HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18149, 7 May 1927, Page 4

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. I * Women Poisoned by Coatomics. The American Medical Association announces, as the outcome of a coun-try-wide investigation, that the growing use of cosmetics, on which American women now spend more than £23,400,000 everv vear, is not only supporting a horde of beauty quacks, but is causing hundreds, and perhaps thousands. of cases of dangerous poisoning annually. Investigation by a special committee reveals that scores of women seeking to buy beauty by the jar obtain for their money unsightly scars and permanent disfigurement. The committee sent a question paper to skin specialists, and sixty-two replies received enumerate 111 cases of skin poisoning caused by hair dyes; 137 cases of poisoning from use of face bleaches, face creams, powders, and rouges, and forty-three cases of poisoning caused by hair tonics. }J K K • Alaskan Reindeer Meat. An original stock of about 1200 reindeer imported into Alaska from Siberia in 1902 has increased to about 330,000 animals, and reindeer grazing is now an increasingly important factor in the future of the Northern country - . Over one million pounds of reindeer meat was exported from Alaska in the years 1924 and 1925. X X K Long life In one House. After having lived in the same house for over sixty-seven years, Mr William Hobbs, of Bethnal Green, Loudon, has died in his ninety-first year. In this small tenement house Mr Hobbs brought up a family of twelve, ten of whom arc alive. His total number of descendants at the time of his death numbered well over 100. Mr Ilobbs outlived his wife by five years, but both were alive on the celebration of their diamond wedding some years ago. Legends on Sundials. Until the end of the eighteenth century, clocks and sundials were by custom inscribed with mottoes relating to the shortness and wise use of time. “ I also am under authority ” is one legend on a Yorkshire sundial, while “It is impossible for me to lie” is on a dial near Scarborough. At Hartlepool is a still sterner warning, “ The last hour to many, possibly to you.” On the dial on the south-west tower of Beverly Minster is an inscription which asks, “Now or when?” Famous London Cross. The Gothic Cross in the forecourt of Charing Cross Railway Station, London, is a reproduction, so far as existing information makes possible, of the original cross raised by Edward 1., to mark the last resting-place of Queen Eleanor's body on its way to Westminster Abbey. There were nine of these crosses, that at Charing being adjudged the finest and most ornate of the series. It stood, however, not on its successor’s present site, but further westward, at or quite near where now stands the statue of Charles I. It was demolished in 1647 by the Long Parliament. The present cross was erected in 1563 from designs by Edward Barry, R.A. It is approximately 70ft high, and cost about £IB,OOO.