Local and General News

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 130, 26 April 1890, Page 2

Local and General News

The butchers in Wellington are going to raise the price of meat. Victoria spends annually on state education £722,000. The Manchester Rifles will parade (full dress) for inspection on Friday May 2nd. We have received No. 8 article on the railway problem of New Zealand, by Mr Saml. Vaile, of Auckland. La Grippe has fairly established itself in Feilding for the time, and the number of complaints increases day by day. Mr F. Bull, of Wellington, has applied for a patent for a new chemico-mechani-cal combination process for the manufacture of superior fibre from phormium tenax. The Returning Officer for the Manchester Road District, Mr Sherwill, gives notice that .the election for No. 5 ward will be held on Saturday, May 3rd, at the schoolhouse, Mangaone, and the schoolhouse, Bunnythorpe. The champion economist lives somewhere on the Manchester Block. He was sowing grass seed the other day and when some of it fell on his neighbour's land, he sent a boy over the dividing fence to pick up the stray seed. Fact. The Manchester Timber Company Halcombe, publish to-day a schedule o prices for timber, shingles, stabs, &c, de livered at the Feilding railway station The company also intimate that they have always on hand mouldings, architraves, &c, All communications addressed to Mr H. Cornfoot, the manager of the Company, Halcombe, will receive the promptest attention. Agricultural depression has neither depressed the rotundity of the farmer's waistcoat, nor repressed the exuberance of Ims wife's stomacher. There is nothing therefore, surprising in the fact that just subsequently to a harvest home a farmer's little daughter, after wistfully gazing upon her maternal parent's ample bust, exclaimed, 'Mother, I do wish 1 had a full crop like yours. 1 The Resident Magistrate yesterday gave the decision of the Court regarding the cause of the wreck of the barque Emilie. The Court, after reviewing tbe circumstances already reported, said there was no evidence to, show sufficient cause for the sudden water logging of the vessel, ! except that of the stevedores engaged in stowing the cargo after about a quarter of the cargo had been stowed by the ship's company.; The Paltaerston will case, Flyger t. McNeil and another, commenced at Wanganui on Wednesday, it is a suit by some of the sisters of the testator, a Mrs Fiyger and others of the McNeil family, to retail probate granted to Mrs McNeil, ami 'to compel the executors to prove it in solemn form. The plaintifts allege (1)> that the will, which was executed three weeks before the testator died, was made at a time when^be was not capable of understanding ..its effect*; (2) that it was obtained through $he undue influence of Mrs McNeil. The case is still being investigated.

I "Wirth Bros.' circus opens in Wanganui on May Ist The friends of the late Mr George Evans are reminded that the funeral will take place to-morrow afternoon at two o'clock. Householders, and heads of fimilios are reminded of the meeting to be held in the State Schoolroom on Monday evening to elect a school committee. There was a drunk charged at the Police Court this morning who . yvas dismissed with a caution. Mr Sherwill, J.P,. presided on the bench. Captain Edwin telegraphed tb-day:— Warnings to expect very cold night or frost have been sent to all places north of Napier and New Plymouth. Schmidt, the officer who is alleged to have betrayed the plans of Cronstadt to Plessen, has been sent to Siberia.. He asserted he was innocent, and had been instructed to entrap the German attache's. We understand that Mr Bird, B.M. of Hokitika and Westport, who, it will be remembered, was associated recently with a libel action against a journalist on the' West Coast, has been requested by the Government to resign his appointment,— Wellington Press. He couldu't live on souls. — A clergyman whose salary had not been paid for several months told the church wardens of his church that he must have his money as his family were suffering for the necessaries of life. ' Money/ exclaimed one of the church wardens noted for his stinginess, 'Money. Do you preach for money ? I thought you preached for the good of souls.' The minister replied, ' So I do, but I can't eat souls. And if I could, it would take a thousand such as'yours to make a meal." Some little time ago Mr W. H. Levin, as American Consul here, asked on behalf of his Government the Crown Lands Department to furnish him with a return showing the area of land in New Zealand under flax cultivation. A return has been furnished Mr Levin showing the total area of Crown Lands carrying flax to be 119,690 acres; lands held by private individuals, 179,450 acres; native lands, 147,262 acres ; total, 446,402 acres. These figures are only approximate, as no actual measurements had ever been 1 made. In a letter accompanying the return the Department says that with the exception of a few acres iv the southern portion of the Wellington district the only flax remaiuing in the colony is now grown on the banks of rivers and creeks, and on the margins of lagoons, or in small -isolated patches. Up till recently tYLe-Pi.ormium tenax was regarded as a> weed, and very large tracts, were burnt off and the land brought; into cultivation.