HERE AND THERE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1555, 12 February 1920, Page 45

HERE AND THERE.

A touching tribute was paid to the memory of Dr. Elsie Inglis, the founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, who died so tragically on her arrival in England two years ago on returning from service on the Serbian and Roumanian fronts. More than 100 members of the staff of the hospital unit at Royaumont, France, 1914-19, met to dine at Frascati’s Restaurant, London,. to honour their C. M. 0., Dr. Frances Ivens. A vacant chair was placed in memory of Dr. Elsie Inglis. From it hung two laurel wreaths, one for the women of the hospitals who gave their lives in the service, and the other for the French soldiers who died in the hospitals.

Mr. Duncan McLennan, of Dunrobin, lost close on 60 sheep by a very simple means (says the Tapanui Courier). The water pots into .which the shearers dipped their blades had not been cleaned and replenished, and as the sheep were shorn they succumbed quickly to blood poisoning, until Mr. McLennan traced the cause. Though apparently simple, the effects of foul water pots in a shearing shed are disastrous.

To all who contemplate travel abroad, especially to Europe, the advice of- Mr. G. M. Kebbell. of Wellington, who has just returned from an extended tour, is: “Don’t,” or, at any rate, “Wait, till next season.” Accommodation is overtaxed to the limit in London and* the chief provincial cities, and if a room is surrendered in an hotel fof the purpose of a visit elsewhere, there is no chance of getting it back- on return. Trains, -trams, ’buses, tubes are similarly overcrowded, and a man was killed recently in a rush to a ’bus. Seats at theatres must be booked ahead or there is no chance of getting inside. Altogether the conditions are most uncomfortable for visitors and travellers.

One thousand officers and men of the City of London Police Reserve, who served as special constables during the war, marched to St. Paul’s Cathedral to attend a thanksgiving service, at which the Lord Mayor and, sheriffs attended in state. Canon Simpson, who preached' the sermon, said that at the beginning of the war between 7,000 and 8,000 men were sworn in. The force was necessarily recruited from men not available for military service, nevertheless 3,000 left to join the combatant forces, and a number were mentioned in despatches for gallant conduct in the field.

One of the strangest occupations for women (says the San Francisco correspondent of the “Sunday Express”) is that of a professional wine taster, a post held by Mlle. Collinere, a young French girl, who earns about £5OOO a year in California. She is a teetotaller, strange as it may seem, She cares nothing for wine, and never swallows it: the testing is all done by taste in the mouth. If she were to drink wine she would lose her subtle magic of taste, which is so fine and so marvellously developed that she can discern from the first taste of a wine just where the grapes grew from which it was made — whether they were raised in California or in the vineyards of France or Germany or elsewhere. She can even tell the vineyards in which the grapes grew, and whether they were raised on a hillside or in a valley. She can instantly detect an adulteration of any sort, or if there is a blend, and, if so, of which wines. She. has often found so-called wines with not a particle of grape juice in them, being made up of cheap alcohol, sugar, dyes, and cheap fruit juices. Mlle. Collinere can tell the age of a wine almost to a day; whethit crossed the sea or has been moved often and for long distances. She never eats chocolates, rich puddings, pastry, raw onions, lemons, curry or pineapple. She uses no salt, does not drink tea or coffee, and lives on the simplest and most wholesome diet. She gets her reward for all this ascetisism in two ways, for not only does it preserve her wonderful taste, but it gives her a marvellous complexion.