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Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 258, 28 September 1935, Page 8

An infant of months was suffocated at Pukekohe this week through turning over in its cot. Inquests held on deceased persons during 1935 totalled 1563, and of the deaths 94 were found to be due to senility. Violent and accidental deaths accounted for 826 cases, including 125 by drowning. There were 386 decrees. absolute granted in divorce by the Supreme Court in New Zealand in 1934, some 297 of these being on husband’s petitions. Most of the latter were brought in cases where the wives were aged between 18 and 22 years at the time of marriage. To be thrown through a plate-glass window and escape without a scratch was the experience of a New Plymouth resident. He was walking down Devon Street when without warning a man cannoned into him and sent him sprawling through a shop window. The glass was wrecked, but the resident extricated himself without injury. The standard of the English spoken by New Zealanders has greatly impressed Mr W. de Hoog, ot Johannesburg, South Africa, who arrived in Christchurch on a tour of the Dominion. New Zealanders, lie considered, spoke much better English than Australians, and with pleasanter voices. It was remarkable that in every part of the Dominion, and in all sections of the community, so good a quality of speech was maintained. It really was good standard English without the distortions of the East End of London or the dialects of the provinces. There are two rainy seasons in Abyssinia—the earlier and the later—Mr CH. Barton, a missionary who resided there for live years, informed the Citizens’ Lunch Club yesterday. The first was of about ten days’ duration, starting in March. The second started in May and ended about September 12 in the country just south of Addis Ababa, but later in other parts, according to the height of each plateau. Rain, m the season, did not fall continuously, but it did fall every day. Once it ended, an unbroken period of fine weather could be depended upon. “A most important phase in the real estate business to-day is the large number of modern flats which have recently been erected, or are in the course of erection,” said Mr C. E. Hoy speaking at the annual meeting of the Ileal Estate Institute ill Christchurch. “These flats,” he said, “in the majority of cases are artistic buildings and at the same time most utilitarian. They are providing an excellent medium for investment, besides giving modern housing conditions to a large portion of the community which docs not. desire the responsibility of larger homes.”

The demand for stamps which have a strictly limited issue has created so much interest among collectors and dealers that the number of philatelists, it is considered, will probably be doubled before the end of this year. There were 250 convictions by the Magistrate’s Courts in New Zealand during . 1924 for the unlawful conversion of motor vehicles by unauthorised drivers, and 253 convictions were entered against persons for being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle. During the week-end a camp is being conducted at the rifle range, Hokowhitu, by the Defence the Palmerston North and Feilding platoons of the Wellington-West Coast Regiment being those participating. The officer commanding is Major J. 10. Pollock.

A bonus of 7s 6d a head for the destruction of keas—2s Cd to be provided by the county councils, 2s 6d by runholders. and 2s 6d by the Government —has been suggested by the Canterbury Sheep Owners’ Union as a means of checking the depredations of the birds among sheep on the back-country ranges.

His Majesty the King has commanded that in future the blue flag bearing the Imperial Crown and Lion, designated for use by governors-general, shall be flown on Government House and at other places on appropriate occasions. His Excellency has given directions that this rule is to be observed in New Zealand as from October 1. Two or three weeks should find the Japanese cherry trees lining the Victoria Drive at the Esplanade in full bloom, making it Palmerston North’s greatest showplace for a fortnight at feast if the weather is favourable and winds do not deal too severely with the billowing mass of fragrant blossom. The trees are just now beginning to manifest on their limbo the subtle changes made by spring. Abyssinia’s language is Ethiopic, and is of a sacred nature, according to Mr C. H. Barton, a Sudan Interior missionary who addressed the Palmerston North Citizens’ Lunch Club yesterday. He added that it had an Egyptian base and was largely influenced by Hebrew, over 30 per cent of the verbs being of the latter origin. The official language was Amharic, while there were many other languages, with dialectic differences.

