SPORT AND PASTIME.

Evening Post, Volume LIV, Issue 147, 18 December 1897, Page 3 (Supplement)

SPORT AND PASTIME.

Cycling* \ [By DiaoNET.] ] A Chinaman won a 20-mile road race at Niles, Michigan, on 6th September. He had a handicap of 10 minutes, but showed surprising form, and he almost secured the time prize as well as the first. An American paper says he ' almost gave the spectators heart disease when he came over the tape first.' An English company with a capital of £100,000 has been formed undar the title of the Colonial Rubber Estates, to acquire right to collect and gather rubber over anarea of 640,000 aores in West Africa. Zimmerman's season's work of exhibition riding has satisfied him that he is as Bpeedy as ever, and he has determined on a foreign tour. He will make his first appearance in France in February next, and his programme includes another visit to Australia. The bicyole corset (writes 'Altiora' in the Cyclist) is continually undergoing improvement, and is now so small and so pliable, and so beautifully fitted, that a woman scarcely knows she is wearing it. Under the arm it measures but five inches, and the longest part of the front is but eight inches, the whole being scarcely more than a boned girdle to hold the waist line firm, and leaving all the rest of the figure free and uncocfiued. It goes without saying that the wise woman will insist on having her corsets made to order. Bicycles and material to the value of £173,961 were imported into New Zealand during the year ended September 30th. The duty paid amounted to £27,651. An unusual sight was seen in Southwark on 23rd Ootober. Nearly fifty cyclists, men and women alternately, in single file, passed down the Blackfriars-road to the back streets of Bermondsey. Each bicycle was placaded with half-a-dozen announcements of 'Plump for Brown,' and many were decorated with flags. The procession caused no little amazement in the back streets, the entire population rushing out from the courts and alleys to see what whs up. As many of them were Irish they soon got the key to the puzzle, Father Brown being a candidate for the School Board Division of Southwark, and the cyclists got quite an ovation in some quarters.