NEWS OF THE DAY.

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 14958, 4 January 1919, Page 4

NEWS OF THE DAY.

The following are the vital statistics! for the month of December: Births 21, deaths 18, marriages 6. At the present time purple and white' foxglove, growing in profusion on the [ i Wangamoa hills, presents a glorious blaze of colour. This noxious pest has, apparently got completely out of hand! and threatens to ruin the countryside. ', Messrs Thomson and Hills' fruit pre-: serving factory at Motueka which was j destroyed by fire some twelve months i ago lias been replaced by a well lighted! modern structure, equipped with all the! necessary machinery. A new concrete ■building for evaporating has also been erected.

lhe mam road between Nelson and he Pelorus is at present in bad order1 for motoring, owing to vie deep ruts which havebeen ploughed into the surface by continuous heavy traffic Un-' less repairs are put in hand shortly, the ! outlook for the winter is anything but* promising. *» j Mr Ira A. Paternoster, organising secretary of the Churches of Christ oi the .North.lsland and Nelson District commences a tent mission with the! church at Richmond on Sunday night. Air Paternoster recently came " to New Zealand after a number of years in State and Federal wm? among the churches of Australia. The people of Kichmond are urged to accept this opportunity of hearing his message. Some weeks ago Mr W. A. Coppins, saddler, of Motueka, on entering his' shop found a piece of cloth saturated I with benzine under one of the windows ?t . >he back of the premises. On Christmas Eve a prasser-by observed a hre m its incipient stages and suppressed the outbreak. It is surmised that the hre was caused by a panama hat being lighted and thrust through a broken window. The hat, which belonged to Mr Coppms' son, had been missing for a month The matter has beet placed in the hands of the police. The Telegraph Office advises that wireless messages in plain language to and from and 'between merchant ve^soJs in the Pacific and Indian Oeeaus uuiy now be accepted without restriction The term "merchant vessels" does-'not include ships carrying troops or hospital ships. Miss M. E. Moore, from the Tchang Mission, China, will occupy the pulpit at Trinity Presbyterian Church to-mor-row evening. The Tchang Mission is conducted by the Church uf Scotland, and Miss Moore has been in the mn-ign field about twenty years. She is thecfore fully competent to speak tvith authority upon the great problems of rhe Chinese Republic. On Monisiy afternoon Miss Moore will address the local Presbyterian Missionary iTmon at l_\3C p m., when all interested m missionary work are cordially invited to attend At the conclusion of the missionaij meeting afternoon tea will he dispensed, and Chinese lace and other mission work may be purchased. i The Rev. E. Palgrave Davey, superintendent of the New Zealand Children's Mission, is at present in Nelson, and i? providing happy hours for the ehikfrer on Tahuna beach. He has made children his special study, and there are nc dull minutes at his gatherings. In today's issue it is notified that everj afternoon till the 9th inst. he invites all children to meet him on Tahuna beach when there will be sand designs, com; petitions, riddles, faces, lolly hunts . surprise packets, etc. A special service will be held on Sunday afternoon at c o'clock, preceded by a text-making competition at 2 o'clock. "The Rev. Mr Davey's visit to Nelson last summer will be remembered with interest by manj children. ! A young man named Clarence A'rthui Lewis died in the Auckland Hospital or Saturday from inuries sustained i through falling on a hay fork while en- , gaged in harvesting at Kbhimarama. [ The Customs duties collected at Nel- ; son for the month of December amounted to £1255 18s 3d. The'beer'duty foi the same period was £394 15s lid. Messrs Barton Bros, were unfortunate in losing one of their trick ponies, ; "Lir.tle Tom Tom," in a railway accii dent at Marton a few days ago. The pony had reached the age of 34, having been with Barton's Circus for a greal . number of years. Mr W. B. Allen, of Clareville, had h narrow escape from a serious accideni last w;eek. ■He was assisting to erect a fence, holding a stake while anothei wielded a heavy maul. The head of the maul flew off and struck Mr Allen r blow on the thigh. Fortunately the leg was not broken but it was fearfully bruised and swollen, and Mr Allen suffered considerably from shock. !In the near future hospital ships as such, will be a thing of the past as'fai as New Zealand is concerned. The Defence Department will sEII control the vessels, but they will be known as ambulance carriers. This re-olassificatior provides for the. "red cross" 'beln<>- removed from the sides of the sElps^and m addition to the carrying of troops they will also be allowed to carry certain classes of cargo. The Oamaru correspondent of the Otago Daily Times" writes that the wintry blast experienced on Saturday week appears to have caused a pretty heavy death rate amongst shorn sheet in. the back country. On some stations the deaths ran into hundreds. It wa< the worst weather experienced at shearing time for many years, and it seems fortunate that, from several causes shearing is somewhat backward this .. season. Had it been otherwise the toll or deaths would have been much heavier

A special • telegram to the Auckland "Star" on Saturday last said:—"Smoke rising to a height of at least 200 ft was seen belching forth from a rift on the south side of "While Island on Thursday afternoon. The activity, continued until 2.15 yesterday afternoon, when the eastern area also became affected, violent outbursts predominating.

