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Motueka Star, Volume VIII, Issue 555, 1 January 1907, Page 5

Smoking by machinery is the latest “Yankee notion.” The. United States Depai tment of Agriculture employs a machine to smoke cigais. It has four mouthpieces, in each of which a is inserted. For ten seconds the smoke is drawn in- and is then puffed out, the process being repeated every half minute. While the “inhaling” is going on, the way in which the filling and the wrapper burn is carefully noted, the ash is examined, and the odour of tjfie burning tobacco observed. The plant from which each of the cigais is made is known, and the one that makes the best showing in the competition is selected for planting. The test is proving an aid to the American tobacco industry by teaching the farmers what kinds of tobacco to plant in order to receive the highest financial returns. A strange story is told by the Geneva correspondent of the “Daily Mail” of an elderly gipsy woman travelling with a tribe of Bohemians in the conton of Berne. The woman has had six children, four boys and two girls, all of whom have died on reaching the age of seven, the last dying a few weeks ago. Three of the children died on their seventh birthday, and the others a day or two after. It is stated that all the children fell ill as every birthday approached, but the mother took no notice of their illnesses until the critical seventh year was reached, when she nursed them devotedly. The women of her tribe shun her, believing that she possesses the “evil eye,” and is responsible for the death of her children, but the unfortunate woman’s husband is devoted to her. After the death of her sixth child the tribe became so hostile that her husband decided to take his wife away, and will shoi tly return to Bohemia. The chil-di-e*r died from no particular disease, and seemed simply to have wasted away.' The doctors who signed the death certificates never traced the cause of decease.

A. horse in trousers is interesting people in New l£ork, says the Drovers’ Journal. The horse belongs to Charles Parshall, agent for the Humane Society. Parshall observed that his horse suffered severely frc m attacks of horse flies, and conceived the idea of taking some old trouser legs and placing them on the animal, faslening them to a fly net. The horse now is able to eat his rations without stopping to fight flies, and the plan is as m uch of a success as was the old' horse bonnet.