General Items

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 97, 29 August 1923, Page 3

General Items

■Oamaru boasts a male resident who is 101 years of age and is still hale halo and hearty.

/At Otaki a crowd gathered to witness a race between a well-known stock agent !and a looal trainer (states the Mjailj, the latter to run 50 yards with'a 9st. man on his back and his opponent to run IQQ .yards. The trainer won easily.

A new kind of "silent inspector" has been erected in Hastfings. It is a solid looking struoture with a concrete base, and on each of its four sides are tho words "Slow—Keep Left." Jt is surmounted by a flash light which can be seen all through the night from any direction.

"You may be interested to hear," stated Dr. Cla.rk at the Hawke's Bay Education Board, "that a flour merchant told me that the orders for wholemeal flour in Hawke's Bay had increased 40-fold since last year. The head teacher of on© of the largest schools told me that toothache amongst the children is " almost a thing of the past. These facts arcclosely connected I think."

A settler from the back country has sent Ashburton about 100 keas' beaks, wjhjicli he obtained in the Rakaia Gorge. This is an exceptionally good haul, though it took some time to collect them. It is understood the price paid by the authorities is somewhere En the vicinity of 7s 6d, so the settler in question will have a tidy cheque for his good effort on behalf of sheep-owners'.

A man driving a tip-cart down a Hamiilton street on a recent evening had a somewhat unusual experience .(relates* the Waikato Times). The pin of the caft worked loose, the result being that the load and the driver were precipitated on the hard road surface. The man escaped with a shaking, and no damage was done to the articles which comprised the load.

During tho hearing of a charge oP keeping liquor for sale, heard at the Te Kuiti Court last week, Sergeant Fearnley endeavoured to gauge a witness' measuring capacity by asking how' many "nips" were contained i?i a .bottle of whjisky. Mr Vernon (counsel for the defence) came to the rescue by intimating that in the British army messeß the number of "nips" to a bottle was sot down at twelve. Sergeant Fearnley Oh no. The regulation number is nineteen. Mr Vernon insisted that the secretaries of departments controlling tho issue of alcohol to tho troops wjere instructed to make their calculations on a basis of twelve "nips" to a hottie. Sergeant Fearnley: There ha 4 ! been expert evidence given in this Court, Your Worship, that the number of "hips" iranges from two to twenty, but we do not recognise King Country "nips." (SmSiles.)

An amusing incident which occurred in Napier h related by the "Daily Telegraph." A gentleman wa s conversing with an assistant in a baker's shop when a woman came in and purchased a loaf of bread. The bread was parcelled and tied up, and the customer left the shop. Tho customer was not long gone when it was noticed that the string, which came up through a hole in the counter, was moving. It did not take l a second to see that the string was merrily moving along tho counter, along tho floor and into the street. Running outside, the man saw the string disappearing into a shop on the opposite side of the road. He went across, and after explaining matters, broke the wanderer from tlie parcel of bread and returned it to to its sanctuary beneath the counter. The lady assistant had forgot-'

ten to sever the string after tying the naroej,

The oyster beds of the dominion ! last season produced 34,450 sacks of oysters'. The total quantity of oysters marketed from the Foveaux Strait hed s was, 27,280 sacks. The Wholesale value was £17,367. The quantity picked from the rock oyster beds in tlie Auckland district was 7523 sacks., valued at £7702 10s. Altogether 2390 sacks, of Foveaux Strait oysters were exported, and the balance of 32,000 sacks wore consumed fin the dominion.

The following story was told at the '1 nvercargill competitions by Mr Temple White; Ernest Newman, one of the greatest musical judges in England was judging a brass instrumenb competition in the north. After the award had been made an unsuccessful cornetist erne to tbo Judge and truculently asked: "What do you know 'out cornet-playing?. Can. you oven play the cornet?" "No," was. the calm reply, "I cannot, but neither can T lay an egg, yet I know a good one from a bad one."

Avoidable losses, estimated at £750,000 per annum, arc being made* (assertß the New Zealand Dairyman) by cheese manufacturers of the Dominion. This organ of the great dairying Industry of Now Zealalad assigns a loss of £250,000 to the use of tbf rim in the cheese press, £2150,000 lo £270.000 to, exceptive temperature in tbo cheese-curing rooms, and another £250,000 loss attributable to extraction of a certain proportion of fat from the milk used in cheese-making in order that whey buttor may bo made and "starter" cream obtained.

At a board meeting not 100 miles away from Wanganui the question of .fixing a name for a. new street was undor discussion, when one elect of the peoplo suggested that such a legal track should bo christened "Shakespeare avenue" ' after the great poet. Then (relates the Wanganui Chronicle) up jumped another member, known a-g the board's encyclopaedia, and said: "Tbo commissioner who ha.s' just spoken may think he is clever, btit any schoolboy would tell him that Shakespeare isn't the name of a man, it's the name of a book."

A man employed on the Peel street bridge works at Grisborne had a remarkable escape from an unpleasant death a few days ago (relates the Poverty Bay Herald). He and several others were engaged , removing the casing from one of the piers when he lost ; his; balance and fell down on to the mud. Fortunately ho fell on his feet, and sank into the mud up to hjis thighs, the task of extricating him being a lengthy one. Had he fallen any other way than on bis feet, he would probably have been suffocated before he conld have been removed from the mud.

A good story is going tho rounds concerning an enthusiastic bandsman 'in a certain Auckland provincial, towln. Ho is an artist with the drum-stick, and in his ordinary everyday aVjOcation, trade, profession, or calling has occasion to usfc a long, sharp knife. While a lady customer at his establishment was obtaining supplies she remarked that the drummer was the cynosure of all eyes when on parade. Accepting tho compliment implied, the drummer proceeded to demonstrate with the knife a fetwi of the nourishes he was capable of with tho drumstick. In a flash the top of his thumb was badly gashed!

Workmen on the transmission Bine between Shannon and Fpxton received a surprise a few days ago when they came across a small live snake about 18 inches in length, in one of the transmission poles (relates an exchange. The polo in question bad a branch lopped off leaving a small cavity between the bark and the, trunk, and it was evidently in the Australian forest that the reptile in question, found a snug resting place. •What it has lived on in tlio meantime is a matter of conjecture, as it must be at least two months s-inco .these poles we're shipped firopi Australia. Posstibly the sap in the pole has supplied sufficient nourishment to keep the snake alive until it was, dilslodgied and given a speedy death blow from a workman's axe.

To the mere ordinary layman,

conscious of his exceedingly limited knowledge of abstruse subjects, there was something awesome about the great opening meeting of the Pan-Pacific Science Congress at the Assembly Hall (says the Melbourne Age). On every side were men wbo had achieved world-wide fame in such subjects as geodesy, anthropology, ethnology, all the other "ologies" which are a closed book to 99 men out of every 100 of the common herd. But despite ' the presence of so many distinguished men, there was an air of friendliness about the gathering which augurs well for the success of the congress, and furnishes encouragement for the view that much good will come out of the interchange of idtas between representatives of nations whose territories border the Pacific. The dominant note struck by all the speakers was that an urgent need existed for co-operation in facing great problems common to Pacific nations, and one of the Japanese delegates (Dr Sakurai) urged that the recognition of this great need should lead to the formaton of what he aptly described as a "cultural alliance."