Entomology and etymology
The glow-worms usually seen are the insects in their grub stage, the larvae in entomological language. The light, evidently, is emitted in both the grub stage and the perfect stage, but not in the intermediate stage, when the insect is a dormant chrysalis; a pupa, entomologically. The grub weaves for itself a web, like the web of a spider.
The web is a kind of mucus discharged from all parts of the grub’s body. A grub, when making a new web, raises its head and part of its body into the air, and reaches around until it strikes something. By drawing its head back slightly, it makes a very fine thread of mucus.
By gliding motions of its body and by movements of its head, it makes pendant strings of beads. Some of these are from one inch to four or five inches long. When a grub is shining at night, the reflection of the light may be seen along the main thread or tube. The grub’s lamp is at the end of its body. It is semi-transparent, and there is great diversity of form in it. The grub can withdraw or extend it at will, but the grub may cease shining immediately without withdrawing the lamp. Grubs cease to shine on very cold nights, in the daytime, and in a room lighted artificially. Only one species of glow-worm is known in New Zealand. It is a fly, Arachnocampa luminosa, which means "the luminous creature that makes a web like a spider’s".
Dog owners urged to be kind
During the present season a number of competitors have given club secretaries trouble through thrashing their dogs on the trial grounds, because they did not put up satisfactory runs. In at least one instance the competitor was ordered off the ground — and rightly so. There must necessarily be a certain amount of luck in all trial work, and every experienced competitor knows that the very best dog at times will make a bad blunder. To thrash such a dog is most unsportsmanlike, and secretaries of all clubs should take a very firm stand, and order any man who is guilty of such a practice to remove both himself and his dogs.
Kindness is probably more essential in the training of a sheep dog than any other attribute, and the man with the best dogs is as a rule the man who is firm but kind, and who only uses the stick when it is absolutely necessary. A cowed dog is usually the sign of a foolish master, for kindness will accomplish far more than any amount of thrashing, always admitting of course, that it is necessary to be firm.
Comeuppance for obnoxious Aussie
An immaculately-dressed young man boarded the Rattray street cable tram on Saturday, and began to talk in affected tones to one of the passengers. He had come from Sydney, he said, but had found Dunedin’s leading hotels not "classy" enough for him. One felt these things, he averred, after coming from a large city to "a little place like this". He had been told to go to a boarding-house in Kaikorai. The visitor’s feelings when he found that he had been the victim of a practical joke can better be left to the imagination. — ODT, 27.4.1926
