The solution of a problem which has concerned many people - how to see the world on next to nothing - has apparently been solved by an elderly English worker who was a passenger for Sydney by the Westralia. He told a New Zealand Herald representative before the vessel sailed that he was formerly an employee on the docks at London.
While at this work he saved 10, and, being single and unfettered, decided to start out on this magnificent sum to tour the world.
He obtained a steerage passage to South Africa, and landed at Capetown with only a few shillings. He worked there for a month, earned another 10, and made for Australia. After another month's work at Brisbane he bought his passage to New Zealand, and for the rest of two months he was an employee on a dredge on the Molyneux River, in Otago. He was leaving Auckland with a steerage ticket for Sydney and 6, and he confided to the pressman that he had spent the time of his life, and felt that his 58 years weighed as lightly on him as 20.
• A ship's doctor early in May (says the New York correspondent of the Daily Express) carried out a surgical operation by wireless telegraphy while he was 400 miles away from the patient. A labourer on Swan Island, a lonely wireless station in the Gulf of Mexico, crushed his foot so badly that it was obvious it must be amputated.
There were no doctors and no medical books at hand, and no one at the station had ever attempted any surgery before.
The wireless operators sent out a call, which was picked up by a vessel in the Caribbean Sea, 420 miles away.
A surgeon on this vessel sent a reply message telling the men on Swan Island how to go to work. The injured labourer was operated on successfully, and the patient on recovering insisted on pressing the wireless key himself, under the guiding fingers of the operator, to send the doctor his thanks. He is reported to be making an excellent recovery from the operation.
• Aeroplanes are adding a new terror to bird life. The huge and noisy apparition in the air strikes them with the same fear as a bird of prey. A curious instance of this occurred at Parramatta a few days ago in connection with the aviation race between Hart and Stone (says the Sydney Morning Herald).
When Hart and his machine sailed over the town several flocks of homing pigeons happened to be out for their afternoon's fly. When the winged machine appeared in sight, humming like a gigantic bee, the pigeons flew wildly. First the various flocks commingled, then they started off in all directions, and several of the birds in their wild flight dashed into the telephone wires and were killed.
• Mr D. L. Poppelwell, of Gore, spoke to the Otago Institute on the subject of "New Zealand Wild Flowers" with all the authority of an expert and the ardour of an enthusiast. After stating the little known fact that while the North Island had 219 native plants not found in the south, the south could produce as many as 456 unknown in the north, he made passing reference to the very grave ignorance of native flora among New Zealanders.
Very few, he said, could name more than half a dozen of our flowers, and among these would most probably be the mountain lily, which was a buttercup, and the Chatham Island lily, which was a forget-me-not. - ODT, 12.7.1912.
