer sentiment made him keep it, despite the fact that he was penniless. Now he is a millionaire. One American has bought a consignment of twenty opals from Hatton Garden at a cost of thousands of pounds. Jewellers say the sudden popularity of the opal is just a whim of fashion, which, with jewels, changes like fashions in clothes.