HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17882, 25 June 1926, Page 8

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. Farmers in “ Clover.” Four years ago a Hertfordshire farmer introduced among his crops a new species of clover which grew to a height of eight feet and, in doing so. amazed agriculturists all over the country. Known as “ Giant Clover.” the new crop is this year being grown on a larger scale than ever before, so far as England is concerned. Striking proof of its value is afforded by the fact that recently the farmer referred to above sold one of his farms on which the clover is cultivated at a profit of £IOOO. The clover is particularly valuable as fodder, and is hardly less useful as a green manure. Ground into which it has been ploughed well it is claimed, yield 100 per cent more corn than ordinary ground. An Executioner on Strike. Executioner Deibler, who supervises the beheading of French criminals -with the great knife of the guillotine, receiving 1000 francs for each execution, recently gave notice that he would not work any more on that basis because the income was too small. The executioner’s attitude became known at a Cabinet meeting, when the Premier, M. Briand, seeing that the Minister of Justice, M. Laval, seemed downcast, asked the reason. “As if there were not enough other functionaries heckling up with demands for money here.” answered M. Laval, “ Deibler now is refusing to work piece rate any more.” The Premier jokingly replied that M. Laval's department was supposed to keep the executioner bus}* enough to provide him with an adequate income. Another White House Romance. It is told of the President of the United States, Mr Calvin Coolidge, that as a boy his father took him to the railroad station while shipping a calf to Bostc»i. “ Calvin,” said his father, “ this calf is going to Boston. Some day you may go to Boston, but this calf will get there first.” Since that day Calvin has travelled far beyond that point which his father, perhaps, had set as a goal for his son’s ambitions. Murder Clues in Gun Barrels. No two rifled revolver barrels are exactly alike and so each gun leaves a distinctive series of marks on the bullet it fires. The tiny scratches on the bullet are compared with the rifling inside the revolver barrel to And the gun used in the shooting. “ IJelixometer ” is the name of the remarkable instrument that makes it possible to examine every portion of the inside of the barrel through a microscope. The apparatus was used recently in an American murder case and proved successful. tc x King Coal. Capital and Labour know all the tricks of the war trade (says a writer in the Sydney “Sun.”) They are army generals, military-minded, securing strategic positions, fighting to a finish, then arriving at some kind of peace, drawing up some working arrangement, ratified in official arbitration courts, to be contemptuously regarded, like another famous treaty, as "a scrap of paper” as soon as they have got their wind again. Then there’s another war. They don’t always know what it’s about. They only know they’re right. And the community looks on—looks on and pays, always pays. If only these military-minded men would forget that they are generals, if they would become fiddlers, the community would have much more fun and have much less to pay. and much more to pay with, of course. When coal is the subject of the conflict, the whole community is concerned. Among commercial commodi ties coal is king. Everything—what we eat, what we wear, what we read; our habits of life; our means of livelihood; the facilities of intercourse and travel; the housing of worshippers—everything is involved in the conflict between Capital and Labour when coal is concerned. And always. The agencies of production and exchange rest not day nor night. The gates of the world's markets are never closed. The ocean liner’s engines are never- silent. The furnaces must ever be fed. Electric power stations and gas works never cease their production of illuminatives. The cloud of smoke by day is a pillar or fire by night. A fundamental thing is coal. Without British coal Australians cannot even win ashes.