HERE AND THERE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1456, 21 March 1918, Page 40

HERE AND THERE.

Mr. Spencer Gollan, of Hawke’s Bay, accompanied by his son, has returned to New Zealand from England.

Dr. P. W. Menzies, medical officer of the Mangonui Hospital, has been appointed medical superintendent of the Clyde Hospital.

The Rev. Canon Gould, of Onehunga, has just celebrated the 91st anniversary of his birth.. Canon Gould came to Auckland in the days of Bishop G. A. Selwyn. On one occasion, with a white comrade and two Maori guides, he walked to Tauranga, Rotorua and back, being a month on the tour.

Mr. George Chirnside, of Werribee Park, Victoria, a regular visitor to the Dominion for the fishing season, is at Taupo.

Mr. D. Collins, recently licensee of the Royal Hotel, Auckland, has returned to Christchurch, and taken over the Hotel Federal.

Mr. M. T. Francis, of Gore, won ,the prize given by the Provident Life Assurance Company for the agent doing the most business in New Zealand in 1917.

Mr. Walter Martin, Clerk of the Court at Apia, Samoa, is visiting New Zealand for the benefit of his health.

Mr. N. A. Nathan has returned to Auckland after a holiday tour in the south.

Mr. N. K. Mac Diarmid, who has retired from the position of manager of the New Plymouth branch of the Bank of New South Wales, after occupying it for 28 years, was presented by the clients of the bank with a silver-mounted purse of s overeigns and a signed memorial.

Mr. C. B. Morison K.C, who recently underwent a rather serious operation, and who has since been recuperating in the Taupo district, has now returned to Wellington, and resumed his professional duties.

A London cable states that the Belgian Croix de Guerre has been conferred on Colonel C. W. Melville, of the New Zealand Rifles.

The huia, one of the rarest of native birds, and extremely prized by the old-time Maori chiefs for its tail feathers, is almost extinct. Some years ago search was made in the bush on the Ruahine and Kaimanawa ranges for specimens to place in the bird' sanctuaries at Kapiti and Little Barrier Islands. The search, however, was unsuccessful. For several years past it has been believed that huias still existed in the more remote spots in the bush country about the headwaters of the Wanganui river, and confirmation of the opinion is no\V to hand. Last week, whfe mooring over the Okahukura Hill fronts Matiere, Mr. B. A. Beattie, stock ageist for Dalgety and Co, saw two huiag, states the Wanganui “Chronicle.”- Natives in the Pipiriki district state that the huia dsiappeared from that locality about eighteen years ago, when. there was a big demand for the black, white-tipped feathers for headgear decorative purposes in connection with the visit of the present King and Queen to the Dominion.

Mr. Maughan Barnett, city organist in Auckland, has been re-appointed by the City Council for a further term of five years, upon the same conditions as formerly.

Lieutenant - Colonel R. Heaton Rhodes, M.P., has arrived in London from New Zealand, and is inquiring into the organisation of the New Zealand Red Cross.

According to private advices received by Mr. C. Browne, of the firm of E. C. Browne and Co., Auckland, Private Theodore C. Browne has had both legs amputated as a result of gunshot wounds in the right and left knees. Private Brown left New Zealand with the 27th Reinforcements, in the infantry section. Before enlisting he was engaged in farming near Gisborne and in the Taupo district. He is 22 years of age.

The Rev. R. T. Mathews, vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Suva, Fiji, and Mrs. 'Mathews, arrived in Queenstown last week on a visit to their daughter, Mrs. Peter Mackenzie, Walter Peak Station. The reverend gentleman and his wife have journeyed to New Zealand for the purpose of seeing their eldest son, Private Cuthbert Mathews, who has just returned invalided to New Zealand, and is now in the Cambridge Sanatorium.

Mr. J. McKenzie, the “All Black” footballer, who left for the front as a sergeant with the 20th Reinforcements, has returned to Wellington. He was wounded in the lungs and about the shoulders, but is now able to get about again.

Mr. John Hill, whose death has just occurred at Fiji, aged 80 years, was at one time District Commissioner and for 18 years a member of the Legislative Council. He went to Fiji from Auckland in 1870.

Two English sportsmen, Messrs. Charles Stoddart and A. D. Campbell, Who have visited New Zealand regularly for many years, are once again trout fishing at Lake Taupo.

