WELLINGTON NOTES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12679, 12 February 1904, Page 2

WELLINGTON NOTES.

Mr A. Macintosh, general manager of the Hank of New Zealand, is likely to pay a visit to the Mother Country shortly. The party visiting the Chathams by the ilmenioa. leaving Wellington on Saturday, will consist of the Governor and his private secretary (Major Alexander), Lord Northland, A.D.C., the Premier and one of his private secretaries, the Attorney-General (Colonel Pitt), Hr Pomare, and Captain Seddon. The vessel can make the run to the Chathams in three days, and it is expected that she will not be absent from Wellington for more than a fortnight. In regard to the reported cure of a white leper at Perth, Western Australia, referred to in a cable message, the authorities in Wellington doubt whether the cure was effected as stated by the use of Chalmugra oil. The oil is an Indian product, and came into prominence as a specific nearly twenty years ago. Consequently, its uses are well knowm to medical science. The more possible explanation of the Western Australian case is that nature has taken a hand in the matter, as she frequently does, and the activity of the disease having expended itself the affected parts will heal, and the leper become cured. The Chief Health Officer of this colony, when in Australia some time ago. saw a case in the Sydney laz&rette under these conditions, qnd the authorities proposed setting.the patient at liberty after 13 years* confinement. Wellington can furnish a case in point in that of the Chinese sent to Somes Island some time last year. The case was not a virulent one, but the disease was sufficiently marked to leave no doubt in the minds of the health authorities that it was a case of leprosy. Since his confinement i on the island, the man has been well fed and exercised, and made to take daily baths in the sea, with the result that the leprous symptoms are gradually leaving him. and he is likely to bo discharged cured, A motioq tn get more attention paid in the syllabus to official and business letter-writing did not commend itself to the School Inspectors’ Conference. Apropos, one*of the Inspectors told a story of how the pupils In a class were ordered to write for submission to the teacher a form of letter applying to the local town clerk for a position in his office. One boy lost his letter on the way to school, and apparently the finder of it forwarded it to its address, for later on the boy received a note from the town clerk informing him that his letter had been “referred to the engineer with power to act/' The Tourist Department is advised that a geyser which has been extinct for over 20 years has become active at Tokaanu, and is giving a display daily, the shots going to a height of'over 50 feet.

At a meeting of the Exhibition Executive, a letter was received uom a Melbourne firm asking for permission to shew a baby incubator. Tiie application was handed over to a committee for consideration. The so-called “incubators” are in use in France, and have been exhibited in England.