HERE AND THERE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 November 1924, Page 15

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. EXPERT DENTISTRY—LONG AGO. During excavation of the.site of the Roman baths at Bath, two human jaw bones were found. They were examined by a dental expert, who stated that one of them was the jaw of an elderly Roman woman, who suffered from pyorrhoea. The other jaw, a powerful one, probably belonged to a slave, who had had a tooth extracted by an expert! From this discovery it will be seen that the science of dentistry is not a modern discovery. YPRES GROWING ON RUINS. Ypres, at the head of the sailient so gallantly held by British soldiers from all parts of the world throughout the war, is gradually rising from the ashes to which the war reduced her. Already, replacing the 4500 houses that were there before the war, 2082 new dwellings have arisen, in addition to new garden suburbs containing nearly 300 more. The municipal buildings have been rebuilt. The old monastery has been replaced by a new Palace of Justice, and a new monastery has been built outside the town. The central markets are still in ruins, but new ones are to be begun on the old sites. Three new churches are in course of erection and new schools, including the school of music and the school of industry, to say nothing of a prison and a post office. Th* population, which was 17,000 before the war, is already over 14,000 again, and the markets are as busy as they were before the war. 20,000 MILES UNDER THE SEA. Submarine K 26, the largest underwater craft in the British Navy, has just completed a 20,000-mile voyage. This is the longest trip ever made by a submarine. Though the voyage lasted eight months, officers and crew, lived aboard the submarine throughout the whole cruise without any assistance from a parent ship. Everything that was required was carried in the submarine- itself. Charles Brun, who built the first mechanical-driven propelled, submarine in France, in 1863. had probablv no idea of the tremendous future which was to open out before the new invention. AN EXCLUSIVE BIRD. The South American Pavilion at VVembley exhibited a remarkable bird from the remote and lonely island of Tristan-da Cunha. Bored with the old methods of nesting, the Highland Cock has' launched out on hold and original lines of its own. When birds of the ancient school are establishing their homes above the ground, he is burrowing beneath it and making a subterranean nest. The idea is exclusive. So far ornithological experts have failed to discover imitators. Ostriches have been observed flirting with the idea, but so far they have only been able to get their heads below the surface. There are only two Highland Cocks in Europe. SHRT-SLEEVES BANNED. The shirt-sleeves habit is not yet so universal in England as in America; but is gaining ground, even in those Government offices where, not so long ago, it was most strenously combated. There is a story of one Under-Secre-tary at the Foreign Office who, observing a clerk walking along a corridor in shirt-sleeves, . gave chase, and hauled the offender to the door-keeper to he identified. Still more unfortunate was the clerk in another Government department who one broiling day entered his chief’s room without a coat. This was the greeting he received: = “If it should be convenient to you. Mr So-and-so, to dispense with your trousers, pray do- not let any consideration for the Board prevent you doing so.” But these incidents belong to the davs before Labour came to Whitehall. PIECE .OF PLYMOUTH ROCK. At Immingham Creek, on the Lincolnshire side of the Humber, the Anglo-American. Society of Hull has just erected a stone monument injnemory of the departure thence "of the Pilgrim Fathers. The little band oi Pilgrims, after their stay in Holland, eventually reached Cape Cod, Massachussets. in 1620. A piece of grey granite from the spot where they landed at Plymouth Rock forms the top part of the Immingham monument. HORSE-POWER OF OARSMEN. A professor at Yale University has been making tests with regard to the energy used by trained racing oarsmen. He states that they are more efficient than most gasolene and steam engines, as one-fourth of the energy produced by the men goes directly towards driving the boat. Special apparatus showed that during a race an oarsmen would breathe sixteen gallons of air a minute. Each man prodtlees nearly four horse-power in energy at the start of a race, and in a four-mile event hir body will use up fuel equal to nearly jib of sugar. INVASION OF STONEHENGE. The Office of Works, which is in charge of ancient monuments in Britain, has done what some persons regard as a silly thing in regard to Stonehenge. An obscure s ect which calls itself the “Latter Day Druids” wants to bury the ashes of its members, as they die, near the wonderful Druid Circle where the Ancient Druids worshipped thousands of years ago. The Government Department has appeared not to object to this invasion of a great place. “But,” says a London paper, “if these ‘Latter Day Druids’ are to desecrate Stonehenge, why not let us form a society of ‘Latter Day Abbots,’ and claim that our ashes shall be buried in Westminster Abbey?” SEASIDE CROWD’S ODD VISITOR. A sea bird, a large member of the diver family, swam ashore at Ramsgate' the other day and hobnobbed with the paddlers and the folk on the sands. Its natural food is fish, but the discharge of oil from ships makes fishing difficult for these birds; the oil gets into their others and hampers their movements. This particular diver allowed itself to be stroked, but refused all food except a ha.m sandwich one woman, gave it. When it had eaten that it followed the woman about asking for more. A fox-terrier who intervened, vot a peck on the nose and retired Then a bather picked the bird up and swam out to sea with it, and it war seen no more.