News in Brief

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20232, 16 February 1934, Page 6

News in Brief

Bantam Foster-mother*. It was reported by the ranger at a meeting of the Auckland Acclimatisation Society that 17 out of 70 chukhor eggs had been successfully hatched. Various methods had been tried, and it was interesting to note that a setting of eggs had been placed under a chukhor hen and she had deserted. Black Orpington hens were entrusted with half the number, but, although they did not desert, they were too heavy for the eggs. The only successful hatching was from those placed under bantam hens, and there were now 17 fine young birds, which had received every care from their foster-mothers. You Never Can Tell. It happens that the two dressing sheds adjacent to Warkworth’s bathing pool, near the town bridge (Sydney), bear no sign to indicate which is the men’s and which the women’s. The story is current of a modest male visitor to the town who intended to make use of the facilities offering. He approached a shed, and from the doorway espied a pair of grey flannel slacks, and concluded that it was the shed set aside for his sex. On entering the shed, however, he found himself in the midst of a bevy of the opposite sex, in a more or less natural state. His and their consternation and embarrassment were equally manifest. The garment which led to his mistake was of the kind sponsored by Marlene Dietrich. Thrush that Came Back. A year or so ago a girl living at Tainui, near Dunedin, saw a boy with three young thrushes that he had taken out of a nest (states the Dunedin “Star”). He had killed two of them, but she rescued the third, and brought it up by hand, being pleased at finding it a particularly fine singer. When the moulting season came o.i it flew away, and the owner thought it had gone for good, but after five months it returned, hopping about the lawn; and when she recognised it and brought some egg and biscuit on a plate, it followed her into the house, through the .dining-room and into the kitchen, as it was wont to do when a fledgling; then gravely hopped into the cage that was its first home when a captive. » « 5* In Legal Phraseology. “ I congratulate the person who devolved that sentence,” remarked Mr Justice Frazer in the Arbitration Court at Napier, when referring to a passage in a statement of claim outlining the circumstances of a fatal accident at a Napier brewery at the time of the earthquake. The sentence read as follows;—“Whilst engaged in boiling a vat of beer on the premises of the defendant, the deceased suffered personal injury by accident arising out of his employment, in that, as a result of a sudden violent and continued disturbance of the equilibrium of the building in which the said vat was situate, a portion of the said beer was spilled, and the deceased was scalded and otherwise injured.” ■