NEW ZEALAND NEWS

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 30, 6 February 1929, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND NEWS

NOTES FROM ALL PARTS. • ;i THE DOMINION! DAY BY DAY. HERB, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE PURPLE FIELDS OF PENNYROYAL. The Auckland suburban landscape is colourful at the moment where tlie pennyroyal runs riot, spreading over hill and dale te make purple fields.- It flourishes best in swampy places, although it appears to thrive fairly well on the hillsides. The well-known aromatic plant, which, smells much like wild mint, is fairly close to the category of noxious weeds, and farmers like it not, as it obliterates much pasture.—Auckland “Star,” ' A MEAN THEFT. A child of three yeans was the victim of a mean theft in Auckland recently. "While her mother was posting a letter, the child was standing hy her side, and on the way down the post office steps the mother asked her what had happened to her purse. “I gave it to the lady who said ‘Give me the purse, dear’ ” the child replied. The mother skid the purse was a Christmas gift to the. girl, and contained only a few coppers, “It is the meanest! theft I have ever heard of, and I would willingly pay pounds to discover the perpetrator,” she added.

POISON AND PRESGRHPJIONS r

An argument was in progress in, the City Police Court at Dunedin on the subject of the requirements of the Poisons Act. Counsel for the defendant (Mr Calvert) waa contending that if every preparation that contained poison ®had to bo labelled according to 'the provisions of the Act, the resultant prosecutions would be innumerable. He stated that practically every chemist’s prescription, contained a certain proportion of poison, although the fact was hot generally known. “You surely do not meai! 1 interjected his Worship,;,in apparent; alarm, “that all prescriptions are poison?” “Yes, 1 do, your Worship,” replied Mr Calvert, amid laughter. “Only if jt were known, probably none wquld b© sold.’'’ FIFTY YEARS AGO. The cost of living was the cause of the same anxiety 50 years ago as it is to-day. “Paterfamilas,” writing to the Lyttelton Times on January 21, 1879, said:-“Sir, will anyone in the trade or out of it explain why, with flour at, £9' a ton, I should be made t 6 pay 7d for » 41b loaf, and with beef and mutton quoted in yoW Marketj report of this morning at 3d and Ifd respectively (I take the mean of the quotations) my butcher charges me Bd. per lb for steak, 7d for roast beef and 4d for mutton? I have only recently arrived from another part of the colony where the wholesale prices are fully 25 per cent, higher and the retail tariff considerably lower.’’ OF THE “MACS.” Never, surely, has tb© “long arm of coincidence’' been stretched further than was the case in the Auc land Police Court the other day, says the Auckland “Star.” Before Mr McKean, S.M., two defendants, named respectively McCarthy amd McCaffery, were charged! with a breach of the Licensing Act. iue case for the prosecution was taken bv Sub-Inspector McCarthy, and © defence was in the hands of Mr McVeagh. To add to the series of nomenclature! similarities, one of tne pressman reporting the case also has a, “Me” at the commencement ot ins surname. “Any more Macs” asked a bewildered colleague.

A TRAMCAB COMEDY. $ The car waiting at the bottom d Queen Street, says the “AnckW Star ” were hoarded by the usual, tired and worried set of travellers. A parcel slipped from somewhere', and fe.ll in the centre of the car. then a woman alighted, the car gave a spasmodic jerk, and began move creakily round the c ° , man snatched up the OT _ lU ? ’ lumped on the platform, and it into the hand of tho.ahghtmg woman while the car swung mto '« stride and did not pull OP 't reached Custom, Street stop. The small girl, bewildered by tbe rapidLuts, pulled her mother’a dress aud said, in a hushed voice, i that it was her parcel which the man had presented to the lady. The mother gave one horrified glance, and ~ the car began to move leapt off, followed by the child- The glance Tvhioh the mother bestowed on the man in the comer spoke volumes.