NEWS ITEMS.

Colonist, Volume XLIX, Issue 12017, 19 August 1907, Page 4

NEWS ITEMS.

An Ashburton resident recently lost two cows. A post mortem was made, and, a quantity of poisoned grain was found in their stomachs. It is presumed that the animals picked up grain that had* .been scattered on the roads for the destruction of small birds. The walls in Chester, are almost, two. miles in extent ■, and their fourh dation is attributed to Mariud, King of the Britons, A.t>. 73. The farfamed Mercian lady, Ethelfleda, rebuilt and enlarged them. Victor Dehaulon, who eloped with Mile. Piedallu from her millionaire father's chateau at Isle Adam, France, has lost his bride. > The lovers had taken refuge- at Oatend, where Dehaulon obtained work as a waiter at an hotel. Unfortunately for him* the niiliionaire happened to be the principal shareholder in the hotel. Discovery followed, and the waiter's bride has been abducted by her father in a motor car. The Eev. Dr T. B. Stephenson, founder of the Children's Home and the Wesley Deaconesses Institution, London, retires from official positions. He has been 47 years in the ministry, and has rendered conspicuous service as founder of the two above-named institutions. Baldwin, a tight-rope performer, while walking along a wire rope stretched across a canon at Colorado Springs, at a height of 583 feet from the ground, suddenly lost his eyesight. He retained his nerve, however, and calling to the men at th 6 end of the wire, he guided himself by their voices arid landed in safety. A rat which entered a fowlhousa at Newton Flotman, Norfolk, killed 25 prize strain chickens in a night. A young woman souvenir hunter who recently cut all . the buttons from a lieutenant's uniform . during a visit to an American 'cruiser was locked in a cabin by, the owner of the uniform , arid compelled to sew them oil again. The oldest Alpinist living is M. C. Russi, a schoolmaster, of Ander matt, who has just celebrated his one hundred and first birthday. Last summer he, accompanied by several Alpinists, made his last climb, asconding the Gutsch Mountain, nearly 7000 ft, without assistance. Mr William McGowan, the SouthWest London Police Court missionary, has retired after thirty-throe years' service. He was originally a Grenadier Guardsman. It was he who, with the late Canon Ellison, founded the Church of England Temperance Society. A contract has been let for the foundations of the new. Methodist Church House at Westminster. The original price paid for the Aqtiariuai site, some portions of which have been since sold, was £320,000. The building to be erected will cost .€140,000, and will serve as a great centre for Methodist work. V As a coffin was being lowered to the grave in Denton, Maryland, a solemn voice rose from the pit, "Let me down easy. " Mourners and pallbearers fled in a panic, but later a negro named Samuel Johnston, who had been seen near the gravesidewas identified as au able ventriloquist and arrestedi The head of a tailoring establishment at Providence, Rhode Island, formerly patronised by Mr J. D. Rockfeller, junior, declares that when h& was ordering a suit of clothes the son of the oil magnate always said* "Please don't forget to slip into one of the pockets a couple of patches for the trousers. " ~Senora Creel, wife oJMkheT Mexica v Ambassador in Washington, is said to pay £40 to £100' for a pair of stockiDgs, the entire^fronts of which are composed of lace covered with pearls, rtibies; emeralds, and diHmouds.