THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. MONDAY, JUNE 27, 1927. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5144, 27 June 1927, Page 2

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. MONDAY, JUNE 27, 1927. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The number of deaths (11,819) re; gistered during 1926 was nearly 800 in excess of the total for the previous year (11,026) sta.tes the Health Department. “This, disparity,” adds the department, “is not reflected to the same extent in the death rate, which still maintains its position on a reasonably low level. The death rate (8.74 per 1000 of mean population) was,«in fact, an increase of only 5.43 per cent, over the record low rates for 1925 and 1924 (8.29 in each case). The increase is principally due to the epidemics of whooping cough and influenza during 1926.”

A profit of over £6O was shown by the Kerepeehi Sports Association as a result of its sports meeting last Easter Monday. Sundry small accounts and donations are yet to come in.

Steady progress is being made with the obtaining of signatures to the petition asking Jhat • the area about Pipiroa, Ngatea, and Waitakarur.u be constituted a lands drainage district. There is a certain amount of opposition to tlie proposal, for some settlers are of the opinion that more should be done by the Government before handing the area over to the settlers. It has been suggested that the new drainage board be known as the. Hauraki Plains West Drainage Board, as that was the name selected for the same area in connection with the water supply scheme.

The Manawatu Daily Times says that on the recommendation of the New Plymouth authprities, the- Palmerston North Traffic Department got busy and painted the street domes with aluminium. The idea was to make them visible at night, but the experiment has proved anything but a success. Workmen ar.e now busy restoring the yellow and white coats, which have yet to be improved upon.

Returning from a social function one night recently a party of motorists were held up at the Ngatea bridge while it was opened for a boat. Chaffing at the delay, one member conceived the idea of pleading a patient for the doctor to expediate the opening of the road. The ruse worked, but punishment came quickly, for within a few chains of the bridge a tyre went flat.

An urgent meeting of settlers draining into Drain H in the Netherton area is called for 8 o’clock to-morrow night at the Netherton Hall.

“ When you look at the sky at night and sweep the heavens, with your eyes you fancy you can see millions of stars ... but that is where you

are wr\ng, because you reflHy only see about aOOO,” said Dr. P. D. McLeod, who is in charge of the observatory at Canterbury College, when lecturing at the College on “Celestial Photography” (says the Christchurch Press”). “But if you had a one-inch telescope and gazed through it,’ he continued, “you would behold 100,000, stars. And if you had a ten-inch telescope you would see 5,000,000, while if you had a 100-inch telescope you would be able to see 100,000,000.” In the whole of the system there were (as far as it was humanly possible to ascertain) about 1,500,000,000 stars in the heavens. “Our sun is. one of those- stars,” he went on. “Relatively it is equal to one individual on this earth, as I understand there are approximately 1,500,000,000' people in this, world.” He said that in 1887 a definite plan was formulated to photograph the sky, and added that the work then commenced had not yet been finished, although it had been in hand for 40 years.

“Withdraw the management of the affairs of common interest from the nation as a whole', confine it to a class or. a group, and, even if their intentions are excellent, you will arrive at narrow and warped conclusions (says Sir Herbert Samuel). “Not only will you have a people ill-inform-ed, wanting in self-reliance without individuality or manysidedness ; you will produce policies which may perhaps be more sedate, but will certainly be more conventional, more timid, less productive of great results.”

Woods’ Great Peppermint Cure. For Influenza Colds.