PERSONAL

Evening Star, Issue 17593, 23 February 1921, Page 6

PERSONAL

Mr H. J, Thornton, assistant secretary to the Wanganui Education. Board, was yesterday appointed secretary to the Taranaki Education Board in place of Mr P. K Whitcombe, who has retired.

Mr H. W. Bundle has been appointed to the magistracy. He was admitted to the Bar in 1904, 'practised at Lawrence and Dunedin, and served with the Imperial Forces from 1916 to 1919. He is now practising at Palmerston North.— Wellington message. Mr G. C. M'Lachlan, tho nowly-ap-pointed manager of the Mosgiel branch of the Bank of New Zealand, has now assumed control.

Senior hydrantman R. W. J, Patterson, of the Dunedin Railway Fire Brigade, has been appointed to represent the brigade at the annual conference and demonstration of the United Eire Brigades’ Association. Mr Patterson leaves for Napier to-morrow.

At tho annual conference of tho New Zealand Society of Civil Engineers in Christchurch the following officers were elected;—Mr F. W. M'Lcan, president; Messrs Jas. Burnett and F. W. Purkert, vice-presidents; Mr W. IL Morton, hon. secretary; and Messrs J. Blair Mason, W. E. Bush, and N. Cioftou Staveley, members of the council.

The following have been appointed Otago’s delegates to the National Convention of the Y.M.C.A. to be held in Dunedin next week:—The Hon. G. M. Thomson, M.L.C., Messrs H. K. Wilkinson, T. C. Ross, N, Paterson, F. Arthur, V. T. Drew, and Captain . Sundstrum. Colonel Hiram Bingham, the American explorer and professor of Latin-American history at Yale University, who is at present visiting Auckland, in addition to holding several American university degrees, is a Fellow of tho Royal Geographical Society and of tho Royal Anthropological Institute, London. He has done considerable exploration work in South America, principally in Peru, where he made a close study of tho territory formerly occupied by tire Incas. He has made five expeditions to South America for the Yale University and the National Geographical Society. His investigations have covered many fields of scientific research, including zoology and botany, and on his last visit to the Southern Continent he was accompanied by about a dozen scientists and their assistants. Colonel Bingham served in the American Air Service in France in 1918. On his visit to New Zealand, which will extend over two or three weeks, he is accompanied by Mr G. H. Myers, of Washington, who was formerly in the American forestry' service. Colonel Bingham's close knowledge of Hawaii and its natives, who have so much in common with the Maoris, has led him to look forward with interest to an opportunity of obtaining some first-hand information regarding the history and characteristics of tho Maoris. After a short stay in tho Dominion he will proceed from Wellington to San Francisco by the mail steamer.