DUNEDIN NOTES

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4482, 27 August 1940, Page 4

DUNEDIN NOTES

COMPETITIONS FESTIVAL The thirty-ninth animal festival of the Dunedin Competitions Society was oJQciallv oueued by the Mayor JMr A. H. Allen) on Wednesday last. As usual ,a great deal of interest is beling 1 taken, in the varied programs. Morning, afternoon and evening sessions are attracting appreciative audiences. The .Maori collection at the Otago Museum .has been enriched recently by the addition of a .number _of rare wooden articles discovered in rook shelters and caves in Central Otago. The gifts are part of a collection jna.de by the late Mr George Fisher, of Middlcmarch. and include a two-ha.nd-Jed club of unusual type and two fern root diggers. Also included are an eeling fork, several greenstone adzes, | some Moa bones and Maori _ imple- ' incuts. A mummified tuatara is unusually interesting in that it is the only known Otago specimen in which the ,s.kin and ..softer parts have been preserved. Other gifts to the Museum Include, a loom from Nigeria, a collection of snuff boxes, a groim of Egyptian pieces and a Maori adze found on Flagstaff. A unique film story was presented to the Otago branch of the It oval Society of N.Z. last week when Mr L. E. Kichdale showed a motion piclure record of the earliest stages in the life of the now famous royal albatross of Taiaroa -Heads. The film showed the beginning of the story—the arrival of four pairs of albatrosses in October last. In the nesting period of three months, the male bird shared the work equally with its '’mate, the single egg in-one nest was shown to be cracking and the first appearance of the chick was a beak enlarging the hole in its shell. The story continued until the chick was 81 days old, when it was covered with four inches of down. Gradually the chick grew, its unsteady gait at TOO days of age being shown on the screen. The young albatross was quite friendly with the camera-man showing no fear. By the time it was 250 days old, the bird was almost fully grown. The film closed with the young albatross exercising its wings in. preparation for flight and finally this representative of the chief of the sea-birds set off on its ocean wanderings. The iscliool holidays are reflected by the .number of children attending liie popular community sings. Special programs have been presented in (their interest and the enthusiasm with which the youngsters joined in the singing was good to hear. Mothers may heave sighs of relief when the holidays are over but there is no doubt that the children 0n, jO." themselves. Community singing for patriotic causes, is a means of combining business with pleasure and is a more interesting way of raising funds than the Crumb cards with which our generation, collected pennies for starving Belgians-