GENERAL NEWS.

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 105, 7 November 1918, Page 2

GENERAL NEWS.

Mrs R. C. Allen lias received word that hor husband, Lieut.-Col. E. C. Allen, D. 8.0., has been discharged from the hospital as fit for active service. It is evident therefore that Lieut.-Col. Allen's wound was only a slight one.

For the month of September the returns to tho Norfolk Dairy Coy. show an increase : The milk received was 465,347 lbs as against 445,384 lbs for the corresponding month of last year. The butter-fat was 16344 lbs, the. payments £IOB9 9s 3d, and the average test 3.4. The Sunny Park Company received 171,453 lbs milk, producing 6581 lbs butter fat. The payments were £4lB 12s and the average test 3.4.

It is estimated —says the Eltham Argus—that as a result of the hard winter and scarcity of feed there has been a loss of over 8000 cows in the Taranaki district—probably this is an under estimate The calculation is arrived at by a record of the cow hides that liave been sold by various auctioneers. This heavy loss has created a brisk demand for cows and springing heifers, and good quality animals are selling at big prices.

A London pressman was told of a miner who was tunnolling under No Man's Land, and heard a German picking with his pickaxe in a countertunnel approaching tho British lines. The British miner waited hours in the dark until the German tunneller broke into tho English tunnel; then there was a fight to the death with knives, and the Hun wont West. The victor got into tho Gorman tunnel and walked towards the Hun trenches, and succeeded in blowing up a part of them. This grim fight below No Man's Land, between these two soldier miners, is one of the grimmest and most striking combats ever recorded.

A ballot for Crown lands uudor tho Discharged Soldiers' Settlement Act was held at the District Lands and Survey Office, Auckland, on Wednesday. For seven sections in the Wairere Survey District, near Matamata, 151 applicants went to tho ballot, the following drawing sections : —W. It. Carter, section No 1, 74 acres (18 married applicants); W. R. G. Eippey, No 2, 74 acres (10); C. A. Moore, No 3, 80 acres (11); W. E Miles, No 4,' 75 acres (22); M. F Barlow, No 9, 60 acres (26); A. S. Warrington, No 10,75 acres (33); A. Wiggins, No 11, 7o acres (31). At the last meeting of the Te Awamutu Sub-provincial Farmers' union the secretary, Mr Clifton, after stating there would be a deficit ou the year's working of £2OO said : There seemed no prospect of adding to the resources, and the only course left open seemed to be to curtail expenditure and adopt a cheaper scheme of having a clerk in the office. Had members supported the land agencj' as they ought to have done, the present position would not have arisen. In the circumstances he considered it right that he should tender his resignation and he therefore did so. Somebody had to make the move and some change had to come about. Members regretted the position, one member characterising it as a very retrograde step. He added it was beyond belief that a rich community failed to raise £7OO for organisation. The resignation was accepted.

A rather dismal story of experiences with share-milkers was related before the Military Service board at New Plymouth on Thursday. The farmer wiio was appealing said that tho first family of sliaromilkers he got left in six weeks—they found the work too hard. He got another family, but the first time he (appellant) went to town the sharemilkers broke into the house and about the last time he saw them was when thej' appeared in the Waitara Magistrate's Court. Having a stout heart, the farmers engaged still more milkers on the system, but this time there was the difference between the two parties about tho manner in which tho agreoment was carried out. A fourth time the owner of the farm engaged sharemilkers and the}'- went again before the end of tho season. After this tho farmer became discouraged and when the board suggested that he should seek to put a fnmily of sharemilkers on the farm while he went to the front, he was far from enthusiastic. —Herald.

A party of throe engineers who left New Zealand some three or four months ago for America soon obtained work in the shipbuilding yards there (says an exchange). " One of tho party, in a letter to his brother in Balclutha, says that he has charge of J installing the turbine engines in one of the engine-rooms of a destroyer. J Wages are high, and he has made as much as GOdol. 90 cents a week (£l2 13s lOjd). Sundays and all overtime are paid for at the rate of Gs . per hour, and the average weekly wage (not including Sundays) is 49d0l ' 30 cents. He says there is little home ( life or sociability in America, every- ' body being keen after the dollars. ' There is plenty of work for marine engineeis over there, but he thinks the labourers are just as well off in New Zealand, as living is so high in America.