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Otago Witness, Issue 3566, 18 July 1922, Page 40

—Stockings which bear the wearer’s name embroidered as “clocks” is a fashion novelty from the United States.

A number of Harbour Board employees are at present engaged in connecting a line of pipes to the pipe line which runs from the dump at the dredge Vulcan to Lake Logan. Tlie new pipe line will be used to fill up the estuary of the Leith at Black Jack’s Point to enable the embankment which is to carry the new railway to be gone on with. If, however, the Government does not agree to vote the sum of £3OOO now being asked for it is doubtful whether the Harbour Board will go on with the work in the meantime.

An application from the Board of Health, Wellington, for the services of the superintendent of reserves (Mr D. Tannook) in advising as to the planting and beautifying of the site of tire new consumptive sanatorium at Wa.ipia.ta has been granted by the Reserves Committee of the City Cbuticil. Permission has also been granted Mr Tannock to advise the Palmerston Borough Council as to certain beautifying works to be undertaken in the borough.

In a divorce petition in re Lily M'Pherson v. John Steven M'Pherson, a motion by the former asking for service of petition and citation, Mr Justice Chapman has made an order that personal service be dispensed with. There are at present 103 returned soidier in-patients and 101 out-patients under treatment at the various hospitals in Otago.

About four miles of the Beaumont railway extension is ready for plate laying, and the rails have already been laid a short distance to the bridge. Tlie bridge itself is in course of construction, and tlie District Engineer (Mr F. J. Campbell) hopes to have it sufficiently advanced to begin plate laying in the spring. It is reported (states an Auckland Press Association message) that, as the result of the bad weather, the middle portion of the Wiltshire wreck has broken away from the fore part and sunk. The only part visible, even at low water, is the bridge. The fore part of the vessel remains fast on the rocks. A sliced-np plane tree and the bole of a knotted oak tree were unloaded from the Port Chalmers during her recent visit to Dunedin. The oak tree was about 16 feet long and about four feet or five feet in diameter at the butt. Both trees were consigned to Messrs Ross and Glendining. The oak tree is to be cut up and used in connection with the milling machines for shrinking tweeds, and the plane blocks are to be utilised for making hosiery board®. The oak wood has special qualities which cannot be supplied by any New Zealand gum woods, and the same remark applies to the plane wood. The plane wood, for instance, will not buckle under high heat. A Press Association telegram from Invercargill says that the police have been informed that Harold Neale (22), a farm band at Minaret station, Pembroke, has been missing since the 10th. It is believed that he was drowned in a flooded creek. A search is proceeding. A model of a helicopter aeroplane invented by tvt o New Zealanders, Messrs B. Mansfield (Palmerston North) and J. Marr (Wanganui) has been exhibited to the Miriistr of Defence and the heads of the naval and military forces and members of Parliament (states a Press Association telegram). It is claimed by the inventors that the machine could rise vertically and hover over any given spot. For normal flying purposes the wings lock. The model is being brought under the notice of the Home authorities. The secretary of the Otago Motor Club is in receipt of the following telegram from the county engineer, Maniototo County Council: —“Most bridges and crossings between Wedderburn and Becks are damaged. All car traffic is held up.” At the Bluff Court on Tuesday Alfred Stephen Archer, licensee of the Golden Age Hotel, was fined for permitting drunkenness on his premises. On Thursday (says the Southland Times.) he appeared before Mr G. Oruioksh ink. S.M., to show cause why his license should not be endorsed. Mr Haggitt appeared for the defendant, and stated that the owner of the hotel had come down from Dunedin and an agreement bad been entered into by the defendant whereby he had undertaken to vacate the premises within a month and that no breaches of the law would take place in that period. In the event of his breaking the licence ho could be ejected immediately. The owner would probably find a suitable man to take over the license by the end of the month, and he suggested that the case should be adjourned till then. The Magistrate adjourned the case sine die, stating that in the event of a new licensee taking over the premises within a month he would not endorse the license. The Annual Communication of the Masonic Grand Lodge of New Zealand will open in C-hrietehurdh on ’Wednesday, November 29. The whitebait season in the north lias opened a month earlier than usual this year. Our Wellington correspondent wires that the leader of the Opposition has given notice to ask the Minister of Finance whether he will amend the Moratorium Act by providing that guarantors of mortgages who pay up arrears and interest on mortgages they have guaranteed shall not be called upon to pay the principal sums until the date of the mortgage provided they also keep up all payments of interest during the currency of the mortgage ? He says many farmers who purchased land at high prices were assisted with money by financial institutions. They gave to those institutions as .security for such advances mortgages for other lands, which mortgages were in very many oases guaranteed by friends. These mortgages provided that in the event of interest being unpaid within 21 days after due date the principal fell due. The guarantors were fr; quently ignorant of tlie fact that interest payable by the mortgagor was in' arrears and the first notice they received of the fact that, interest was in ar-iv-ar was a demand for payment of the principal and interest immediately, and, although the guarantor was willing io pay arrears and keep the interest paid on the mortgage until the maturity of such mortgage the mortgagee refused to accept the arrears of interest and clcnrunded the principal US well.

