LOCAL & GENERAL NEWS

Marlborough Express, Volume LX, Issue 231, 30 September 1926, Page 4

LOCAL & GENERAL NEWS

Polis of ratepayersi yesterday at Hastings on four proposals to borrow a total of £58,900 for bitumen roading, footpaths, etc., eleetrical applianqes and operations, piping open drains and sewerage, and water works were carried ' by substantial majorities. A Maori named Jimmy Waereta who broke out from the Terrace Gaol on July 23rd, was sentenced at Wellington to-da,y to twelve months,' imprisonment for the theft of a motor-cycle, on which he had been riding about the country for three months. His original sentence was two years' reformative treatment for theft and forging and uttering. The Marlborough Merino Breeders' Association has been advised that the challenge trophy to be presented by it to the Royal Agricultural Society for competition in the merino section at the Royal Showi has been shipped from England by the s.s. Hororata, and will arrive in ample time for the show. The trophy is a very handsome one and, if time permits, will be placed on view in Blenheim before being forwarded to the Royal Society. The mulberry tree that Dame Ellen Terry planted twelve years ago in the Sh&kespere garden of the Diuiedin Botanic Gardens has thrived, and has grown to a fair size. At the plantinoDame Ellen Terij remarked that if the tree prospered she iwould like to have some smiall thing made from a piece of its wood to add to her collection of souvenirs. Her request is shortly to be obeyed. A little box made from a bough that came off at last year's pruning is to be sent to Dame Ellen Terry >s Englisffi address. Apparently there is money in good sheep dogs. A drover at Christchurch submitted his dogs to aiiction, as he is retiring from thc roacl. The paek were good workers iand fairly well known, and they were competed for by farmers, who paid good prices for them. A six-year-old dog made £21, and another one a few years younger brought £22. An attractive-looking collie bitch brought £11. The mature dogs brought au average of £17, and some six-months-old pups up to £5. What was strikinp; w,as the animntpJ

competition for thenf. Dozens of farmers bid for the lines submitted. As secretary of the Fai-mers' Union, Mr R. Wanden wrote to tlie Royal Agricultural Society with referenoe to the omission of the grain and seed sectipn from the sohedule for this year's Royal Show. Mr Wanden has now received a reply stating that the Society had endeavored to lay down a standard schedule for the stock classes, but, up to the present, such seetions as grain and seeds, and other subsidiary seetions, had been left to the Association controlling the show to deal with. The letter adds that the Marlborough protest in regard to the omission of grain and seeds will be placed before the eouncil of the Society, but, as everyone, recognises, it is too latei to do anything in the matter this year.