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Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12491, 18 March 1909, Page 4

A new use. for old motor cars' has ben found by photographers in the East End of London. Knowing that one of the chief failings of mankind is the love of creating impressions, these - men of the camera openly advertise that clients can be photographed in automobiles if desired. . The business done is so great that" the outlay for a disused motor car is soon repaid. On her eightieth birthday Miss Catherine Helen Spence, the doyen of Australasian women writers, was given a great public reception in Adelaide. In her speech on the occasion Miss Spence said : "The best part of my work has. been done since I -was forty, and the hardest since I was sixty. I was fiftytwo when invited to go on the outside , staff of the 'Register' and 'Observer.' I was sixty-six when Melbourne folks discovered that_ . T - had^ some :.6f the gifts of a public speaker. "I. was a little older when I took to lecturing oii 'Effective Voting,' and went through my own State and afterwards through America and Canada, to preach the doctrine : of electoral justice, and I was seventy-one when the Ministry of the day put me- on the Destitute Board." ' . '

The German population now ex- i coeds that of France by over twenty million. An appeal is being made for donations towards a memorial to the late Sir James Hector. The amount so far contributed is only £230. This is felt to be quite insufficient for the purpose of commemorating in a worthy manner the services rendered to New Zealand by the eminent man of science whose name the* memorial is intended to bear. At Bolthead, on the Devonshire coast, England a wireless station has just been opened by the PostmasterGeneral pf the British Post Office. This station is intended to establish communication .with ships at sea. It. is stated that this is the first of a series of similar stations which are to bo maintained by the post office throughout Great Britain. One of Dr Schlick's gyroscopes for preventing the rolling of ships at sea has been fitted on ' board the mail steamer Lochiel, and tried on the ship's regular route between Oban and Bunessan. -While the vessel was rolling 16J deg. on each side, the gyroscope was started, and immediately decreased the total angle of roll to 3- deg.- The apparatus is driven'electrically, and requires but little attention.