Items.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 6048, 13 September 1894, Page 4

Items.

Under a new French law, cyclists are compelled to have affixed to their machines a metal plate bearing the name and address, so that the identity of the rider may be established in case of an infringement of regulations. Writes an American editor : " Coming home a few mornings since we met a man attempting to walk on both sides of the street. By a skilful manoeuvre we passed between him." Bank-note forgers have been arrested in Hamburg. The English L 5 notes believed to have reached England for circulation are thought to represent about L 114,000. Electrically operated typewriters are now in use. An instrument may be thus automatically worked at any distance. There was a meeting of lady cyclists in London recently, at which an association was formed. Recently 2o ladies went out together for a run, all of whom were attired in the rational costume —knickers and tunics. A journey by ''land" from New York to Paris is being planned by Lord Dunmore. He has gone to Montreal to arrange with the Hudson's Bay Company for the equipment of an expedition which will go to Alaska, cross to Siberia at a season when the Behring Strait is frozen, and then travel through Siberia to Europe. He says he will make the journey if he lives. An instance of "mother-marking" in merino sheep was lately brought under my notice, writes "Brune," by a sheep farmer of long experience in Victoria. He writes : " For four consecutive years a boundary rider, having a quiet black dog, has looked after 800 ewes in one paddock, and though a different lot of lambs were lainbed in that paddock each year, there were always more black lambs among the produce than in all the other breeding lots on the estate put together, and they numbered about 4000. This year the boundary rider had about the same number of ewes in the paddock, but his black dog was not there. The result is there is only one black lamb in the lot. This has happened with the same lot of ewes that last year, in that paddock, produced fifteen black lambs." My correspondent naturally concludes the black lambs were the result of the ewes seeing a black dog amongst them every day. He also remarks that in those paddocks where foxes are troublesome there are always more red and yellowcolored lambs than in any other where ewes are lambed. To judge by this, the evil of that imported pest—the fox—is not confined to killing.