NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3653, 18 June 1927, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

Whitebait are reported to liavi made an appearance in the Waiwakniho river at New Plymouth. A petition signed by the requiret number has been sent to Wellingtoi for the purpose of raising the status of Martinborough from a Towt District to a Borough. Within a few weeks the construction of a palatial theatre for pictures and vaudeville shows will lx commenced in Dunedin at a price oi £35,000. Many spurious coins are apparently tendered to tram conductors in Auckland. An item in the tramways balance-sheet that claimed attention when the accounts came before the City Council last week was “spurious coins, £4 13s 3d.” Patronage of the New Zealand tailways has diminished to an alarming extent over the past seven years. The official records for 1927, when compared with those for J 921, which gave the highest figure for the last 12 years, show a falling-off in the number of ordinary passengers of over 5,000,000, while the increase in the number of season tickets issued over the same period is only 119,479. When the log of the steamer Xgapuhi was taken on board when the vessel reached Tauranga from Auckland the other day a. bright piece of ivory was found in the cylinder (says an exchange). Closer examination revealed that a shark had evidently attempted to swallow the log, and in the process had lost one of its teeth. The cylinder of the log was full of water, which accounted for the log running slow from the Old Man Rock to Tauranga. “May T offer, as my first remark,” said Sir A. Boyd-Carpcnter, M.P. for Coventry, in an address at the Wellington Town' Hall on Wednesday night, “an attempt at the musical language of the great race in New Zealand? ‘Tena Koe Pakelia!' (Laughter and applause). It is a welcome and a greeting, with a music which must appeal to everybody of our race, for if there is one thing which has struck mv colleagues and myself, as we are going through this- wonderful Dominion, as regards the Maori, it is the wonderful musical quality of the voice, the imagery of his mind, and the tone.of his utterance. I should wish, and you all wish —although these are side issues perhaps in one way—that they should he preserved, for they represent a great deal in the British Empire.” The cave drawings discovered in the Arapuni Gorge last year formed the subject of a lecture by Mr. G. Archey, curator of the Auckland Museum, at the meeting of the anthropological section of the Auckland Institute on Tuesday evening (reports the New Zealand Herald). Air. Archey said the drawing showed a series of sketches 'of canoes, apparently of war eanoe type, displaying typical stern posts and fi-gure-heads and in several eases sails. Although they differed in some respects they were not river canoes, all being of the seagoing i ype. The caverns did not show indications of having been permanently occupied. Although a hearth was discovered and pipi shells wore found in the debris on the floor, these suggested the caves had been only temporarily inhabited. The presence oi' the coastal shells laised the question whether the Maoris who used the caves ''were coast people or from the interior. In discussion following the lecture, Mr. (t. Graham said a tribe known as Ngatihotu had inhabited the neighbourhood, having been gradually ousted from the coast by a more warlike people. The shells suggested that some of the .a had used the cave as a refuge. Regarding the canoes shown in the drawings, he believed they were of a type developed subsequent to the arrival of the Arawa and T.ainui canoes in 1325. They were similar in pattern to those shown in Captain Cook’s plates.