Convictions entered by the Magistrate’s Court in Palmerston North for traffic offences in 1934 totalled 20(5, including 36 for negligent or dangerous driving, 71 for breaches of tho lighting regulations, and 121 for offences relating to registration of motor vehicles. There were 14,430 convictions throughout New Zealand ioi traffic offences, including 12G9 for excessive speed, and 2429 for negligent or dangerous driving.

Clematis is now in bud at the Esplanade, and the starry-like flowers of this sweetly scented climber will be blooming, it is anticipated, at the same time as the Japanese cherry trees, which last season burst into the full vigour of their blossom on October 15. The tall shady English elms guarding the entrance to Victoria Drive are in bloom, and three or four weeks should be sufficient to see the later varieties of rhododendrons, and also the azaleas, at the height of their prettiness and picturesque garden effect.

For thirty or forty years Greek and Armenian merchants have been living in Abyssinia, said a missionary, Mr C. H. Barton, in an address to the Citizens’ Lunch Club at Palmerston North yesterday. He added that they usually married Abyssinian women and lived a life two or three degrees lower than that of the natives. He could not congratulate Mussolini if that was the kind of colonisation he was seeking for Italy. It was necessary for the white man to conserve his strength and in living in Abyssinia take advantage of native labour.

A disease very common in this country, although it was scarcely guarded against, was hydatids, said Dr Stanley Foster during an address which lie gave at Canterbury University College. People fondled <jlogs, from which the disease could mostly easily be caught, as if they were not at all dangerous, and completely disregarded that such displays of affection merely put themselves in the way of contamination. Dogs carried the germ on tlieir muzzles, passing it on unnoticeably but very often effectively. Nor were people sufficiently careful in keeping dogs away from vegetable gardens. For this reason the thorough washing of vegetables, especially 7 if they were to be eaten raw, could not be too firmly advocated. New Zealanders are too loath to advance the qualities of tlreir own country. The latest visitor to think the Dominion is holding itself back by its own humility is Hon. Authony Winn, a young English journalist who left Wellington for Sydney this week after spending five weeks in the Dominion. “Nobody with any sense could dislike a country so beautiful and whose inhabitants show so much decency and goodwill. But when one finds those same inhabitants suffering from an ‘inferiority complex’—to use a stupid but convenient phrase about tlieir own capacity for mental and social development, one does feel inclined to try and jog them into throwing off that inferiority complex,” he declared. t

“The unfortunate thing is that almost the only really modern ships at the naval review, namely, the 10,000ton Washington cruisers, are little more than glorified sardine tins, having no armour and so being extremely vulnerable,” remarks a retired English naval officer, Admiral Sir Richard Webb, in a letter received recently by bis brother, Air Franklin AVebb, of Alorrinsville. Admiral Webb was an interested spectator at the naval review this year. The trouble was, be added, that the Americans would not give up big warships, and the French would not give up submarines, so Britain had to build both—although both were, be considered, useless from the point of view of Britain’s security. “It is all so mad and so stupid,” lie adds, “and it is impossible to see the end of this coming naval race in armaments.” A Judge presiding over a New York court, coat discarded, a bedraggled shirt displayed to an apathetic public, a faded gown wrapped round the judicial neck, and the judicial eye roving over the latest issue of the comic cuts —this was the scene that greeted Dr. A. L. Haslam, of Christchurch, on a viist there. “They must have scoured tho Bowery for the jury,” said Dr. Haslam. “It comprised tho most dreadful-looking lot of thugs I have ever seen together in my life.” The Judges of the United States were not appointed on the English system, but by. election, a procedure dating from America’s independence eh d a time when democracy had run mad, he said. The only Judges who were not elected were those of the Federal Court of Justice. Tlio ordinary courts were certainly lacking in the dignity .'hat was invariably associated with English courts. Competent. American counsel had told him that they would much prefer the British system in every way.

Open-air schools (non-tuberculosis) in London accommodate 1627 children, in addition to 209 open-air classes held in playgrounds.