Page 10 Advertisements Column 2

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20623, 12 August 1932, Page 10

News of an old friend of the Dunedm Exhibition days—Bandmaster F. J. Iticketts —is contained in a letter written from Edinburgh by a Dunedin resident who is at present touring the Homeland. The writer stated that during the week ho was.in Auld Reekie (early last month), the Marines Band from Plymouth, under the baton of Mr Ricketts, had been playing in the Princes Street Gardens. The Ricketts kilt, of course, had gone, but the musician's stocky figure looked quite well in the Marine dress uniform. "He has not altered since the time of the Exhibition, seven years aao, and was keen to talk of Dunedin, added the traveller. "His old band, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, is in China, and there is only one of the old players left." The severity of the frosts experienced in New Plymouth lately may be gauged by the effect on native foliage (states the "Taranaki Daily News"). For the first time in memory the leaves of the Puriri (vitex) and kawakawa (macropiper) have been killed by frost, whilst the fronds of the various tree-ff-rns have been rendered yellow and their early death is only a matter of weeks. The paratawhitu fern (marattia traxinea) that luxuriates in New Plymouth, and is such a pleasing feature of s6 many gardens, has also been affected, even in what were previously regarded as perfectly sheltered places. Evidently the severe frost has been driven by the southerly winds into the bush and so caused the damage jto so many gardens.