A very active campaign is being prosecuted by the Society for the Health of Women and Children at the present time. While Dr Truby King is busy in the north the members of the committee are doing a great deal of work in Otago.
Last Monday Lawrence was visited, and a delegate from the society addressed a representative and enthusiastic gathering of the townspeople, a branch of the society being formed. At Milton, too, the delegates were warmly received, and a branch was organised there. A suggestion was made that a Plunket nurse should work the district, including Milton to Lawrence, and a decision as to which town shall be the headquarters of the nurse was held over.
The next place visited was Oamaru, where a well-attended meeting decided to form a branch, with Mrs Whitton as president. A Plunket nurse will be stationed at Oamaru, and the surrounding districts will be reached from there. At Palmerston a branch of the society has already been formed, and it has agreed to pay a portion of the salary of the nurse, whose headquarters will be at Oamaru.
Members of the committee will visit Balclutha on Monday at the invitation of the Mayor of that town, and meetings will be held during the week at Naseby, Clyde, Alexandra, and Cromwell, where delegates from the society will speak, and branches will probably be formed.
Branches of the society have been established in every town in the north in which Dr King has spoken. He is expected to return to Dunedin in about a fortnight.
• At the invitation of the directors of the Jacobsen Destination Indicator Company a number of members of the City Council, heads of various corporation departments, and several shareholders in the company yesterday attended an official trial of the apparatus. The invention is a most ingenious one, and its object is to announce in turn the names of the streets which the car is approaching.
These are printed on a revolving screen, which is controlled from a special button inserted in the motorman's handle, which directs the current to the motor in the apparatus.
This in turn operates the screen which revolves with a burring sound, designed to attract attention, and stops with the name of the street being approached exposed to the view of all in the car. The value of this arrangement would be readily apparent to strangers in a city or to those who experience difficulty in locating their particular stopping-place on a dark night.
The run selected for yesterday's trial was to the Ocean Beach and back and, taken as a whole, the test was a most convincing one, and the value of the invention was made strikingly apparent. Besides showing the streets, the indicator can be fitted with advertisements, which also revolve, and the value of the invention is enhanced in no small measure by this addition.
• In consultation with a local resident who has been rabbiting on the Galloway faces we were informed (says the Alexandra Herald) that the little German owls liberated by the late Mr Iversen have firmly established themselves on the rock-bound places abutting the Manuherikia and Molyneux rivers. Another gentleman declares that they frequent the rabbit warrens, go into the nests and drag out and destroy the young rabbits. That they scare away the small birds seems to be universally acknowledged. - ODT, 7.9.1912.