A new observatory, with a giant telescope, erected, by the Canadian Government at Victoria, British Calumbia, has been completed. The building was begun four years ago. The reflector of the new telescope is 73 inches in diameter and 12 inches thick. The tube is sufficiently large to allow a small motor car to be driven through it. The movable parts of the telescope weigh more than 40 tons, and the lens alone weighs over 40001b, yet so evenly and perfectly is it balanced that a man can move the great instrument with one hand.

-- A committee is investigating the conditions of the poor in Englancf, and the poverty of the principal centres. Already the revelations have staggered the people of England. Poverty in England is said to be on the increase. The Committee's investigations show that it is far greater than was ever dreamed of.

In a despatch received by the Minister of Defence in Australia (Senator Pearce) recently, it was mentioned that imputations are not "resorted to in military hospitals while there is even a remote chance of saving the limb. This particularly applies in the case of an arm or forearm. Experience has shown that the artificial hand is but a poor substitute, and an arm is never amputated excepting after consultation between j two or more surgical experts.

The "Post's"' London correspondent states that at the special Empire Day celebration in Trafalgar Square in aid of the War Loan, Mr I. W. Raymond (Invercargill) and Mr Clutha Macl-:en-xie, son of the High Commissioner, gave addresses. Mr Mackenzie told, the story of a Maori who refused to tiu back to Now Zealand although he had had both legs amputated, because ho : thought his people would assume that j there were no Germans left, and would ask him why he was coming home. lhat," said Mr Mackenzie, "was the ■spirit which was felt throughout the Empire." Sir Thomas Mackenzie and miss Mackenzie were also present.

A novel strike, which at one time threatened to assume serious dimensions, occurred recently at a Chelsea aviation factory (says an English paper) liie employees were called out by the Federation of Discharged Sailors and boldiers to protest against the alleged brutality of a foreman and manager to a wounded soldier employed at the aircraft works. The strike was engineered by Mr John Cuilock, Parliamentary candidate for the Federation, who has been wounded three times and discharged, ihe allegations he made as to the treatmenu of wounded soldiers at the works m question were of a surprising and inhuman nature, and were promptly dealt wxth once the facts became known iuthe proper quarters. ■

Ihe fallmg-off in the totalisator receipts at the various race meetings in New Zealand during the Christmas holidays, compared with last year cannot be attributed to either shortage of fTf J °J J° an im Pr°vement in the nnn A? 6? 6 ??°, ple i says the "WairatK i Af c}" Lt h? s faeen solelydue to t ! fon? U, e l nzi l eP'demic. Apart from the fact that scores of the best-known Sn Ptt ? f +1 tße r]>OminiOn haV^ 8u" cum bed to the disease, hundreds of people who usually patronise the racecourse have this year abstained from doing so The traffic by road and S way has been much smaller than in former years People have,, perhaps wisetno ™. !9 tak, e tlle nsk attendfng the congregation of unknown people in the tram and upon the racecourse

Britain is charging Germany several million pounds for a^- raid damages of v. Inch interesting details may now be Sf v d S ates a caWegram to the Melbourne "Herald"). A bomb from a StV'V 1" 6 tO a! VTrehouS in Wood stieet London, and destroyed <*oods of the value of £500,000. An aerootne stei Luctees were missed by a few yards. One bomb threw up an enormous fin ». eu*y-*1 "-co mcendiary bombs hit™ + Arf n? l- A bomb dropped Station trains a* Liverpool Street station, London, and destroyed both

UJ'S° f?u ht<l" Says the Journal of Publid 5t % many Persons feel concerned as to the prevalence of goitre, or enlargement of the thyroid gland, amongst -New Zealand inhabitants. The fre bve^ ..1 th Which f^' manifested S-Jlw enlarg ement of the neck, is ob-" seivable—more particularly in girls and women-at the preset Sy cln U altogether, ascwbable to the "prSent i fashion of open neckwear. Many medical men believe that there is at leSt in •some districts in New Zealand an If usual prevalence of this tSuble^a di¥ Alinwter is satisfied the disease ff'suffi tion as the problem demands For Sip