HOAX INDICATED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26848, 12 August 1948, Page 8

HOAX INDICATED

MESSAGE ,IN BOTTLE.

p.A. WELLINGTON, Aug. 11. Has a bottle spent nearly 10 years drifting from St. Helena to Ngahau-

ranga. Wellington? This question confronts Mr R. J. Tapp, a Wellington motor driver, who found on the rocks at Ngahauranga a corked bottle containing a message that it wss thrown into tne sea at St. Helena on January 22, 1939. The message asked the finder to take the bottle to the nearest branch of the Royal Society for determination of ocean currents. The message is signed by the Rev. George V. Hoskins, of Willow Lodge. Mount Rodney, St. Helena. The director of the Dominion Museum, Dr R. A. Falla, said he had. not heard of this society but it was possible that the writer had meant the Royal Meteorological Society or possibly the hydrographic department of the Admiralty, which he understood arranged for drift bottles to be thrown in the sea. He added that he thought it a genuine case of a bottle drifting. Inquiries have established that there is no record in the clerical directories of a Rev. George V. Hoskins. “ People do funny things. Remember, a cow has just been entered in a Melbourne beauty contest,” commented a meteorological office official.