Messrs. James H. Ladeboer and K. Grant, of Batavia, Java, have left New Zealand after a holiday tour.

Messrs. Haybittie and Carpenter, of Palmerston North, who have been on a trip to Australia, have returned to New Zealand.

Big fish are reported to be very plentiful at the present time in Palliser Bay. Fishing from a launch the other day, Mr. S. Silver and a party from Karaka Bay, secured in less than four hours 24 big hapuka, half a dozen trumpeter and groper, a number of blue cod, and a shark eight feet long. Some of the hapuka weighed over 601 b, and one big fellow scaled nearly 801 b in weight.

Speaking at a meeting of the Acclimatisation Society Council last week, Major Whitney said that a strong effort should be made to induce the Government to assist in importing Atlantic salmon for liberation in New Zealand rivers. He said that the Atlantic salmon was immeasurably superior to the Pacific salmon, besides being the finest fish food procurable. He did not think there could be found a more suitable habitat for the Atlantic salmon than the Waikato and Wanganui Rivers. He said there had been an effort to import a shipment of Atlantic salmon ova

some years ago, but the effort had failed through the lack of ice. Major Whitney suggested that the eels in the rivers should be utilised as a source of revenue for the society, and he quoted from the “Fisherman’s Gazette” the statement that at the Italian town of Comacehio, on the Venetian side of the Adriatic, in a good year there were turned out over two million pounds of eels. It was stated by a member of the council that New Zealand smoked eel sold in London at 2s. a pound.

The 1914 Star —bronze, as for the Army—will be granted to all officers and men of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Royal Naval Reserve, and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who actually served in France or Belgium on the establishment of a unit landed for service on shore between August 5 and midnight, November 22-23, 1914, says the official notice just issued. Claims must be approved by the Admiralty. Legatees or next-of-kin will be entitled to receive Stars won by officers and men since dead. Those who landed at Antwerp will be qualified, and Dr. Macnamara has said armoured trains will be included.

Writing from Palestine under date of December 28, a sergeant in the New Zealand Mounted Rifles describes their Christmas Day: — “Christmas morning dawned, showing a very

very cloudy sky, but we had to pack up bright and early to do a 12-mile trek back to our resting area, where we were to have a week’s rest after our six weeks’ hard fighting. By 8.30, what previously looked like a camping ground was only an ordinary gully in the landscape. We were off on a journey that will live long in the memories of all those who made it. The ground for miles and miles, if not under water, was so saturated that the horses sank up over their hocks, and we had only traversed a few miles when the rain descended at a pace practically unknown in New Zealand. We had our rations, blankets, and everything we possessed on our horses, and, needless to remark, everything was wet through. We waded, or rather our horses did, through these bogs and ponds until about 3 p.m., eventually arriving on the much-cursed sand of last summer and the preceding one. It was bitterly cold, still raining, and we just erected our ‘bivvies’ as best we could, tossed our wet blankets, partook of wet bread and cold tea, and spent the most miserable night I have ever experienced.”

Basing his estimate on the death rate of the Union Army in the Civil War, the German Army in the FrancoPrussian War, the British Army in the Anglo-Boer War, and the Japan-

eses Army in the Russo-Japanese War, Edward Bunnell Phelps, editor of the “American Underwriter,” says that the loss by death in the present war will be 540,000 a year if the average number of men engaged amounts to 6,000,000. These figures go to show that the life of a soldier is not any more uncertain than that of a civilian under certain conditions. Thus Mr. Phelps finds that a soldier’s chances of living through a year of war are greater than those of a civilian for living from the age of 25 to the age of 36, from 30 to 41, from 35 to 45, from 40 to 49, from 45 to 52, from 53 to 56, from 55 to 60, or from 60 to 63 years.

Mr. T. J. MacMahon, the wellknown South Sea Island traveller, says the Sydney “Morning Herald,” who is now in Sydney, is showing among other island curiosities a picture hat made of pumpkin stalks, and trimmed with the same fibre. This hat is the work of a Tahitian lady, now living in the Solomon group. Mr. MacMahon has a high opinion of the white women, resident in the island group. Since conditions became so far ameliorated that the planters could take their wives to live there, the white women have pluckily faced the trying climate and the tropical housekeeping, with the result that the standard of living and refinement has been notably advanced.