Here and There

New Zealand Graphic, 6 April 1907, Page 25

Here and There

Money from Seaweed. Japan, which wastes nothing in its domestic economy, realises £400,001) annually from its seaweed products. According to the report of C. J. Davidson, an attache of the British Embassy at Tokio, more than 50 varieties of the seaweed found along the Japanese coast are utilised cither for food or as manufactured products. The traveller sees bundles of dried seaweed, white with the crystalised salt of the sea-water, hung from the front of every food stall. The coarser varieties are stewed and served with fish. Some of the delicate sprigs af sCa grass are boiled with fish soups and remain a vivid green, floating against the vivid lacquer of the soup bowls. Other species of seaweed are used in the manufacture of glue, of plaster, and of starch. Whole villages are given over to seaweed fishing and the drying and packing of the product for shipment to the manufacturing plants in the large cities. In the country along the seashore the farmers use the coarse and ropy kelp for fertilising their vegetable fields.

■s>❖<?> Authentic Epitaphs. Under this yew I.ies Jonathan Blue. (His name was black. But Unit wouldn’t do.) Beneath this sod And under these trees I.ieth the bod Y of Solomon Pease. Pease is not here. But only his pod; He shelled out his soul Ami it went up to God . Here lies Thomas Bly, Killed by a sky Rocket In the eye Socket. Viewing this gravestone with all gravity, Dentist Jones is lilting his last cavity. Here lies, returned to clay, Miss Arabella Young. Who, on the Ist of May, Began to hold her tongue. It was a coughin' that carried me off. It was a coffin they carried me oft in. Here lies me and my three daughters, Died of drinking Setzer waters. If we’d a stack to epsom salts. We wouldn’t have been in these here vaults. Abe Dodd stood on the railroad tracklie did not hear the bell - Toot, toot! Farewell! Here ties the body of Thomas Lee This is- him. This is he. A, B, C, D, IS, F, G. Here I lie, and no wonder I’m deadFor a waggon wheel ran over ray head. Here lies the body of Robert Gordin Mouth almighty, and teeth accordin’. Stranger tread lightly over this wonder; It lie opens ids month, you're -one thunder! ” J © © © Not All Pleasure. The cry is now all ‘ back to the land.” But this is how a correspondent of an Australian paper writes: "I caught the microbe of going on the land through daily reading the probates of wills Of dead farmers, none ever under £3OOO. Got a lease of 30 acres while under crop. When the hay was shifted a splendid self-sown crop of poverty weed became visible. This won’t want any cultivation, and I hope < he market price of weeds keeps up next, spring, as my hired assistant says they’ll go three tons to the acre. Bought a pony with a weak set of bowels, 20 years old by the rings on the two teeth left. Gave him a bundle of green maize; ho got at the water himself. He was as big ns a Clydesdale when he died that night, and the stable boy said his tempend uro. was 200 dog. Rabbits ale my turnip tops, and I sei three traps. The first night, my neighbour’s dog walked awav with a trap, singing like Marshall Hall's lyric orchestra attacking the Valkyrie. Next night we lost, two of our best hens. Then successively we caught a prize Australian terrier, a brace of chickens, a kitten rab-

bit, and two ducks. Never thought trap ping was so easy to learn. A fox took our turkey chicks one pale blue moonlight night., and then our coxy died through eating half an “Australasian.” We cart water three miles, but only a half a mile to go for beer, which is sonic compensation. I’m beginning to think better fifty years in a boarding-house than cycle “on the land.” © © © Projectile Takes Photographs. A projectile to take photographs, and claimed to have been successful at heights up to half a mile, is the idea of Herr Mario, a German photographer. A camera, having the form of the usual almost conical shell, is thrown into the air by means of a kind of trap. At a predetermined angle as the camera, turns to make its descent and is pointed slightly downwards, the shutter is automatically released, and a picture is taken of a broad expanse of country. In still air the flight and spot at whieh the aerial camera will fall can be calculated with much precision. Precautions are taken to avoid damage by concussion, and the results are expected to be of great possible value in military operations. © © © Moving a House. American skill and ingenuity were strikingly illustrated recently, when the. contractors successfully completed the removal of an entire three-storey brick residence, situated at Harlem, a suburb of New York, to a new and more convenient site nearly half a mile away. After disconnecting the pipes, the house was raised by hydraulic jacks, and with such skill that the furniture inside, and even the ornaments on the mantelpieces were undamaged. Then began the long journey on a specially-improvised platform, and finally, after a couple of weeks, the brick house; without a pane of glass broken or a single crack in its walls was deposited safe, and sound on its new foundation. By night time all the pipes had been connected, and the family, the members of which had occupied their rooms during the entire process of removal, slept soundly after their travels. © © © Hints Only. The man who. is afraid of nothing is the man who is frightened by a ghost. Many a man's good fortune is duo to the will power of a deceased relative. It is gooil to beware of the woman who doesn’t -like sweets, flowers* or babies. It may not be complimentary to human nature, yet a person with no faults has but few warm friends. A wise young man keeps both eyes on the small bov with whose big sister he wants to face the parson. It’s all well to advise people to look on the blight side of things, but so many tilings have no bright, side. A woman doesn’t worry as much over how she is to gain a crown of glory as she does bow to gain a new hat. The first thing a man does when he starts to help his wife at her work is to get her to wait on him and find things. A Breton Heroine. A “deed of gold” is reported from France. At St. Vincent, near Lorient, in Brit tally .the river Arz was frozen over. Some children ventured on the ice, utterly heedless of its weakness and the depth of the stream benerrth. Before they had gone many steps they had fallen through, and were in the water. Mlle, l.e Com ma nd ear, a girl of lit, hoard the cries of two women who saw the accident from the river bank some distance away, and soon divined what was the trouble. She resolutely waded into the river, making a way for herself through the broken ice. and with the water sweeping over her shoulders she reached the two elder children, one aged 10 and the other 7, who were clinging

