Manawatu Herald SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1929. LOCAL AND GENERAL

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3913, 2 March 1929, Page 2

Manawatu Herald SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1929. LOCAL AND GENERAL

The Prime Minister has announced that tenders for the. supply of tobacco to mental hospitals and prisons had ibcen revised and extended to allow of New Zealand manufacturers competing. “This year is cpiite like old times as far as thistles are concerned,” remarked .Trustee W. E. Barber at Thursday’s meeting of the Manawatu Rabbit Board. Mr. Barber said that thistles were growing in profusion right throughout the district.

A special message received- from Dunedin yesterday states that a report is current there that requests may be made to the Government to withhold permits for the keeping’ of Chinchilla rabbits until further measures are taken to make it absolutely certain that none can get loose, and start a new race that will become a pest. An old gent entered a barber’s shop the other day, and owing to his hair being rather thin on top, he remarked .to the barber: “Look here, you ought to cut my hair cheaper, as there’s nothing much to put.” “In your ease, sir,” said the barber, “we don’t cliarge for cutting your hair at all. ‘What we charge for is having to look for it.”

“There have been no instructions issued for the cessation of work on the Palmerston North railway deviation,” was the statement made by the Prime Minister (Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Ward) when questioned by a reporter at Palmerston North yesterday regarding the rumours prevalent that .the Government intended dropping the project. In making this statement, Sir Joseph added that the matter had not been discussed.

The old dodge of causing a crowd to gaze skywards at nothing was* successfully adopted in Lambton Quay, Wellington, the other day. A man with an air of concentration looked fixedly at the top of a big building on the opposite side of the street, shaded his eyes, and pointed. The crowd steadily greiw until 30 staid citizens were in all seriousness peering into vacant space. The crowd continued to grow, hut it no longer included the cause of .its collection.

The fact that stoats have a particularly keen sense of smell was mentioned by Trustee Gloyn at Thursday’s Rabbit Board meeting. He said that .one day he was proceeding across/ his farm in the Taikorea district when he noticed A','here a rabbit had burrowed into the side of a dried up drain about eight inches below the ground level and there concealed its young. A stoat walking along- the top of the bank sensed the young rabbits buried beqeath and burrowing down from the top was not long in securing the young.

“Mountains so distinctive and so •'beautiful .deserve a name of their own," said Mr. it. Scoville, of New York, after lie had seen the Southern Alps recently. He said that the comparison with the Swiss Alps, which their name suggested, was both odious and .misleading. The two were entirely different, and would gain by having their unique character’ emphasised. The Swiss Alps had pine trees growing right up to the sky-line, while the New 7 Zealand mountains were hare and rugged like the Rockies. More thau o.ny others lie had seen, the New Zealand ranges resembled the Selkirks in British Columbia, with their jagged snow-capped ,peaks. A peculiar feature of the Southern Alps, however, was their height above the Hermitage. The foothills surrounding the Canadian Rockies, for instance, made it impossible to observe peaks of 12,000 ft. at close quarters except from an altitude of about 6000 ft., and in this way some of their dignity was lost; but in this country one could look up from the Tasman and Hooker Valleys at Mount Cook rising up for 10,000 ft. sheer into the sky.

The Rongotea Dairy Company’s payout for January was 1/6 per lb. of butter-fat. There is a big falling off in the milk yield, on account of the dry weather.

A report has been widely circulated to the effect that the Moutoa dairy herds arc badly infected with vaginitis. Upon making inquiry we learn that the statement made by Mr. Giimblett at a Farmers’ Union meeting at Palmerston to this effect has been exaggerated, as the cows in this district are not any more subject to this trouble than herds in any other part of the Doiminion this season.

Despite the fact that stoats and weasels do a tremendous amount of good in keeping rabbits down, they are at times responsible for serious inroads being made into the feathered members of a poultry run. At Thursday’s meetiog nf the Manawatu Rabbit Board, Trustee Mclvelvie said that he knew a farmer in the Carnarvon district who had placed 28 ducks in a -crate one evening for despatch to Wellington the next day by motor lorry. When the farmer looked into the box the following anorning, ho'wever, ho found every duck dead, a stoat or weasel having found its way into the enclosure over night. It was a peculiar thing that the animals had a particular liking for ducks. When the question of the advisability of removing the protection on hares was under discussion at Thursday’s meeting of the ManaAvatu Rabbit Board, one trustee remaikedj that he did not knoAV which did the -most damage, the hares or the shooters. Some of the “sports” were in the habit of blazing aAvay at anything they saw, windmills, gates, posts, beer bottles, etc., while they had little regard for fences, the wire often being pulled away from the"staplcs. In fact they shot at anything and everything. He had experienced great difficulty in keeping turkeys on his property, and had now given the job of rearing them up, as they always fell victims to the shooters. The meeting decided that it would not. take any action in regard to having the protection on hares removed.

A good method of rolling down thistles prior to ploughing a pad-, dock Avas mentioned by Trustee MeKelvie at the monthly meeting of the Manawatu Rabbit Board on Thursday. On his properyt at Carnarvon this year one paddock Avas covered Avitli thistles over five feet high. When a start was made to plough the area, great difficulty Avas experienced in getting the horses to pull the plough through tangle. The trouble Avas overcome, however, by attaching two horses to a hea-vy gate on which Avas placed a heavy blue-gum post for extra Aveight. The l-opd hitching the horses to the gate were about a chain long and gave them sufficient freedom to allow them to pick out a path among the thistles. In this manner the Avyeds were crashed down in a very short time and no further trouble was experienced in getting the paddock ploughed.