The sum of £10 10s will be awarded in prizes to those infants who excel in physical fitness and size, and whose general pretensions to beauty are considered by a committee of medical men and a vote of the public to be the greatest. On an afternoon to be fixed the show will be held in His Majesty's Theatre (which has been kindly lent by Messrs John Fuller and Sons rent free), when all the competitors will be carefully judged by three judges who will all be medical men.
Each competitor will be photographed by a kinematograph operator in order that the photographs of the competing infants may be shown to the public at an evening entertainment which will be arranged in connection with the show.
On the occasion of the evening entertainment the films will be thrown on the screen, each infant having its number attached, voting papers will be handed to each member of the audience, and the three children getting the largest number of votes will be awarded further prizes. The age limit has been fixed at 15 months old on February 1, and babies over that age will not be eligible.
• The rata trees in the Owaka district are at present a glorious sight. The splendid weather seems to have been appreciated by the ratas, as they are one mass of red, and can be seen several miles away. The hundreds of holiday-makers who have been staying at the seaside resorts have fully enjoyed the fine display of bloom, and those who have seen the sight for the first time have been delighted. The young ratas stand transplanting well and start to flower at an early age.
• The infinite variety and all-round interest of the new pictures screened at the Queen's Theatre yesterday ensures a high and well-merited degree of popularity for the programme which is to be on view for the next few days. There are several good dramatic subjects in the series, all up to the high standard insisted upon by the management of the Queen's Theatre, and these are interspersed by several excellent scenic, comic and topical films which lend the diversity which is required to round off the entertainment.
In the two fresh editions of the Gaumont Graphic the gazer is given a demonstration of the up-to-dateness of the kinematographer, for they depict events which took place on the other side of the world as recently as the last week in November. Views are included of the funeral of the late Spanish Premier, Senor Canalejas, and of the Balkan war, while other subjects of interest touched upon are the launching of a German cruiser at Kiel and an exhibition of fire-drill in New York.
• Permission to capture a couple of kiwis and send them to an institution at Chicago, U.S.A., is sought (says the Dominion) by a Marton resident formerly a school master in the United States. The exportation of the kiwi, which grows rarer year by year, is not readily permitted by the authorities.
Not long ago a person who had obtained a number of kiwis, at a cost of 50, was successful in conveying them as far as Sydney but there the birds were seized, on the ground that no permit had been obtained for their exportation. The birds themselves are probably almost as difficult to obtain as permits authorising their removal from the dominion, but they are reported to be still fairly numerous in dark, sunless gullies round about the upper waters of the Wanganui River.
- ODT, 14.1.1913.