to the edge of the ice. and brought them to the river bank. The third child, a two year old Imby, she left balancing on tne ice, thinking that he had a belter chance of staying above water than the bigger children. But before she reached him he slipped, and was washed into midstream and sank out of sight. The girt dived, caught the baby's clothing, and dragged hint to the shore. lie-.-cued and reseller were all put to bed at once, and so far none has lieen afflicted with any bad result of the wetting. © © © Festival of the Dolls. A curious custom of the Japanese is that of -the observance of n certain day in April of each year, called Dolls’ Day, or the Festival pf the Dolls. On this day all the girls and women array themselves in gaudy attire, and the mother of each household adorns the family ronin ip gay colours. Then the little girls dress all their dolls, old and new. in their best Sunday clothes and prop them up about the walls. In the after noon a great feast is prepared, ostensibly for the benefit of the dolls, though the repast is actually consumed by the grown folks in the evening. Japan is the only country that lias such a festivity. <?■ <? Musical Seasickness. In a little book of jottings called “Notes of a Nomad.” by W. A. Horn, there is an extraordinary example of ingenuity. He was challenged, it appears, to write thirty lines on seasickness, with a musical term in every line, and here is his first stanza: If rotting is her crotchet Tilts vessel ought to "score.” Stic spoils 'my ’’rest,’’ she spoils - my “notes." Site spoils ray -‘repertoire." There "ilcini” goes my dinner, As lire ship on "ripper <’” •‘Appoggiatiiras." Oh! tile brute. She's "pitched too nigh” for me. . , a I know you’ll think mo very “bass,” I’ll "pause" till calm prevails: It's ail liccau.sc they’ve gone and “set" A bad "falsetto” salts. 1 cannot “scale” the dizzy mast: The “chords" are very slack; Oh! how I "shake:” I know I sluiil "B flat” upon my back. I” bet a ‘Yenor” Unit she strikes The "bar" , upon the lee; "Andante” up the money, should She safely reach the "key." ■© © © Cock Fighting in Oar Language. Many traces remain in popular speech of the hold that, cock fighting gained on the nation during those centuries through which it was even an official institution in boys’ schools. ‘That beats cock fighting" may be going out of fashion in favour of ' That takes the cake,” now that the former supremacy of the ‘•sport’’ is being forgotten, but we still speak of “living like a lighting cock,” though “living like a race horse" might be more in keeping with the times. When we say that a man “dies game,’’ or that we are “game” for anything, we are commemorating the gamecock’s spirit. The “white feather” is an illusion to the fact that such a feather in a fighting cock’s tail was taken as evidence of inferior breeding and courage. © © © Odd Occurrence in the Hunting Field. On the afternoon of February 8, 1791, the hounds of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort were in full cry. The run had been a long one, and they knew that the fox was almost spent. Suddenly the scent turned abruptly from the open, leading straight into the garden of a cottage in the little village of Castle. ( oonibe. Those who were following wondered what had happened, and wera more astonished still to see the entire pack, without checking for an instant, dash through the open door into the little room. A shrill sewam was heard, and when the whipper-in threw himself from his horse and gained the threshold lie saw a sight which probably no fox hunter lias ever met before or since. A' while face woman stood clasping a child in her arms, and right there in the cradle from which the infant had just been snatched, eighteen couple of fierce hounds were struggling to devour limit fox..