ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 101, 30 April 1908, Page 3

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

A RECORD CROP. A Croydon shoemaker, who rents one of the Corporation allotments and employes his leisure hours in the healthy exercise of gardening, has succeeded in raising on his small piece of land what is believed to be a record crop of eschalots. The price obtained for the crop worked out, on a careful calculation, at as much as \ £326 per acre! Questioned as to his I method of securing such an extraordinary result, the shoemaker said that he utilises one of the waste products of his ordinary calling as manure. j The burnt ashes of old boots — his I speciality—he declares to be equal to the finest bonedust. To the use of this he attributes his success with his little allotment.

THE ORIGIN OF KHAKI

Mr JN. F. Gordon, of New Plymouth, has forwarded a copy of " The Tiger and the Rose," the journal of the 65th and 84th, the York and Lancaster Regiment, containing a very interesting letter from an 84th veteran. The letter refers to incidents in the Indian Mutiny, and after referring to the siege pi Lucknow, the writer says: " Our^inen were a very conspicuous mark owing to the practice in India of wearing white clothing. I managed to make a dye, the colour of the ground, and with this dyed a ?uit of white clothes.,. I met Sir Henry Lawrence, and he asked whether I had brought the clothes with me. 1 explained that I had dyed them, arid he gave me a suit to treat likewise." General Lawrence then told the writer that he would take him off duty and let him dye the suits of his comrades. The soldier, however, managed to do the work in. his spare time, and had all the suits dyed. In four days' time the whole of the Residency was garbed in cl jthing of the colour which is now known as khaki. Sir Henry Lawrence - told the ' soldier that he would see that he was rewarded for his services, but that night the general was killed by a shell, and the "discoverer "of khaki heard no more of the promised reward. r . ! PURIFICATION OF WATER FOR PUBLIC BATHS. There is, says Chambers's Journal, proba,bly no more acute question troubling those municipalities possessing public baths than the econ-i omicar maintenance of the purity of the water therein. A constant supply of fresh water, though eminently desirable in the interests of those availing themselves of the facilities offered them, especially in the industrial quarters of a large, town, is too expensive, with the result that the' water is only changed twice or thrice a week. This difficulty, however, has now been successfully surmounted by -I the engineer to a London Borough Council, and the baths in question have a constant aVid daily supply of fresh running water. absolutely free from bacteria and other impurities. Nevertheless, the same water is used lover and over again. The idea it-\ self is very simple. The water leaves the bath at the bottom at the deep end and passes over a screen, by which all impurities suspended in the water are arrested. It is then lifted by means of a double-acting pump to the top of the building, a height of tome 25ft, to a water-tower. Here it percolates through a series of three superimposed perforated large zinc trays, where it is submitted to the beneficial influence of sun, wind and air, which thoroughly oxidises the water and kills all bacteria contamination. This operation completed, it gravitates into a large filter-tank, where the water is thoroughly purified, finally being heated to a temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit before entering the bath at the shallow end, opposite to that from'which it was withdrawn. This process is continued throughout the day, and a constant stream of iresh water flows into the bath, so that this particular municipal authority in London has satisfactorily solved the problem concerning the maintenance of a pure supply of water in the bath. As this filtration and aeration plant is designed upomthe most economical lines the purification process is effected very cheaply.

MAKING DOCTORS IN A HURRY

The Melbourne Medical Board has (says The Argus) brought under the rotice of the Chief Secretary a case in which a young man who, after a short preparation at Melbourne University, went to America and returned in less than a year with the degree of M.D., a qualification that takes seven years to obtain at Melbourne University. The person/in question was nat even a matriculated student in Melbourne, but the Board was forced, under the Medical Act, to register him .as a duly qualified medical practitioner. An amendment of the Act is being sought by the Board.

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. One of the" hardest cases ever ventilated in the New South Wales Arbitration Court was heard at SydnejT last week, when a sawmill hand told

how he kept a wife aiid eight children on 80s per. week, his average wages i:or twelve months. . "How about the children's clothes?" he was asked. "The wife makes them"," was the reply, "and so it does not cost us much." "And boots?", asked the counsel. "I do the repairing myself," said the witness, "and sometimes we find some boots 1 that have been thrown away, and I put soles on the uppers.' 5 Mr Spencer, a member of the Court, then asked, " Don't you think that is an encroachment on the union P" The witness was not the only person amazed at the ques.tion, but he admitted that perhaps it was. "Have you bad any illness?'' he was asked, and then.the witness's brave front was pierced: "I buried a little girl three weeks ago," he said brokenly. ,