Needed a bigger boat

On Saturday evening two brothers named Benjamin and Joseph Drake left Purakanui Inlet in a flat-bottomed boat to fish on the reef outside the bar. After a few casts and a catch of a few cod and a groper a whip-tailed shark was hooked on a groper line. Being reluctant to cut away the line the brothers attempted other means. The anchor was hoisted, and the shark immediately set off seawards, thrashing the sea with its tail, but the occupants of the boat rowed in the opposite direction, and the big fish gradually tired, although at times the boat spun round and round as on a pivot. The sea being dead calm, the shark was gradually towed ashore to the rocks at the pinnacle, and there it was clubbed to death with an oar, afterwards being towed round to the inlet, where, upon measurements being taken, it was proved to be a 12-footer, its tail being 6ft in length. Next morning the brothers, with the first cast, hooked another shark, but the line caught round the anchor rope. The shark dragged the nose of the boat under, and in haste the men cut away the rope. The shark, which was a huge one, came to the top a few times, lashing the water into foam.

Otago rocks

Mr P.G. Morgan, Director of Geological Survey, states that New Zealand’s oldest rocks appear to be in Western Otago. Some geologists believe that those rocks were laid down in the Cambrian Period, far down in the Palaeozoic Era, the era of early life on the earth. Other geologists assign them to an earlier age than the Cambrian. The mica, chlorite and quartz schists of Central Otago are believed by some geologists to be as old as the oldest rocks of Western Otago, but geologists, like doctors, differ, and at least one of them considers that those old rocks of Central Otago are little older than the Triassic Period, which still was sufficiently long ago to have its remoteness measured in tens of thousands of millenniums. Mr Morgan expresses an opinion that the mica schists of Otago may be no older than some rocks in North, Central, Western Nelson, and on the western side of the Southern Alps; but the absence of fossils in those rocks renders their ages uncertain. There is evidence that, in some of the Palaeozoic periods, New Zealand was part of a lost continent, known to geologists as Gondwanaland, which extended far to the west.

In a healthy body

"Physical Education for University Students" was the address given by Mr J. Renfrew White at the opening of the Home Science Department of the Otago University yesterday. 

With regard to the education of the body, the speaker said he thought that was an essential part in education. Students should know the fundamental laws of life, and the fundamental laws governing the body; it was not only of importance to themselves, but it was essential that they make it part of their stock in trade and pass it on in their teachings. A crooked spine, or misplaced abdominal organs were more serious than a broken leg. Two great and predominant causes of physical disability, said the speaker, were defects in diet and defective teeth.

The teeth of the people of New Zealand were the worst in the world, and the mechanical disuse of the body was one of the causes. In conclusion, he urged them all to take an interest in the "body divine," and to be careful of it and correct any of the defects that were common. — ODT, 10.3.1925

Compiled by Peter Dowden