HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16359, 23 February 1921, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

ELECTRICITY ON FARM? An interesting development of th# use of electrical power in the rural districts has taken place at Hereford. The corporation of the city is selling it to the neighbouring farmers, and the demand is continually increasing- Some years ago the city electricity department, having more power than it could use, offered it to farmers and others in the surrounding villages. At first the demand was limited, but it gradually increased, until there are nowfarmers who use power to the amount of £6O and £7O a year. During the war the War Office opened a large filling factory at Hereford, and plant was erected for the supply of a large amount of electric power. After the armistice the factory was closed down, and was about to be dismantled when the corporation took it over. The city’s capacity to supply electric power lias thus been largely increased. Many villages and country houses are now lighted electrically, and the number of farmers who employ electricity for power increases every week. It is used for threshing, grinding corn, chaff cutting, and dairy work, and itß scope seems to be unlimited. SLEEPING SICKNESS CURE. Caged mosquitos at the London School of Tropical Medicine play a great part in malaria research. That is only one branch of the school’s investigations. for in various directions 1 secrets of the tropics have been unearthed. all making for the mastery of disease and the spread of preventive measures. Science has tracked down various parasites, and among its various other discoveries are the following;- - j The way malaria is spread and the f main lines of prevention ; how wild j animals act as reservoirs of disease to ! flies, which spread sleeping sickness ; I how yellow fever can be stamped out | by any community applying scientific j knowledge: the connection of a worn j parasite with the swellings known ai j elephantiasis. These are only a fen of the conquests, which include methods j for the cure of sleeping sickness. “ if | the patient is secured before it is too : late.” A cure, too. has been found j for bilharziasis, an internal trouble, j which affected several hundred British i soldiers during the South African carr- ! paign njid a number during the late 1 war. and the method of .preventing ! hookworm has been successfully detnon--1 strated. This tropical intestinal ailment has been found among Cornish j miners. A RICH SHIRKER. Two years hard labour was the sen* tence of a General Court-Martial cn James Richard Farnsworth, of Lums- . dale, Matlock (stated to be a partner in the Derbyshire bleaching and dyeing firm of Messrs G. H. Farnsworth and Co.), on charges of desertion, absence without leave, and escaping from military custody. Tn promulgating the ; sentence at the Tower. the G.O-C., j London District, remitted six months. Farnsworth, a wealthy young man of twenty-five, wag posted to the Irish Guards, and. out of a period of two years and 283 days, served only one day with the colours. The rest of the time ; he spent in prison, in hospital, or nt . large. Captain James stated that out. j side Blackpool Police Court, while i Farnsworth was talking with his solicitor and his surety, Mr Marples, of Sheffield, he hit the latter a heavy bl»w with his fist, jumped into a taxicab,/ and dashed off to Preston. When he escapee! his bail of £IOO was estreated! MURDER SECRET OUT. i How a woman preserved an agones of silence regarding a terrible seereM for more than a quarter of a century* was told recently to the police at Span-y dau. near She is the wife orw a cabman named Schultz, and sha f stated that rather more than twenty-* five years ago her husband murdered » girl of eight years. Some years before that crime he murdered, so she declared, his wife’s two brothers. Schultz, who is a man fifty years of age, had always threatened her with death if she ventured to give away his dread secret; but lately her agony of mind liad been such that she determined to tell the story, come what might. Schultz has been arrested. As th© inquiry proceeds into the accusations made against him, the list of crimes which it is believed ho has committed lengthen?, and has now reached eleven. The victims were men, women and children. ARRESTED IN CHURCH. Arrested at a Redfern (Sydney) church, whither he had gone to get married. James Leslie Grant, a young bootmaker, was sentenced at Darlinghurst Sessions to three years’ hard f labour. He had pleaded guilty to five | charges of breaking and entering, and to one of embezzlement. It wasf stated by ilie police that Grant wished to marry a young woman. Judge Backhouse said that he presumed the gaol authorities would have no objection to the marriage taking place. The police witness: But T understand her family object, as the girl is under age. Judoro j Backhouse: Oh! well, that settles tho j matter. J HIEVES- *D EVTCES. ; Side hj- side with the more extensive I robberies committed by night gangs on j the river. the widespread pilfering which goes on by day in the docks call* for continual watchfulness on the part of the dock police. “ The schemes devised by potty thieves in the dock* reach the limit of cunning and artfulness,” said a London pore official to .b “ Daily Ohronicle ” representative. ! “ Many a mail has sacrificed his situaj fion for a couple of ounces of ton. hid- • den in his tobacco tin. A favourite ; way of “ clearing ” silk stockings is to wind them tightly round the waistSometimes tea or tobacco is put inside (he stockings in order, if possible, to bring off a double event. Recently a man taking a bag of chopped firewood out of the dock was found to have concealed 101 b of tea sewn in a small ba«* in the midst of the wood, and a milkman has been caught leaving the clock with a tin of salmon in his milk. Holes are sometimes burrowed under the dock fences, and goods passed out in this way. Dockers are not. of course, tin* only offenders. T heard recently of an office boy who stole a tin of milk, and, wrapping it in a piece of brown paper and attaching a label, passed the policeman at the gates boldly, explaining that the milk was a parcel redirected to U steamer which had left the port.” BISHOP REBUKES BTSHOP Anglican bishops object to being addressed as “My lord” or “Lord bishop,” according to Bishop Charles C. Burch, of the Episcopal diocese of New York, who recently attended the Lambeth Conference. Dr Burch told meeting of the Church Club in New York recently that he was walking with the Bishop of London, and addressed him as “ Your lordship.” “H* whirled round,” said Dr Burch, “ and admonished me never to call him that. ‘ T don t like it. and T never want to hear it from your good lips again,’ he exclaimed. * Calf rae just plain Bishop/” FINED FOR ASSISTING THE POLICE. Through his readiness in helping tho police to capture a thief a Highgate youth has been fined. Acting under police instruction?, fi© had ridden his motor-cycle at night in pursuit of the fugitive but a constable, ignorant of the youth’s mission, had duly noted that the machine was without a light. In consequence the rider was summoned at Highgate Police Court, but after a fine had been imposed, the magistrate was told of the circumstances under which the “offence” was committed, and immediately remi--ted the penalty.