NEWS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 50, 28 February 1942, Page 6

NEWS OF THE DAY

Loss of Mail

The loss by enemy action of a small mail for the United Kingdom was announced last evening by the Post-master-General (Mr. Webb). The approximate dates of posting were: South Island, letters and newspapers,] December 30-January 5 inclusive; par-j eels, December 27-January 5 inclusive. North Island (Wellington district only), letters, newspapers, and parcels, January 3. . The mail was very small, consisting of 11 bags of letters and newspapers and 14 bags of parcels. St. David's Day. The annual festival of the national and tutelar saint of Wales, St. David, falls tomorrow, March 1, but Welshmen in Wellington will be honouring their patron saint tonight. Very few historical facts are known about St. David. He is supposed to have been born about 500 A.D. and to have lived to a ripe old age. He founded the cathedral that bears his name and over 50 churches as well, and with the passage of time his fame increased^ as did also the popularity of his shrine as a place for pilgrimage. Durability of Timber. According to an electric linesman of 15 years' experience, who was giving evidence in a Supreme Court case, New Zealand timbers put in the ground always decayed first at ground level, "between wind and water." When Australian hardwoods failed, he said, it was not because they had given way at the ground level, but because they had decayed at the top. Most Australian hardwood poles contained a lot of sapwood. Another Land Girl. The publicity given to the case of a young woman typiste who has taken up farm work in the Morrinsville district to relieve a brother who wished to go on active service has prompted a Rotokauri settler to give another instance, in which there figures an Auckland girl who had worked in a solicitor's office for three or four years ! and had never even been ..on to a farm in her life. After three days she was able to handle a large herd, leg^ roping and washing the cows in readiness for the milking machines, and generally doing much of the work customarily done by youths on the farm, not only in the milking shed, but also with the various tasks of the day, The girl's age is 20. Her employer says she is a completely successful land girl, and adds that this is the type of girl who can relieve many young men for active service. Our Avian Heritage. What will people in other countries think of New Zealand in years to come? The question is asked in "Forest and Bird," and is replied to by a writer as follows:—"In history New Zealand should aspire to be known not only as a country that helped to beat the Axis in war, but as a country that helped the .British Empire to equal and excel the Axis in the higher principles of the utilisation of land and of the preservation of all those forms of life, animal and vegetable, that aid land's use and conservation. It is not enough that New Zealand should be notorious for deforestation; for draining operations which drive out the swamp birds without compensating for land losses by erosion:, for allowing one cat to destroy an entire species of bird (the Stephen's Island flightless wren): for stocking museums of Europe while allowing the species itself (example, the huia) to be totally destroyed. These negative distinctions do not convey any impression of i superiority."