NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2714, 29 March 1924, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

"The main point in connection with road making is that the people have to pay for it,” said Mr. Thomas W. Patterson, a representative, of an American asphalt mixing maokinary company, during the course of au interview offered a Northern Advocate reporter. Consequently he added , the people should see that they get the best road for their money, hut there was really more in haring good roads than merely the cost, of building. In America the centralisation of schools was an outcome of the making of good roads, and the result was that money was now being used for automobile fuel to carry the children to larger and better staffed schools, instead of being spent upon maintenance cost of low grade roads.

Since the Stum* Age the accepted method of catching tish has been to inveigle it- on to a. hook. Catching tish in a net A also a method of considerable antiquity. It has been left to the Americans to evolve the latest method of catching tish — ilial of sucking them up with a pump! A tube running- fore and aft of the fishing vessel empties into a tank, and an eight-inch motor-driv-ward end sucks in about fourteen tons of tish and water a minute. This goes into the tank, which catches the tish and allowes the water to run off. This method is simple and extraordinarily efficient, for if the boat passes through a shoal, more, than two tons of fish a minute may be caught.

Approximately 400 rabbits fell victims to strychnine poisoned carrots at one of the Winslow plantations on Friday night, states the Ashburton correspondent of the “Lyttelton Times.” During the week good bait was laid regularly, and the rabbits feed well. On Friday the time arrived for poisoning the bait, and the result as stated, is considered splendid. The breeding season is now on, and besides the number of rabbits killed, many hundreds of young, yet unable to shift for themselves, must perish. An inspection of the plantation on Saturday revealed the efficacy of the method adopted. The greatmajority of the rabbits must have perished within a few seconds of taking the bait, for they dropped on or within inches of the bait line. Some no doubt, made for their burrows, but death overtook them on the way. One of the men who witnessed a rabbit taking poisoned carol said that death occurred within a few seconds. To-dnv the feeding without poisoning will be recommenced, and after a couple of days or so strychnine will be added for another kith