NEWS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 89, 11 October 1941, Page 8

NEWS OF THE DAY

The "Evening Post."

From Wednesday, October 15, the "Evening Post" telephone number will be 47-222, and from 5 p.m. until 6 p.m., 47-227. Otherwise Engaged. The Petone Commercial Club, which won' the Lauchlan. Golf Cup in 1934, will not be a starter this year, owing to .Its inability to get a team together. Most of its players are in the Forces. Linen Flax on Bluff Wharf. Some time ago a vessel loaded a quantity of sacks of linen flax seed in Bluff, and strewn in the bottom of the railway wagon was a quantity of the dried linen flax plants, these having been placed there to keep the bags from coming in contact with the iron floor of the wagon. Apparently the plants had become spoiled in the course of harvesting, but they contained a considerable quantity of seed, some of which was shaken out on to the wharf. Now there is to be seen grawing alongside the rails and in the cracks of the wharf planks a beautiful strike of linen flax. Reports say that this crop is not easy to grow, but apparently it is very partial to trie sea air. The Common Fly. Two flies are capable of producing, in one year, as many as 335,293,200,000,000 flies, said Councillor A. E. S. Hanan at a meeting of the Timaru Borough Council, urging the council to take precautionary measures against the spreading of disease by flies. | A fly's egg, he said, was the size of a pin's head. In ten days this egg be-i came an adult, which in seven days began laying eggs at the rate of 100 every ten days. Councillor Hanan said that flies were capable of spreading 30 well-known diseases, and one fly would carry on its body no fewer than 5,000,000 germs—enough to infect a whole household. The .public accepted the common fly, he said, without realising its harmful potentialities. Reputation of Christchurch. Someone careless, of the reputation of Christchurch made up a story a few months ago that has since gone round the world, states the "Star-Sun." The latest to succumb to it is a Birmingham newspaper, in which it appears as follows: "During a first-aid demonstration young women members of the Christchurch (New Zealand) Auxiliary Ambulance Service were called to aid a 'casualty.' They bandaged him, lifted him gently, but missed their hold, dropped him, and broke his leg. The girls then placed the casualty on aj stretcher and slid him carefully into a hospital ambulance, but not quite far enough. They -slammed the door. i struck the patient on the head, and, i gave him concussion." This tale, quite I untrue, and, indeed, absurd on the face of it, because the stretcher always i goes into an ambulance head-end first. is believed to have been concocted in I Wellington, but, as the collection of cuttings at the local St. John Ambulance headquarters shows, has travelled far. From Australia it has now reached England, and may quite well have already been translated into the quaint wriggles and curves of Arabic and Hindustani script or the intricate picturegrams of the Chinese.