ODDMENTS OF NEWS.

Feilding Star, Volume V, Issue 1404, 31 January 1911, Page 4

ODDMENTS OF NEWS.

ITEMS GARNERED FROM OUK

EXCHANGEB,

Miss Pamela Wright, one of the Wright brothers' sisters, flew in a biplane .from her home at Dayton to Columbus, a distance of 75 miles. She averaged a speed of 62 miles an hour. In place of a passenger, Miss Wright carried a heavy consignment of silk, which she delivered m Columbus. This is the first time that freight hae ever been carried in an aeroplane, and it is on this fact that a record is based.

While taking a flashlight photograph of the interior of a Canadian cavern not long ago, a traveller was nearer damage, if not death, than he bargained for, though fortunately for his peace of mind he did not discover the risk until it was past. Imagine his amazement when, on developing the negative, he found that a fullgrown lynx had been staring at the magnesium wire only a few feet from where he had stood. The lynx is one of the most smteful of the large cats, and its vicious temper makes it an object of peculiar respect to the trapper, who, when on his rounds he fluids one of these snarling brutes caught by the leg, exercises the greatest caution in removing it from the trap.

Mr Tim Healy's defeat in North Louth was a triumph ior something or other, he says, for the intimidations practised by the Hedmondites. The gentleman "who drove Mr Healy in a motor car wae set upon by a crowd. "Give us four of your men to stand ai> my back, 5 ' he said to the head constable, "and' I will fight my way through." But the head constable said the attempt might cost him his life, and he refused. Mr Healy then had a telegram sent to Dundalk for another motor car, and after some delay, picked, up a bar bell which lay on the floor of the schoolroom in which the polling took place, he tmshed his way through tihe police saying, "Oα the heads of the Chief Secretary and my opponents may lie the responsibility. I am going to leave, this place now." And he did co, fortunately unobserved, and reached a motor car. In Dundalk hie hotel waa under police protection owing to tie violence of a crowd, who threw missiles and had to be charged with batons.

The picnicker who throws an empty lead tea-packet or the capsule from the top of a bottle into grass where live stock can get at it probably l>as no idea that he is likely to cause serious loss to other people. But a farmer in this district (says a Tarana&i paper) has had the danger of this practice brought home to him very forcibly. Recently Mr F. H. Sampeon, of Sentry HaY leased a portion of the Waitara Racing Club's property, and turned some of his cattle into it. But an inexplicable mortality set; in amongst- the stock pastured in that paddock. Six cows have died during ith'e past month, bringing the number that have died since October, up to ten. } A careful search of the paddock failed to reveal the presence of any poisonous weeds, so Mr Sampson got a veterinary surgeon "to make a post-mortem examination of some of the anmals. Then it was found that they had dirfd of lead-poisoning. In the" stomachs of the animals were pieces of lead—portions of tea-packets I and so.forth—which had been, thrown by the frequenters of the racecourse into the paddock in. question } and eaten by the cattle. 'A peculiarity of the disease is that the animals become stone blind about a week before death.