NEWS ITEMS.

Motueka Star, Volume II, Issue 47, 29 April 1902, Page 4

NEWS ITEMS.

. A Christchurch paper says . —lf Mr Seddon at Home sets up the claim he set up here that he is the author of the blockhouse system in. South Africa, there will be a roar of laughter that will make a tidal wave on the coasts of New Zealand. » It is stated that the capital of the company which has been formed in Wellington and Auckland to work the extensive totara forests near Taupo, will be £350,000. The scheme involves the construction of a railway to connect with the Rotorua-Auckland railway. It is understood that another large totara bush in the Taupo district has been secured by Mr P. Bartholomew. The new Lords of Westland, the Hon James Marshall and the Hon Jas. Holmes, turn out all that could be expected. The former is said to have been a Totara Flat hotelkeeper, and the latter an eminent water race projector. The former, we presume, will be acceptable to the Liquor party, and the latter will be welcomed by ardent Prohibitionists.—Wairarapa Times. A novel and beautiful sight, seen recently in the township of Leeston, 27 miles from Christchurch, is an avenue of wattle trees in full bloom twice was not altogether uncommon, but the appearance of a long row of trees in bloom so late in the autumn is certainly almost unique. . Last week the Treasurer of N.S. Wales received a letter containing LI 2 from an anonymous correspondent who signed himself “Thine.” The Takaka News says :—The settlers’ sheep which were driven to Canterbury for sale fetched satisfactory prices on the whole ; the best wethers realised 13s 7d, and prices ranged from that down to 4s for some lambs which had been shorn. The farmers generally consider this is the best method of disposing of their sheep and will most likely repeat the experiment later on. It is stated that the lambs would have realised better pr ices had they been sent earlier in the season. The Evening Post recently stated that 4,500 sheep had been driven overland from Hawke’s Bay to Wellington, and that not a sheep was lost on the journey. A Masterton drover doubts the accuracy of this statement. He says the thing is almost impossible, unless settlers on the line of route subscribed to th :» flock. Trooper Crawford, in a letter to the Hawke’s Bay Herald, writes : —The man who says that the Boer is not brave—well he did not know anything about them ! I suppose it is a case of their being desperate ; but to seem them advance on us, dropping everywhere, with their bridles on their arms, firing as they came, and the women behind leading more horses, and singing some darned chant about “ Da President, da President,” was a sight worth seeing. I want to know (writes Mr Labouchere in the London “Truth”) whether the colonies intend to pay their share of our outlay on ships of war. They are blatant Jingoes, so long as it costs them nothing. We are always being told that the expenditure is necessary owing to our colonial Empire. But, if so, why is the British taxpayer to pay the entire burden ? Why does Mr Seddon not send us over a, substantial contribution from New Zealand, instead of windbag oratory denouncing all who are not as Jingo as he is ? As it is, he is clamouring for our purchasing New Zealand sheep at a higher cost than we might obtain them elsewhere../'Our colonies are never weary of insisting that they are our sisters, and they seem > to think that ladies should not pay the j reckoning. They seem to me to be \ poor relations who sponge upon us| as though we’re a rich uncle in a comedy