GENERAL NEWS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 159224, 13 September 1923, Page 5

GENERAL NEWS.

Electric searchlights playing over the surface of the waters in the Norwegian fjords lure the sardines to the surface, where they can be caught. The sardine canneries along the coast of Norway were recently threatened with a lack of fish owing to the fact that the sardines remained so deep as to render fishing impossible. The lights remedied this situaton.

Armies of parisitio wasps are bel ing imported to Canada from the United States to wage war upon the loorui-boibng woipm Wherever corn is groxVn in America the worm thrives, reducing the value of the crops by millions of dollars. No method of destroying the borer was known until the tiny parasitic wasp was discovered in France which took kindly to the American climate. This insect has a predilection for comborers, making his home on the husk of the ear, within easy striking distance of his game.

Th© rigour of an unusually long and severe winter appears to be vanishing (says the Dunedin Star). There has been ,a sudden change to springlike conditions, and a northerly gale has been raging, and there are signs of an occasional shower of rain in the back country. The changed conditions must have the effect of clearing the pastoral country, which, after coming through a hard winter, is very backward in growth. Rain and a period of warm weather are badly needed.

A party of schoolboys belonging to the village of Fuet, near Porrentruy, of the averasre age of 11 years, went into a forest birdnestdn’g. One of them a boy of 12, wishing to show his comrades how a man is hanged, climbed a tree with a rope, fastened the rope to a branch, passed a noose round his heck and jumped into space. The struggles of the unfortunate boy who was being strangled, aroused the admiration of his comrades, who cheered and danced around him believing that he was acting. Suddenly the .boy’s struggles ceased, and his face became livid. His comrades in alarm, ran down to the villiage and informed the policeman of ttjhel incident. When the man arrived and cut the boy down he was dead.

Not bathing merely, but even the application of water to the skin was discovered by the arbiters of fashion in France two centuries ago In Jean Baptise de la Salle’s “Les .Regies de la Bienseance et de ,1a Civilite chretienne,” a manual for the guidance of youth first published in 1713, which ran through 50 editions in the course of the 18th century, readers were instructed: “For the sake of cleanliness it is well to rub the face every morning with a white towel in order to remove the dirt. It is not advisable to wash with water, for this exposes the face to the chills of winter and the heats of summer.” A similar ‘work, published in 1667, warns children that “to wash the face in water injures the eyesight, brings on toothaches and colds, and engenders pallor.”