HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12776, 21 October 1919, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

There is a big land boom at Wanga. nui and several syndicates are reported to have made very large sums of money in cutting up estates for building purposes (says the Mauawatu “Daily Times The coming of the dredge Kaione has served as a spur to the speculators in the locality of Castlecliff. The chairman of tho Education Board, mentioned at Wednesday night’s Board meeting that in a search for a new school site he had tramped over the sandhills there and found that land was selling at £<oo an acre, for which a syndicate paid £3O per acre, and on which the Government valuation was only £l9 an acre. It is a windswept, sandy, barren place, but there is no question but that the price asked is being realised. Goodness only knows what the purchasers see in it, hut £3OO is in some cases being paid for an eighth of an acre. He added that the Board had an offer of 2J acres for £IOOO, which was held over until nest meeting. __

The United States Shipping Board announces that plans have been completed for the construction of two gigantic ocean liners, 1000 feet long, with a speed of 30 knots, designed to cross the Atlantic in four days. They are to be so equipped that they can ho used as commerce destroyers in tho event of war. The liners, which will bo built under tho supervision of tho American Navy Department, will have a gross_ tonnage of 55,000, draft 35ft., depth 74ft-., beam 102 ft., with accommodation for 3000 passengers and 1000 crew. They will bo equipped with oilburning engines, and will have a cruising radius of < GOO miles- The construction of a special terminal at Fort Pond by' l y (Montauk Point) is contemplated. Tins would reduce the voyage to Plymouth by 118 miles and would relievo tlie congestion in New York harbour. Tho four largest liners now afloat- - Leviathan, Imperator, Aquitania, and Olympic—range in length from 907 ft to Ss2ft.

Several Gisborne firms recently received a somewhat extensive order for drapery to be delivered to an address in the country. One took the precaution to inquire, and found that there was no such person as the woman to whom the goods were to bo addressed living in tne locality, and, pursuing the matter further, ho found that other firms had received identical orders. The matter was reported to the police. Another case of attempted victimisation occurred this week when a telephone order purporting to he from a wellknenvn settler was received instructing the firm to deliver an oilcoat to a man vho would call. The man came in almost immediately after, hut, seeing that the draper was suspicious, promptly bolted.

hJt J?® hoped (remarks the Morning Rost”) that the recent schoolboy strike at Braintree will not prove catching, as was the case just ufty years ago, when the pupils at a proprietary school at Harwich downed books for shorter hours and fewer lessons. The movement spread like wildfire, until over 10,000 schoolboys were on strike, and elementary and secondary education throughout the North of England and the South of Scotland was very nearly at a standstill. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greenock, Leeds, Liverpool and Northampton were the towns most affected, but places as far distant as Brighton and Cardiff suffered sporadic outbreaks. ' ' In the initial stages of the dazzle scheme for camouflaging ships, a small wooden model of each ship was made to scale (writes Lieutenant-Commander N. Wilkinson in “ Engineering.”) On this a design was painted in wash colours for the purposes of rapid alteration. This model was then carefully studied on a prepared theatre through a submarine periscope,, various sky backgrounds being placed behind her alternately. A satisfactory design having been evolved giving the maximum distortion, the model was then handed to a trained plan maker and copied on to a l.lbin. scale profile plan of the ship on white paper showing port and starboard side. The plan was then sent to the outport officer at the port at which the particular ship was lying and transferred under his supervision to the ship. With the extension of the scheme to the whole mercantile marine it became impossible to make a model and plan for every ship, and I determined to divide the Mercantile Marino into typical classes of vessels. For each type of ship a number of designs was made according to the demand for the particular class, and each pntport officer was kept supplied with all designs so that on the arrival of a ship requiring a plan he was able to select one which fitted her as nearly as possible. This scheme worked wonderfully well, but needed a great deal of skilled supervision in the early stages, as with a ship, say 350 feet long and a plan of 380 feet, the work could not be left to be dealt with by a foreman painter. When the scheme had been in operation for some time many of these foremen became so interested and keen that we were able to leave the adaptation of a plan to a ship of different length, to them —in a number of cases with conspicuous success. These men were a great help, as the bulk of work grew enormously, and we sometimes had as many as 100 vessel § being painted at the same time in one port, with only two or three officers to attend to the lot and with long distances to cover.