The South Canterbury Poultry Society's Championship Show at Timaru.

Otago Witness, Issue 2572, 8 July 1903, Page 49

The South Canterbury Poultry Society's Championship Show at Timaru.

(1) Mr R. M. Dickson'B champion Orpington; (2) Mr D. Hampton's champion Minorca; (3) Mr S. M'lntyre's champion Hamburg; (4) Mr Alf. Walker's champion Black Bed Game Hen, Lady Belle; (6) Mr R. M. Dickson's black Orpington Cockerel; (6) Mr J. Lillico's champion Leghorn; (7) Mr W. Henderson's champion Black Langshan; (8) Mr Alf. Walker's firs and special Silver Wyandotte Cock; (9) Mr E. T. Bateman's champion Wyandotte.

In the centre of the group. — (1) Mr M'lntosh, the judge ; {2) Mr D. D. Hyde, Government Poultry Expert.

The Cretacic horses had five toes : Eocene, four toes on the fore feet, and three on the hind feet; Oligocene, three tees on each foot, the side toes touching the ground: Miocene, thret toes on each foot, the side toes not touching the ground ; Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Modern, one toe on each foot, the side toes becoming more and more reduced, till they are now represented merely by splint-bones

Thanks to the results of an expedition sent -out lut year at the cost of Mr William C. Whitney, the story of the evolution of the horse is now complete (s&ys "Harper's Weekly). This expedition, planned by Professor Henry Fairfield Oiborne, of the American Museum of Natural History, and led by Mr J. W. Gidley, went exploring in the Niobrara beds in the southern part of South Dakota. Nothing was found until the very end of the season, when a

herd of three-toed hipparions was uncovered. Bones enough in perfect preservation were found to make one complete skeleton, with many fragments for exhibition and study. The ancestor of the horse had three toes. The picture here given illustrates the progress of the beast from that condition to his present state, when his weight rests on hoofs which represent the enlarged and thickened nail of the middle toe. The second and third toes are represented

by splint bones, one on each side in the rear of the cannon bone, not visible on the surface, but well-known for their tendency to go wrong and make horses lame.

In the earliest ages of man there were wild horses on all the continents, but probably on none of the islands, such as Australia. They differed from modern horses in having shorter skulls and deeper jaws. Their legs also were shorter, and their feet smaller in proportion to

tLeir bodies. They resembled over-grown zebras. The quarries containing their remains are so common in river and lake beds of the latest geological epoch that the name of Equus beds has been applied to them. In South America has been found an ancestor of the horse of the same epoch called Hippidium, with many of the peculiarities of the hipparions, but with a head as large as that of the modern horse. Neolithic men left pictures of the early horses of Europe on their monuments of polished stones. Of course, it is not pretended that the fossil forms already found are necessarily to be looked upon as the actual ancestors of present-day horses, but merely that some of them almost certainly are so, while others represent collateral and entirely extinct branches. From an original ancestor the size of a cat, the horse, through the changes outlined in the chart, gradually came to be as we know him to-day.

— Built of Salt.— Kelberg, near Cracow. in Poland, is an underground village, ape is excavated entirely in rock salt. The in* habitants, to the number of over 3000 L are workers in the famous salt mines, and all the streets and houses are of the purest white imaginable. One of the most famous features of the city is the cathedral, carved in salt and lighted with eleotrio lights. Infectious disease is unknown in Kelberg, and the majority of the inhabitants die of old age.

—It is the opinion of an eminent physician that no person should be permitted to drink tea or coffee until be or she has attained the age of 18 years. In the young those beverages unduly excite the nervous system, and have an injurious effect upon the digestive organs.