The following nominations have been received for seats on the Otago Education Board:—Urban Area: Mrs G. B. Elliott, Messrs J. J. Bardsley,’ L. Sanderson, and J. H. Wilkinson; North Ward: Messrs W. Gardiner, A. E. Lawrence, H. S. Sheet; South Ward: Messrs G. W. Wood and C. G. Martin. Mr J. Smith, of Greenfield, was elected unopposed for the Central Ward. Mr P. M ‘Kinlay, at present South Ward representative, is at present on leave of absence on a trip overseas, and he was not nominated. A rare New Zealand bird, the royal spoonbill, was shot on the Ruamahanga River, near Martinborough, recently, and a rare old tangle of claims has followed. The man with the gun took it to a Martinborough taxidermist who set to work to mount the bird, wilich was badly shot about. The man with the gun said that lie was sorry that he had shot it, whatever it was, and the taxidermist did not know j-pst where he stood, as ho could not name the bird and did not know whether it was protected or not. While he was still thinking it over a second sportsman called in and claimed the partly mounted bird as his own, a “pet” he had had on his station for quite a time. Others called in and remembered the bird as a visitor at their stations as well. The man with the gun was apparently willing to give the bird up, but at that stage the taxidermist, not being satisfied, with the justness of the claims made, wrote to the Wellington Acclimatisation Society suggesting that the best place for the spoonbill was the Dominion Museum. The society at its last meeting thought so too, and will communicate with those concerned accordingly. In the course of the Assessment Court’s sittings at Blenheim it was shown that in one case a landholder in one of the country districts of Blenheim had offered his property to the Government for soldier settlement at £40,000. Yet he objected to the new valuation of his property at something like £26,000, and attempted to argue that the valuation for the purpose of rates and taxes should be only £24,000. In another case a property had been offered for soldier settlement at £27,000, and the owner objected to the valuation placed upon it of £15,000. One of these men remarked, when questioned in court, that he noticed that other people were getting good prices from the Government, and he thought that he could do the same. Late in the evening, when the country is lying asleep under the stars, through the quiet lane around Epsom, in Surrey, often rolls an olcl-fashioned carriage with a crest and a coronet on its doors and a former Prime Minister sitting inside it (says the Daily Mail). Sometimes, to the surprise of strangers, instead of a coachman on the box there is a postilion on one of the two bay horses —a small, neat, figure in peaked cap, blue coat, white breeches, and riding boots, rising up and down with the movement of his mount. The great Victorion who so likes to drive in the evening before going to bed, and who, when the nights are not too dark, likes to be driven in the old-time way by a postilion, is Lord Rosebery, who lives at ihe- Durdans, just outside Epsom. In the spring evenings Lord Rosebery, who is 74, drives out in search of the song of the nightingale, and wlren from some copse or thicket the silver notes of the bird are heard pouring out in a rapturous melody the carriage stops and the elderly peer sits and listens in delight to the song enchanting the still night. Over 5000 hawks were destroyed in the Auckland Acclimatisation Society’s district, the secretary of that society has notified the secretary of the Wellington Society, at a cost of sixpence per hawk. The Auckland Society suggested that Wellington should fall in line, and increase the rewards offered from threepence to sixpence, particularly as only 100 pairs of feet were paid for by the Wellington Society during the year. The secretary of the Wellington Society, Mr C. I. Dasent, remarked that the 100 by no means represented the number of hawks slaughtered, for many hundreds had been killed in the Rangitikei district alone. The Wellington Society was lucky enough to have hawks destroyed for nothing. It. was decided that the Wellington reward should not be increased. The penny-in-the-slot stamp machines which are now a feature of many post offices, have a habit of often being out of order, and most citizens unthinkingly immediately blame the post office officials. The fault, however, invariably lies with the adult public who attempt to force the machine to use bad coins, or, maybe, the small boy element is responsible. The Chief Postmaster, Napier, recently showed a Tribune reporter a collection of coins which had upset the machine in tire private box lobby during tlie past month. These included a French 10 centime piece, a penny struck by a Brunswick firm to commemorate the Federation of Australia, and stamped 1901, a Spanish two csntiinos copper coin, five badly flattened pennies, a piece of lead the size and shape of a penny, and a flattened halfpenny. In addition, the machine was cleared of several tops of match boxes and a quantity of sand. All event of unusual interest in the engineering history of Thames took place a few days ago, when the first of 20 huge locomotives to be built by Messrs A. and G. Price, Ltd., steamed out of the engineering workshop wherein she was built, and passed on to the Government rails. Two plates on her side indicated that by the makers she would henceforth be known as No. 93 (being the ninety ; bird railway locomotive constructed by the firm), while the Railway Department would schedule her as A.B. G9B. In conversation with a reporter, Mr W. Price said the construction of the remaining 19 engines of this type would keep his firm busy for three or four years. Pile engine just tried had been constructed under the supervision of Mr J. Hollis (Government inspector). Incidentally Mr Price mentioned that No. 693 would be used for express work generally on the AucklaudWellingtou Main Trunk service.

A list of decisions of the Minister of Customs in interpretation of the Customs Acts occupies six pages of the latest issue of the New Zealand Gazette. Eighteen bankruptcies were notified in the latest issue of the New Zealand Gazette, 12 of them being in the North Island. Another example of the pioneer work of settlers in the backblocks is to be seen in the up-to-date school building erected at Te Maire a, settlement down the Wanganui River. The Education Department provided the material for the building, and the settlers carried out the work themselves.